So I go out to a restaurant the other night with a bunch of people from my work. Nothing exciting I know, but let me explain. The people I am going out with are mainly scientists working in fields involved in feeding the hungry, development and limiting the destruction of natural resources for the advantage of helping and enhancing humanity. These guys and their mates are the ones screaming at the world "GIVE US FUNDING TO HELP AVERT DISASTER IN POOR COUNTRIES!!!!". Their work is helping hundreds if not thousands of people in poor countries to feed themselves and build resilience in food and resources.
So far so good. You might be thinking "wow what excellent company, a bunch of people who are on the leading edge of the fight against poverty and environmental degradation, these guys must be really interesting people!". And to some degree, you would be right. They are very good people to talk to.
But what they don't do is embrace their work in their personal lives.
Cognitive Dissonants
Let me go around the table. Their are 8 others. 2 economists, 2 policy people for food and ecosystem resilience, 1 person performing impact assessment, 1 soon to be marine biologist, 1 expert on fertilization and 1 social scientist figuring out the best social conditions for resilience to occur. 2 of them are married with a new born. Everyone but the marine biologist is paid... well... shit loads. The restaurant is pleasant with attentave serving people and not smokey.
The evening started off well, we share taxis as much as possible to get to the restaurant. We all meet, sit down and have a drink. Then come the menus and we start ordering. At the end of the ordering I am stunned. Flabergasted. Shocked. Why? 6 out of the 8 ordered steak. Grain fed Australian steak to be exact. Big slabs of it. Now I aren't doing an expose piece here or anything but this absolutely shocked me. Here you have a whole bunch of people "committed" to helping humanity, who understand that climate change is upon us and accelerating as we speak, who are trying to build food and ecosystem resilience and yet here they are eating possibly the worst thing they could. I felt like yelling.
I felt like standing up and saying "What the fuck do you think you are all doing?". I felt like saying "Do you know that each of those steaks is a couple of thousand litres of water and 50 kilos of grain?? That water and grain could feed a Bangladeshi for a good few weeks?? That the amount of energy involved in the production/harvesting/transport of the grain, to the feeding/killing/butchering/freezing/storing/transporting long distances (we are in Malaysia) of that food, would probably weigh in (back of the napkin calculation) at about 100-1000 times the calorific value within the food???"
But I was too stunned. When it came my turn to order I scanned down the menu and found... no vegetarian options. This is when the social pressure really struck. Here I was looking at the menu, everyone waiting for me, semi stunned by the rest of these peoples ignorance (cognitive dissonance actually but I want to say something harsher here) and there are no veggie options. So I have to order fish. This pisses me off. But at least it is locally caught fresh fish. Thank god for that.
But you can see what I am trying to get at here. These people all talk the talk, but when it comes to walking the walk - fuck off, that's somebody elses job. I want to live in maximum comfort and should be allowed to as long as someone else pays for it. I know climate change is happening but aren't prepared to change anything about my lifestyle to try and arrest it. I am quite happy that my luxury will kill people in the future and don't really give a shit. Bangladesh can sink under the seas for all I care, as long as I can eat grain fed imported steak. Yum yum.
I sat there during dinner hoping and dreaming that their steak tasted like the flesh of a Bangladeshi.
Maximum disclosure
We are all hypocrites in the west, in some ways, when it comes to climate change, myself included. We have been bought up in safe secure environments where we can have basically anything we want. The majority of us don't really have to worry about food, shelter or clothes.
I myself are a kiwi, living in Malaysia. How did I get here? I flew. But that really really hurt me. I have written off my carbon for flying here and back via a carbon write off company, but that isn't really good enough, I feel. I am here for 2 years plus and will not buy a car (everyone in Malaysia drives everywhere - even across the road to shopping malls!) and are cycling everywhere. I won't eat any red meat anymore unless it's from a pest animal that is causing environmental destruction (like possums/pigs in my homeland). I limit myself to 2 meat meals a week for now but are likely to go veggie in the future. When I eat meat, I try to make it local fish or chicken.
I aren't trying to say I am a model citizen - I still use a lot more energy and resources than I need. I read a lot of books, are an IT guy so have a laptop, work in an air conditioned office, go through clothes faster than I would like (partly because I am so harsh on them - I do a lot of exercise) so aren't some energy efficient saint. But I am using about (back of the envelope calculation again) a quarter to an eigth of the resources that the above Cognitave Dissonants are, who, fly all over the world to "help their cause", fly all over the world for holidays, drive nice cars and have no qualms about eating Bangladeshi.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Challenging the scientific mind
I love to challenge peoples mind sets. Especially ones that are trapped in boxes built of concrete. It's great. I would even like to consider it a hobby. The problem is, it's a very unsuccessful hobby with not a lot of tangible results. But oh well, hobbies are usually things you enjoy more than you are good or successful at.
Scientists are the best subjects for my hobby. Don't get me wrong, I love to hear them ramble on about their favourite most indoctrinated subjects, most of what they find out is absolutely fascinating. But if you try to challenge any of their idea's, they fall back into their boxes built of concrete. They will look for any related scientific phenomenon to back up their mind set and disregard anything that doesn't fall into the scientific spectrum of thought. But that in itself is a problem.
You see about 400 years ago, a scientific prophet decided to come up with a way to verify results. He figured that if you think something is true, write it down. Then figure a way to come up with a way to prove what you think is true, is true, and write that down too. Then experiment using this method and see the results. Write those down too. Then if you see anything different, strange or odd occur from what is written on the top of your piece of paper, write that down. Repeat until everything in the universe is explained.
And born was a scientific revolution...
Now this is great. Awesome. Finally man has figured out a way to understand the world in a way that makes sense to his 5 scientifically measurable senses. As a result humans have been able to explain the world in rational terms and as such can build some pretty cool shit. But people have to realise that the entire scientific paradigm is a system of knowledge used to explain stuff. But its not the only one. Now I don't know what the others are called and I aren't going to use google to find out because that would be pointless. Instead just think.
Five hundred years ago people weren't stupid. I don't know this but I can make a fairly good guess as humans have survived until today. People didn't stand in the way of landslides. People didn't try to cross rivers in flood with a rock as a floatation device. People probably didn't eat dirt thinking it was good for them. That's because none of these things make sense. So I am going to introduce (belatedly I know and probably not the first!) another paradigm - common sense.
Common sense tells me that I shouldn't stand in the way of a car moving at 100kmph. Science tells me the result of doing so, but doesn't say that I shouldn't, unless I want to die. Common sense tells me that putting noxious gasses into the air is going to eventually cause trouble. Science doesn't quite know what to think on this one, it probably will, but may not do anything. Common sense tells me that I love my family and want to protect them. Science doesn't have anything to do with love, except poking it with the end of a 10 foot barge pole. So why does the scientific world discount common sense as "nonsense" if it can't explain it. And if this isn't so, I would ask science - what is love?
Before I start down that road, I like to ask scientists about the scientific world. Science is a method of understanding what something is, but often science will gloss over the understanding part, as long as we can see the affects. So one question I love to ask is: What is gravity? Often when asked scientists will start by saying "Gravity is a force that attracts objects to each other based on mass, the attraction of which is based on the distance between two objects... blah blah blah...". That doesn't answer my question. You are explaining what gravity does but not what it is. Lets apply that to pancakes. If I was to ask: What is a pancake?, science could tell me it is a fried piece of milk and flour. That's what a pancake is. But if science answered the question with "it's a whatsit that when eaten provides energy based on the metabolic rate of the consumer... blah blah blah...", I would be a lot less satisfied (unless maybe if I ate it).
If science were to tell me gravity is an exchange of little particles (theoretically called gravitons) and it could scientifically be proven, I would give science a hug. But ya can't can ya science. After 400 years, you are still stuck when trying to explain what the hell made that apple fall onto that prophets head. So I would expect scientists to be rather humble and accepting of things they cannot explain. Unfortunately that's just not the case. Most are stuck in their little world and will discount anything non-scientific as "a load of baloney". That's where common sense should come in.
If someone I loved was to be killed in an horrific accident, would I be expected to come into work as if everything was OK? If my girlfriend were to dump me out of the blue, do you think I am going to be fine? No? Why not? Science would tell us that love is non existent (in a scientific sense). Love is a delusion created by our brains that is based in the desire to proliferate our genes. Hence we "love" our family, because by protecting them, we ensure more of our common genes will be in the future mix of humanity. Frankly, I don't buy it.
Now gravity is an unexplainable force that pulls objects together based on mass. But we don't know what it is. This is the same as love. It's an unexplainable force that draws people together and we even measure love in a round about way. If someone I know dies, the amount of time I would grieve is proportional to the amount of love I had for that person. If it's my mum - a lot. If it's Rupert Murdoch - none. Also, if my girlfriend dumps me suddenly, I would feel a big jerk in my chest region, followed by a sinking feeling, then my head would be all in a world of disbelief and denial for a short time, followed by other effects. If my co worker told me she was leaving for a new job, I wouldn't get the same feeling. I give my girlfriend flowers and a kiss/hug (etc) for her birthday, but not so for a friend. So we can measure it by it's effects right? So explain to me how love is any different from gravity?
Lets then create a unit of love and call it a lovelet. The love spectrum exists as 10 distinct lovelets, 1 being you hate someone so much that being near them will cause a fight to the death while 10 means you will merge with them instantaneously and float off to paradise in a bubble of pure joy (ahem, sorry). Lovelets can be broken down into millilovelets and even nanolovelets if you require these amounts to describe your feelings for people.
So you think I am crazy. Well I say the guy that first started weighing things in kilograms is crazy. Some dude thought "This jug holds a certain amount of water and no more. I will call this 1 litre. And the weight of this thing filled with water, I will call 1 kilogram. Kilo meaning 1000 smaller units (because I want to weight really light stuff) of something I will call a gram.". If I am crazy, so was he. Yet all of our quantifications of gravity (not relationships between other forces etc) are based on some dude describing the affect of gravity on Earth on something he just thought up and got others to agree on.
Both gravity and love can be measured using a particular knowledge systems method of measurement. Both forces defy scientific description but they do not defy common sense description. So maybe we should accept that neither system describes either force fully and that both systems can be used to describe the forces better.
Common sense on Gravity
Things go down. If things fall further, when they hit the ground will be larger and more destructive. Nature uses gravity lots in rivers and for rain and stuff. Everyone hopes one day they can use gravity to destroy all actors from disaster movie. For a fuller description, also see Science.
Common sense on Love
Love exists and is a thing we like to have. Love hurts when you lose it. Love isn't logical and sometimes you need to feel unloved. Making love is pretty good.
Science on Gravity
Gravitation is a natural phenomenon by which objects with mass attract one another.
Science on Love
Love is hard to pin down and is non scientific. For a fuller description, also see Common sense.
When it comes down to it, each and every one of us is in a world we try to explain through some type of system of knowledge. This gives us understanding of the world around us and enables us to interact with it better. But always remember humility. Other peoples knowledge systems might actually be more "correct" than ours or able to explain things ours cannot. This is what many scientists and close minded individuals need to learn and remember. You can stand on your soapbox and proclaim you know everything and that yours is the right way but you should always look for proof beyond the knowledge system you are an expert in to really validate your findings. Although don't everyone get all enlightened on me, then I will be out of a hobby.
Scientists are the best subjects for my hobby. Don't get me wrong, I love to hear them ramble on about their favourite most indoctrinated subjects, most of what they find out is absolutely fascinating. But if you try to challenge any of their idea's, they fall back into their boxes built of concrete. They will look for any related scientific phenomenon to back up their mind set and disregard anything that doesn't fall into the scientific spectrum of thought. But that in itself is a problem.
You see about 400 years ago, a scientific prophet decided to come up with a way to verify results. He figured that if you think something is true, write it down. Then figure a way to come up with a way to prove what you think is true, is true, and write that down too. Then experiment using this method and see the results. Write those down too. Then if you see anything different, strange or odd occur from what is written on the top of your piece of paper, write that down. Repeat until everything in the universe is explained.
And born was a scientific revolution...
Now this is great. Awesome. Finally man has figured out a way to understand the world in a way that makes sense to his 5 scientifically measurable senses. As a result humans have been able to explain the world in rational terms and as such can build some pretty cool shit. But people have to realise that the entire scientific paradigm is a system of knowledge used to explain stuff. But its not the only one. Now I don't know what the others are called and I aren't going to use google to find out because that would be pointless. Instead just think.
Five hundred years ago people weren't stupid. I don't know this but I can make a fairly good guess as humans have survived until today. People didn't stand in the way of landslides. People didn't try to cross rivers in flood with a rock as a floatation device. People probably didn't eat dirt thinking it was good for them. That's because none of these things make sense. So I am going to introduce (belatedly I know and probably not the first!) another paradigm - common sense.
Common sense tells me that I shouldn't stand in the way of a car moving at 100kmph. Science tells me the result of doing so, but doesn't say that I shouldn't, unless I want to die. Common sense tells me that putting noxious gasses into the air is going to eventually cause trouble. Science doesn't quite know what to think on this one, it probably will, but may not do anything. Common sense tells me that I love my family and want to protect them. Science doesn't have anything to do with love, except poking it with the end of a 10 foot barge pole. So why does the scientific world discount common sense as "nonsense" if it can't explain it. And if this isn't so, I would ask science - what is love?
Before I start down that road, I like to ask scientists about the scientific world. Science is a method of understanding what something is, but often science will gloss over the understanding part, as long as we can see the affects. So one question I love to ask is: What is gravity? Often when asked scientists will start by saying "Gravity is a force that attracts objects to each other based on mass, the attraction of which is based on the distance between two objects... blah blah blah...". That doesn't answer my question. You are explaining what gravity does but not what it is. Lets apply that to pancakes. If I was to ask: What is a pancake?, science could tell me it is a fried piece of milk and flour. That's what a pancake is. But if science answered the question with "it's a whatsit that when eaten provides energy based on the metabolic rate of the consumer... blah blah blah...", I would be a lot less satisfied (unless maybe if I ate it).
If science were to tell me gravity is an exchange of little particles (theoretically called gravitons) and it could scientifically be proven, I would give science a hug. But ya can't can ya science. After 400 years, you are still stuck when trying to explain what the hell made that apple fall onto that prophets head. So I would expect scientists to be rather humble and accepting of things they cannot explain. Unfortunately that's just not the case. Most are stuck in their little world and will discount anything non-scientific as "a load of baloney". That's where common sense should come in.
If someone I loved was to be killed in an horrific accident, would I be expected to come into work as if everything was OK? If my girlfriend were to dump me out of the blue, do you think I am going to be fine? No? Why not? Science would tell us that love is non existent (in a scientific sense). Love is a delusion created by our brains that is based in the desire to proliferate our genes. Hence we "love" our family, because by protecting them, we ensure more of our common genes will be in the future mix of humanity. Frankly, I don't buy it.
Now gravity is an unexplainable force that pulls objects together based on mass. But we don't know what it is. This is the same as love. It's an unexplainable force that draws people together and we even measure love in a round about way. If someone I know dies, the amount of time I would grieve is proportional to the amount of love I had for that person. If it's my mum - a lot. If it's Rupert Murdoch - none. Also, if my girlfriend dumps me suddenly, I would feel a big jerk in my chest region, followed by a sinking feeling, then my head would be all in a world of disbelief and denial for a short time, followed by other effects. If my co worker told me she was leaving for a new job, I wouldn't get the same feeling. I give my girlfriend flowers and a kiss/hug (etc) for her birthday, but not so for a friend. So we can measure it by it's effects right? So explain to me how love is any different from gravity?
Lets then create a unit of love and call it a lovelet. The love spectrum exists as 10 distinct lovelets, 1 being you hate someone so much that being near them will cause a fight to the death while 10 means you will merge with them instantaneously and float off to paradise in a bubble of pure joy (ahem, sorry). Lovelets can be broken down into millilovelets and even nanolovelets if you require these amounts to describe your feelings for people.
So you think I am crazy. Well I say the guy that first started weighing things in kilograms is crazy. Some dude thought "This jug holds a certain amount of water and no more. I will call this 1 litre. And the weight of this thing filled with water, I will call 1 kilogram. Kilo meaning 1000 smaller units (because I want to weight really light stuff) of something I will call a gram.". If I am crazy, so was he. Yet all of our quantifications of gravity (not relationships between other forces etc) are based on some dude describing the affect of gravity on Earth on something he just thought up and got others to agree on.
Both gravity and love can be measured using a particular knowledge systems method of measurement. Both forces defy scientific description but they do not defy common sense description. So maybe we should accept that neither system describes either force fully and that both systems can be used to describe the forces better.
Common sense on Gravity
Things go down. If things fall further, when they hit the ground will be larger and more destructive. Nature uses gravity lots in rivers and for rain and stuff. Everyone hopes one day they can use gravity to destroy all actors from disaster movie. For a fuller description, also see Science.
Common sense on Love
Love exists and is a thing we like to have. Love hurts when you lose it. Love isn't logical and sometimes you need to feel unloved. Making love is pretty good.
Science on Gravity
Gravitation is a natural phenomenon by which objects with mass attract one another.
Science on Love
Love is hard to pin down and is non scientific. For a fuller description, also see Common sense.
When it comes down to it, each and every one of us is in a world we try to explain through some type of system of knowledge. This gives us understanding of the world around us and enables us to interact with it better. But always remember humility. Other peoples knowledge systems might actually be more "correct" than ours or able to explain things ours cannot. This is what many scientists and close minded individuals need to learn and remember. You can stand on your soapbox and proclaim you know everything and that yours is the right way but you should always look for proof beyond the knowledge system you are an expert in to really validate your findings. Although don't everyone get all enlightened on me, then I will be out of a hobby.
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