I've seen many links to David Brooks' New York Times op-ed piece, "The Neural Buddhists," since it appeared a couple weeks ago. I've circled back to it 3-4 times, given it some thought, resisted writing about it because I had to think about it some more. I'm still thinking about it... but writing about it might help.
Brooks starts by considering science-driven materialism and rational atheism vs "defenders of the faith," and the argument "about whether it is reasonable to conceive of a soul that survives the death of the body and about whether understanding the brain explains away or merely adds to our appreciation of the entity that created it." A revolution in neuroscience, he says, will sideline that debate. Scientific thinking is changing, shifting away from hard-core materialism. "The brain seems less like a cold machine. It does not operate like a computer. Instead, meaning, belief and consciousness seem to emerge mysteriously from idiosyncratic networks of neural firings." He goes on to say that "scientists have more respect for elevated spiritual states," finding that they can be "identified and measured in the brain."
The mind seems to have the ability to transcend itself and merge with a larger presence that feels more real.
This new wave of research will not seep into the public realm in the form of militant atheism. Instead it will lead to what you might call neural Buddhism.
He mentions four points that are relevant to the cognitive revolution and related new thinking about religion:
First, the self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships. Second, underneath the patina of different religions, people around the world have common moral intuitions. Third, people are equipped to experience the sacred, to have moments of elevated experience when they transcend boundaries and overflow with love. Fourth, God can best be conceived as the nature one experiences at those moments, the unknowable total of all there is.
He concludes by saying that atheism vs belief in God is the easy debate, but the real challenge is from people who acknowledge the sacred, and "who think that particular religions are just cultural artifacts built on top of universal human traits." He sees an overlap of science and Buddhism, and a debate that's really between the Buddhist non-theistic experience of the sacred and various biblical teachings and orthodoxies.
I've always understood Buddhism as a practice, not a religion, so I'm not sure what I think of this argument. Consider that some Christians adopt Buddhist practice without dropping or rejecting their religious faith – Thomas Merton was a great example. Though I suppose if you practice Buddhism for a while, religious belief and atheism are the same thing, as are "spiritual" and "material." They're just concepts.
Being humanThe Edge asks whether human beings are unique, via an excerpt from the book Human: The Science Behind What Makes Us Unique by Michael Gazzaniga, a leading neuroscientist and professor of psychology at the SAGE Center for the Study of Mind at the University of California Santa Barbara. There's quite a bit to ponder. Early on Gazzaniga says "We humans are special. All of us solve problems effortlessly and routinely." I'm not sure where he's been looking, but I find that problem-solving is seldom "effortless." But this is interesting:
Although we are made up of the same chemicals, with the same physiological reactions, we are very different from other animals. Just as gases can become liquids, which can become solids, phase shifts occur, shifts so large in implications, it becomes almost impossible to think of a foggy mist being made up of the same stuff that makes up an ice berg. And yet the different substances have the same chemical structure. In a complex relationship with the environment, very similar stuff can become quite different in its reality and structure. Indeed, I have decided something like a phase shift has occurred in becoming human. There simply is no one thing that will ever account for our spectacular abilities, aspirations and capacity to travel mentally in time to almost the infinite world beyond our present existence. Even though we have all of these connections with the biologic world from which we came, and we have in some instances similar mental structures, we are hugely different. While most of our genes and brain architecture are held in common with animals, there are always differences to be found. And while we can use lathes to mill fine jewelry, and chimps can use stones to crack open nuts, the differences are light years apart. And while, the family dog may appear empathetic, no pet understands the difference between sorrow and pity.
Also interesting is the suggestion that, by studying these differences, we learn so much more about what it means to be human.Garrett Lisi at TED
The phenomenal (and probably phenomenological) surfer physicist Garrett Lisi manifested advanced creative physics at the TED conference. [Link]
Referencing the Large Hadron Collider, he tells us about the "whole zoo" of subatomic paricles, the 226 particles we know about, including simple particles like electrons and quarks, and their "second and third generation" relatives, which exist at much higher masses. He talks about the forces that effect each particle - the weak, strong, gravity and mass. A major hope for the Large Hadron Collider is that it will allow us to detect the Higgs Boson, which should give mass to other particles.Making motions
Lisi shows us force maps of particles, organized in terms of hypercharge and weak charges. They organize into symmetrical patterns - these symmetries are the result of projecting from 4D into 2D. "These pictures are not just pretty - they tell us what's allowed to happen." A great deal of progress has been made in physics by drawing these maps ad looking to see what's missing - broken symmetries often reveal particles that are supposed to exist.
Has Thane Heins, an inventor who dropped out of college, created a perpetual motion machine? [Link]
"It's hard for me to give an opinion," said Zahn, who admitted he was excited to see the demonstration. "I don't believe it will violate the laws of physics. You're not going to get more energy out than you put in."
He said it's easy for people to set up their tests wrong and misinterpret what they see. "You've got to look closely."
It's now Jan. 28 - D Day. Heins has modified his test so the effects observed are difficult to deny. He holds a permanent magnet a few centimetres away from the driveshaft of an electric motor, and the magnetic field it creates causes the motor to accelerate. It went well.
Contacted by phone a few hours after the test, Zahn is genuinely stumped - and surprised. He said the magnet shouldn't cause acceleration. "It's an unusual phenomena I wouldn't have predicted in advance. But I saw it. It's real. Now I'm just trying to figure it out."
Smart Drugs
Last week the LA Times ran a piece called "Drugs to build up that mental muscle." Smart drugs aren't new - nootropics were getting a lot of press in the 90s, e.g. John Morgenthaler in Mondo 2000 #2: "New Drugs That Make You Smart." I'm not thinking these drugs make you more intelligent. but they might make your cognition a little sharper and more efficient. (I'm not confusing focus with intelligence.)
UT Austin's ActLab, Sandy Stone's rogue subdepartment within the school of communications, was slashdotted – the fascination du jour being ActLab's current commitment to Weird Science. It's Dorkbot breaking into academia, putting up its feet, and smoking a cigar-shaped object.
A surfer named Garrett Lisi has come up with a unified theory of everything that appears to some to be viable. [Link]
The new theory reported today in New Scientist has been laid out in an online paper entitled "An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything" by Lisi, who completed his doctorate in theoretical physics in 1999 at the University of California, San Diego.
He has high hopes that his new theory could provide what he says is a "radical new explanation" for the three decade old Standard Model, which weaves together three of the four fundamental forces of nature: the electromagnetic force; the strong force, which binds quarks together in atomic nuclei; and the weak force, which controls radioactive decay.
The reason for the excitement is that Lisi's model also takes account of gravity, a force that has only successfully been included by a rival and highly fashionable idea called string theory, one that proposes particles are made up of minute strings, which is highly complex and elegant but has lacked predictions by which to do experiments to see if it works.
Denise Caruso: Intervention
I've been leading a discussion with Denise Caruso about her new book, Intervention. We're talking in the Inkwell conference on the WELL. Denise has written off and (currently) on for the New York Times. We've known each other for years - she used to cover Silicon Valley tech stories, but in 2000 she founded the Hybrid Vigor Institute, which is "not-for-profit research organization and consultancy that is dedicated to interdisciplinary and collaborative problem solving." Intervention is about risk assessment, focusing especially on transgenics and DNA hacking. We've been talking quite about about who should be assessing risk, and who should have authority for decisions about science and technology. If you want to ask a question or make a comment, and you're not a member of the WELL, you can send to inkwell at well.com. [Link to Denise's blog item about the discussion]
This is cool! Todd Lappin's posted images and video of vapor cones created by jets approaching Mach 1. In addition to the sonic boom, clouds may also form as this happens. Todd quotes the Astronomy Picture of the Day web site: "A leading theory is that a drop in air pressure at the plane described by the Prandtl-Glauert Singularity occurs so that moist air condenses there to form water droplets." [Link]
(I was going to embed the video, but you should go to the great Telstar Logistics site to see it... and take a look around while you're there.)
The earthsicle is melting, big wind is blowingI'd hate right now to be one of those scientists who're paid by oil companies to deny that the climate is changing. It's getting harder and harder to maike that case. This morning's news includes a report that there's less Arctic sea ice than ever in recorded history - which is not exactly news to those who've been paying attention; this was a story at Realclimate.org a week ago, and the New York Times also ran a piece. Meanwhile, on the effects-of-climate-change front, powerful Hurricane Dean is on course for Jamaica, and following that, Mexico near the Texas border, with 150mph maximum sustained winds and a terrible attitude.
Wikipedia entry for Sea Ice
New York Times series: "The Big Melt"