I just got Dennett’s Breaking the Spell from the library.

From the introduction:

Those who are religious and believe religion to be the best hope of humankind cannot reasonably expect those of us who are skeptical to refrain from expressing our doubts if they themselves are unwilling to put their convictions under the microscope. If they are right  - especially if they are obviously right, on further reflection - we skeptics will not only concede this but enthusiastically join the cause. We want what they (mostly) say they want: a world at peace, with as little suffering as we can manage, with freedom and justice and well-being and meaning for all. If the case for their path cannot be made, this is something that they themselves should want to know. It is as simple as that. They claim the moral high ground: maybe they deserve it and maybe they don’t. Let’s find out.

Sounds promising.

Just watched Newman (of Newman and Baddeil)’s History of Oil on YouTube.

Incredible.

Do they have people like him in America? If they did, they would probably keep them in Guantanamo.

“An hour with Newman is, without doubt, the best use you can make of your head… His is comedy that cares about something - and it has passion, intelligence and charm.” - The Scotsman.

Imagine Richard Prior teaming up with Noam Chomsky to remake An Inconvenient Truth. A History of Oil. Watch it. It’s incredible.

We had that “but you can’t prove it” discussion at our beer bash at work the other day. The one where your co-debater suggests that, if you believe something without proof, you are making a leap of faith.

Consider the proposition,

The cow jumped over the moon.

Those who consider the proposition true have no proof. But, according to the faith=belief without proof people, neither do those who consider it false. Both positions require faith because there is no proof either way.

The only rational position, according to the F=BWPs, is to say

“I don’t know whether the cow jumped over the moon”.

Yet everything I know about cows and moons and gravity suggests that it’s extremely unlikely that a cow jumped over the moon. The only evidence that it happened at all comes from an ancient nursery rhyme. One by one, the ancient nursery rhymes have turned out to be made up and I am certain that this one is too.

[At this point, I am obliged to acknowledge that some people believe in transcendental cows that don't interact with the world as we know it and that 'moon' could be a metaphor for very small flowers or for the laughter of children]

Where the F=BWEs trip up, I believe, is in mistaking the standard of mathematical proof for the everyday standard of proof which is closer to the legal, beyond a reasonable doubt. Even in science, there is very little that can be proved to the mathematical standard.

Stanley Fish, in the New York Times (non-firewalled version), has a more sophisticated version of F=BWE theory:

I “believe in evolution,” Dawkins declares, “because the evidence supports it”; but the evidence is evidence only because he is seeing with Darwin-directed eyes. The evidence at once supports his faith and is evidence by virtue of it. Dawkins voices distress at an imagined opponent who “can’t see” the evidence or “refuses to look at it because it contradicts his holy book,” but he has his own holy book of whose truth he has been persuaded, and it is within its light that he proceeds and looks forward in hope (his word) to a future stage of enlightenment he does not now experience but of which he is fully confident.

PZ Myers at Pharyngula, in Fish has faith; I have confidence based on evidence, says

Fish is playing word games, using an imprecision in the English language to tag disparate phenomena with the same label. He can claim that the “faith” of the scientist is the same as the faith of the pious only because he does not understand the former. Accepting religious faith is to stand still and imagine a journey through a fantasy land, while science is about walking forward on firm footing towards a destination to which we may not have arrived yet, but can see glimmering on the horizon. It simply doesn’t matter that the faith-head is using his reason and imagination to extrapolate and create his fantasy world, so exclaiming that he has a brain and is using it doesn’t rescue him. The scientist will discover something new—Fish considers that remarkable and a strong assertion, and unsupported by evidence, but it’s a commonplace consequence of using science and ignoring religion—but that isn’t a matter of “faith” at all. It’s about as remarkable as understanding that the sun will rise in the morning.

When I was at grammar school, I used to rank the subjects according to how ‘like maths‘ they were.

We were taught chemistry, physics and biology as separate subjects and, while I enjoyed all the sciences, I enjoyed physics the most because it was more mathematical. Chemistry had less maths and biology, at that level, hardly any at all. In my 11 year old mind, physics was pretty much just applied maths and therefore fun.

In geography, we covered such topics as map reading, how rocks are formed and weather but I never thought of it as science because science was something I enjoyed and I didn’t enjoy geography. Geography had a little bit of counting, measuring and charting but less maths than the sciences. History had no maths at all and I hated it.

At Dylan’s school, they have a single subject called science and they cover such topics as map reading, how rocks are formed and weather. Dylan hates it. In 7th grade he’ll do life science but he already knows he’ll hate it because he hates science. It’s like they want to avoid exposing kids to the hard sciences until it’s too late. Until they have formed an opinion one way or the other.

I have this theory that the people who design school curricula don’t really like science or maths but they know it’s important to the economy and that not enough people are following science careers. The remedy? Make the science in schools appealing to people who don’t like science!

I wonder if they stop to consider the effect it has on people who actually like science? If a kid likes science would making it less science-y make him like it more or less?

I know the answer for me and I know the answer for Dylan. Maths good. Science good. The more the better.

The other day, I went to Dylan’s open house at school and met his maths teacher. We went through the usual awkward self-introduction:

“So, who do you belong to?”

“Dylan”

“Oh! Dylan! He works so hard!”

“No! Dylan Lawrence!”

Apparently, Dylan’s teacher was under the misapprehension that Dylan works hard at maths. I tried to explain to her that maths was Dylan’s favourite subject because it required no work at all. She found the notion very odd. I thought it was obvious.

For me, at Dylan’s age, maths was my favourite subject too. It required no study or work and, every now and then, the teacher would give you some cool puzzles to work on. I would often slyly do maths in other classes when the teacher wasn’t looking. Apparently, it hadn’t occurred to Dylan’s maths teacher that people would enjoy doing maths.

I have encountered this odd attitude before. When Dylan started fourth grade, at back to school night, his teacher explained how hard maths was for the children but that she had a bunch of manipulatives to help with the difficult concepts and she would take them through it step by step and, usually, by the end of the year they would understand.

What would it be like, I wonder, to have math teacher who enjoyed maths? I had english teachers that enjoyed their subject ..and history …and physics …and chemistry …and biology …and french …but never maths.

What if the default assumption in the maths class was that kids like maths and find it easy. What would that class be like?

Imagine if, at the start of the year, they said “OK. Everyone who loves maths come with me. We are going to teach you separately. Your teacher like maths too”. What would that class be like?

To their credit, Dylan’s school has advanced placement for maths and they give the new sixth graders a test. If they pass, they go into a class with a bunch of surly seventh graders who don’t like maths.

Anyway, Dylan just passed the test that lets him take high school maths next year. All he needs to do now is get the form signed and handed in on time which, apparently, was the hardest thing he had to do all year in maths class.

Why is it so hard for him to get a form signed? I don’t know where he gets it from.

Here’s a nice visualization of the federal budget:

 

Click on the picture for a fancy interactive version

That great big circle on the left is defense.

I haven’t blogged for a while and was scanning some of my old half-started blog entries when I came across this quote:

how amazing it is that the Mississippi River manages to meet every tributary, go under every bridge, past every boat ramp and past every fishing pole. Surely this couldn’t be random it must be the work of a divine intelligence.

I have no idea where it is from or why I wanted to quote it. But it’s pretty good nonetheless.

The New York Times just had a review of Natalie Angier’s The Canon. I expected the book to be good (despite the review) but I read a couple of chapters in Borders to see if it was worth buying and couldn’t get past what Pinker called “the distracting wordplay”. I think Angier has a quota of four puns and three metaphors per sentence.

Anyway, one of the better sections was on probability and she described the intriguing idea that, if you define a miracle as something that has less than a one in a million chance of happening, most people should experience a miracle once a month.

Speaking of books…just yesterday I was trying to think of books that I really enjoyed as a 12 year old that my soon-to-be-12-year-old might also enjoy and two really stood out in my memory. Both books  are both about teenagers which is probably why they made such an impression on me.

The first, The Chocolate War, by Robert Cormier, was the first book I ever read that was set in the USA and it made America seem so much more real - and different! - to me than the fantasy place in the movies. I just checked out the reviews on Amazon and they all say things like

I agree with the reviewers who believe that this book is one of the best books ever written for young adults.

I had no idea it was a famous book. There was a movie made of it (it was crap) but I have never heard of anyone else who had even read it. One detail that sticks in my mind is that the protagonist has a poster in his locker that asks

Do I dare disturb the universe?

which, as a 12 year old, moved me tremendously and is the theme for the whole book and often pops into my head when I have a difficult choice to make.

The other book, The Satanic Mill, is even more obscure. Imagine Harry Potter, set in a 17th century Bavarian forest, told by the Brothers Grimm. But take away all the non-dark bits. The reviewers at Amazon are unanimous in their opinion that it deserves 5 stars and it seems that everyone read it in foreign - in French, in Russian and the original German - except me.

I expected them both to be out of print so, imagine my delight when I came home from work today to find that my lovely wife had got The Chocolate War from the library for Dylan. What are the chances of that? I rushed to Amazon to look up The Satanic Mill and, sure enough, it was out of print but…the library has it! Copy’s on the way!

What are the chances that either book is as good as my 30 year old memory of it?