The source of all my power (I love science, part 2)

The Hubble space telescope was launched, in part, to establish a more accurate value for Hubble's constant, the measure of how fast the universe is expanding.  That part of its mission was only half successful, or possibly, doubly successful, as the HST did measure Hubble's constant, but it also showed that it was not a constant, and had a lower value in the early universe.  The expansion of the universe is accelerating, something that was utterly unpredicted.  So here is a piece of information that doesn't fit any accepted theories.  There is nowhere for it in the tangle of interconnected ideas I outlined in part one.  Now what?

Science is a process that is able to find it's own mistakes and shortcoming, and then generates within itself the improvements needed to over come its failings.  It is called the scientific method.

The scientific method, is to me, one of the most elegant processes that mankind has ever created.  It is certainly the most powerful process we have created.  But what is it?

This is the scientific method, and I shall disassemble it below.

First you need to have an idea, a hypothesis.  It doesn't matter if this is a flash of inspiration or a follow on from another well-established principle.  What is important is that it is testable.

A testable idea is one that makes predictions about the workings of nature which the idea encapsulates.  This means you can design and perform the quintessential element of science; the experiment.

Do the results of this experiment match the expected results as predicted by the idea?  No?  Then the idea is wrong and can be discarded.  Now you need a new idea, one that hopefully works better.

But what if the idea and the experiment do agree, well what you have there is a Theory.  Notice how it is not a theory until after there is experimental data to support it.  I want to emphasis this point.  One of my pet hates is the phrase 'just a theory'.  A theory is the highest possible rank of idea because it has been shown to be true.  Everything else is a guess, or a suggestion, or a wish.  A fact is not an idea; it's an observation. Saying a metre rule is a metre long is not a theory (metrologists, please take that sentence as it was intended).  Theorists continual produce new ideas, many of which can not be tested by existing technology, and they remain hypothetical, no mater how much sense they may make, if they can not be confirmed.

Now we have a theory, an explanation for a natural system, we can apply the theory to design more experiments and make predictions about more objects in nature that we don’t yet understand.  We can in a very real sense, explore the universe.

All these new tests and experiments will generate loads more data, and one of the rules about a theory is that it is supported by all the available evidence.  So all this new data has to be compared to the original theory to see if it is still in agreement.

If it is, then it feeds back on itself and we not only increase our knowledge but also increase the power and accuracy of our theory.  Our explanation of nature gets better. 

But what if the new data does not agree with the existing theory?  What happens if it is the Hubble telescope all over again?

Then there is a revolution.  The theory is wrong and must be discarded.  The old order is gone.  Years, possibly centuries of orthodoxy abandoned, and in its place a vacuum that new ideas can fill.  So we end up back at the beginning.  As theories are tested and found to be wrong, they are replaced by new theories that are less wrong.  Science has no end, only progress.

The diagram has described three circles.  Truly world leading research spends a lot of time going round circle one as they hunt for an idea with merit.  Day to day research builds on previous work and goes round circle two, increasing the depth of our knowledge, and once in a while a central principle is pulled down and we go round circle three.

At three billion Euros, the large hadron collider is the most expensive experiment yet built.  It was the very first experiment to test the Higg's field idea.  Yes, three billion Euros, and right at the top of the diagram.  And at such a huge cost you would expect the scientists to be glad it worked, but many would have been happier if it had not found the Higgs boson, because that would have meant the Standard Model of particle physics was wrong.  The Standard Model is one of the two pillar of physics, along with Relativity, proving it wrong would have meant new physics.  We already have inklings that the Standard Model is wrong but we lack data to decide how.  A machine as capable as the LHC, if it had not found what we expected, it would have found something genuinely interesting.  New data which would have fed back in to new ideas.  Less wrong ideas.

We don't invent science, we discover it.  The speed of light didn't change just because we measured it.  Animals evolved before we realised it.  Stars fused atoms for billions of years before we figured that out.  We still have a lot to learn and a lot of mistakes to make. 

There is the suggestion, especially amongst climate change deniers and creationists, that science protects its theories and can't admit they are wrong, as that would mean loss of funding and end careers. This is a ridiculous idea and comes from a basic misunderstanding of the scientific method.  Nothing in science in proven, or ever can be; it can only be disproven.  A thousand experiments may agree with your theory, but the thousand and first may render it void.  It also ignores the practical reality that a scientist who destroys a major theory gets a Noble prize, and their choice of professorship, and the researchers in that field are provided with decades of work as they must basically start all over again.

"General relativity has been destroyed?  Gentlemen, to the blackboard!"

At the other end of the ignorance scale are people who peddle nonsense with a science varnish applied.  Homeopathy and intelligence design have already been round circle one, and you only get to go once.  After that it’s the scrap heap.  Those ideas should be dead, but are kept alive by people who don’t understand the astonishing simplicity of the most powerful process we have.

Part 3 argues that this process of findin rules prevents religion from ever being correct.

My Magnificent Octopus (I love science, part 1)

Science!  I’ve been using that a lot recently.  Science!  With the exclamation mark.  I think it’s a substitute for ‘you moron’?  Science, you moron.  Ok, but answering that question simply raises a new one; why the inflective?  I think it comes from my curiously continuing surprise, at the lack of thinking, awareness, and knowledge of those whom I share my world with.  Knowledge and the ability to think are the two most important things a person can have.  It could be argued that love is the most important thing.  The Beatles, and Richard Feynman, both thought love is all you need, and frankly that is good enough for me.  But the reason I discount it from qualities I’m judging here is because you can’t measure love.  It can’t be gained, or learned, not in a formal setting anyway, and you can’t choose to have more love for something arbitrarily.  It seems beyond human control, even if it is the most controlling force in humans.  A fascinating subject but not the one I will cover.

Well, not here.

Here I intend to outline why I am such a science junky, why I apply the scientific method to all my decision making, and to an extent, why I am confused that everyone doesn’t do that.  I’ve tried to keep it down, but unfortunately it’s already become a trilogy.  During the various drafts for this I kept slipping in to a Richard Dawkins-esk rage at the irrationality of religion, but there won’t be any of that here; I will split that in to a separate piece so that explanatory and the argumentative don’t get in each other’s way.

So come on then, what’s the big deal with this science and its way of viewing the world then?  Well, the world is huge, and amazing, it’s astounding and confusing and overwhelming.  Science gives understanding; a path that can be found through the complexity.  Rationality, once accepted, is powerful, mostly as it provides an excellent way of filtering the vast amount of half-baked nonsense that we are bombarded by.  A scientific mind-set allows the easy distinction between the factual and the ridiculous.  You can see how religion kept creeping in to this?  I think that the most useful element that a rational viewpoint gives, is doubt.

That might sound very negative and pessimistic, but let me be clear, not doubt of all things and people and an absence of hope.   I refer to doubt of something until there is reason not to doubt it.  I doubt that Omega3 does anything to my brain activity, I doubt that anti-oxidants affect aging, I doubt that homeopathy does jack shit.  I doubt that neutrinos can travel faster than light, I doubt climate change is a natural cycle, and I doubt that one doctor publishing results on eleven children can overturn decades of research and show a link between vaccination and autism.  I doubt.  I’m a doubter.

I continue to doubt until information arrives that supports the claim that was originally made, though in all six of my example this will never happen, as the information refuting them is legion.

Oh look a filter; easy peasy.  Just disregard anything that doesn’t come with supporting information, except how do you know if the supporting information can be trusted?  After all each of my examples is backed up by some sort of information?  Lots of magazine articles have been published about how anti-oxidants mop up free radicals in the body.  All sorts of people claim homeopathy has worked for them, and the san Grasso lab in Italy is one of the most advanced and respected particle physics institutes in the world, and they made the superluminal neutrino claim.

The solution, which may seem to place us at the head of a slippery slope, is to filter the information, which is not difficult.  Information need only be considred in how it relates to exisitng information.

I’m now going to construct a visual metaphor, on paper, which is a bold claim but here goes.  Many people think of science as a great solid impenetrable mass, a stodgy great ball of facts and figures and rules and laws, and unless you understand all of it you can’t make any sense of things.

I would suggest that we imagine an art installation, a highly contemporary one; a multitude of fine wires criss-crossing through a large room; sometimes meeting; often weaving round each other; some meeting points have a few wires; others meet in great collections.  From each of these meeting points, these nodes, we suspend little lights.  If we turn the lights in the gallery off then it will look rather impressive I’m sure.

The points were the wires meet are theories, I’m ignoring the technical difference between theories and hypotheses here; each meeting point is a scientific idea that can be tested and evaluated.

The wires are the interconnections between these ideas as theories do not exist in isolation; they relate to each other, and support each other, and not always in ways that are obvious.  The wires are not static either, they move and shift.  New connections are formed, other connections disappear.  Sometimes a single wire is replaced by many, spreading and twisting through the mesh.

The lights are information.  Each showing the evidence that supports the idea it is hanging from.  Some nodes would be dim with only a light of two; others would be great luminous orbs.

The whole structure would be constantly moving and changing, a vibrant dynamic structure.   The wires move, nodes disappear and the lights move to new nodes.  Theories can come and go as new experiments and insights replaces them with improved ideas or shows them to be totally wrong, but the little lights always just move as information is never wrong.  An observation, once made, with care, is a fact and can never be in error.  A new measurement may be more accurate but that doesn’t invalidate the previous measure, it simple documents the progress of precision.

So here we are with this great nest of ideas, sitting in a tangle of wires, and punctuated by a myriad of tiny lights.  It shifts and pulses and changes shape and size as we watch it.  It is this ever changing and growing interconnectedness that I love.  This is what draws me in.  That ideas which seem to bear no relation can be directly linked in ways we could not have predicted. That all knowledge is in some way connected, sometimes by twenty lane mega highways and sometimes by twisting back roads through hamlets of half-forgotten truths.

The hole in the ozone layer was not discovered, it was predicted, by chemists investigating how the properties of a molecule changes when one of the atoms in the molecule absorbs energy and then has to release it.  Chlorofluorocarbon in the stratosphere absorbs energy from ultra violet light, releasing chlorine, which starts a reaction that consumes ozone.  Their work was confirmed by atmospheric scientists, not ones studying Earth, but studying Venus, which is rich in chlorine.  Only after that did environmental scientists make detailed measurements of the actual effect.  Different scientists, from different disciplines, able to join their skills together on a single problem.

Oceanographers taking core samples of the seabed, to study the geological and biological history of the Earth, let physicists do astronomy by studying the ratios of isotopic iron in the ancient seabed, and show us that a supernova exploded within ninety light years of the Earth five million years ago.  Due to the movement of the stars a telescope cannot provide evidence for that.

The way heat is persuaded to flow quicker out of a microchip is copied from microscopic features found in biology.  A better understanding of the weather in the suns atmosphere has allowed us to control the two hundred million degree plasma in fusion reactors by deliberately inducing instabilities that mimic a solar prominence.  The list is functionally endless.  And so is my fascination.

Whenever I am told something new I try and insert it in to my own version of this tangled web.  Does this new information fit; does it contradict something I already know?  We return to doubt, or scepticism as it’s also known.  I don’t take information at face value, I take it at its real value, which may be zero until I’ve looked in to it a bit more.

This fluid and moving tangle of filaments explains the whole universe, and it corrects itself, and it absorbs, grows, and changes, as our knowledge changes.  We can measure the age of the universe, explain the complexity of life, and predict the interaction of the fundamental particles.  We can infer matter and energy undetectable to our current technology, and envisage ourselves on the surface of worlds and moons far from our Earth, and design novel forms of life from scratch.

That we can do all this is incredible and invigorating and awe inspiring.  That we can understand the universe by the simple act of trying to understand the universe never ceases to amaze.

It has been suggested that the non-scientific view point is the more pleasing; that a religious or artistic eye can see beauty that science destroys.  Science is reductionist and turns splendour in to a flow chart.  I would argue against that (there is a flow chart in part two, but it’s a beautiful one) and suggest science adds to the simple beauty of nature.  The scent of a rose can stir my senses and the beauty of its form is all too visible.  But knowing that these concentric rings of petals were formed by the iterative application of a small set of genes, which were themselves formed by the iterative application of natural selection, adds an additional layer of beauty; that the aesthetic which is clear to my eye was self-forming by natural laws which I can understand.

As Douglas Adams so beautifully put it (didn’t he always?) I’d take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day.

In part 2, the scientific method.  The most powerful process we have ever found.

For gods sake, won't someone think of the children?!

Recently the government wrote to the main ISPs in this country demanding that they make the internet safer.  The BBC has published the letter in full.  Now apart from the fact that if I received this letter I’d assume it was spam, as the grammar is piss poor, it also shows that the government have appointed some bod to make internet policy, specifically the MP for Devizes, who doesn’t know how the internet works.

I particularly like that even though this is a technical question regarding a technical issue and the ISPs have the technical knowledge, there are not asked if, but instead told to, implement something, so the PM can make an announcement.  It’s a script from Yes Prime Minister; “we need to announce something or the papers will embarrass us.”  Who cares about the papers; a dead medium in its death throes.

The government wants the ISPs to pay for implementing a user configurable filter system which is, in their language, default on.  This allows parents to think all is well, and when your child watches porn, because they will, the parents and the government can blame the ISPs.  This of course coming from the same government that is driving cheap fast broadband to all areas of the country for the good of our economy.  You can’t have one policy that demands always on, go anywhere, one size fits all, cheap fibre internet, and then say ‘can we have the one size fits all individually tailored to everyone?’  No you can’t.

This post is of course heading towards Florence.  She will be an internet user one day.  She will never know a time where there isn’t a gigabit in her hand, no matter where she is.  8 bit processors, 300 baud connections, and setting interrupts by hand, will just be the clay tablets that her dad talks about.  I expect her to know the difference between a CPU, a GPU, and an ALU, but the hardware will be so ubiquitous and so integrated that I doubt she’ll ever actually hold one as a discreet object (I’ll say either one, for those of you who also know the difference).

The reason I take exception with this badly thought out piece of policy is that ‘default on’ should not be the status of your browser filter, it should be the status of your parenting!

I’ve used the Tor browser, I’ve looked at the deep web or some tiny tiny parts of it.  Do I want a hundred grams of heroin?  Or a 9mm handgun; P226, nice solid Germanic engineering.  Bit expensive, but in a world with the PRISM program, anonymity definitely has a dollar value.  No I don’t think I do.  I am running out of books to read however, so I’ll stick with Amazon.

The point being I know it’s out there, and I know how it works and I know how to make Florence a good internet user.  I’m not worried about her clicking on something and seeing two people, and “look they’ve got no clothes on, and what on earth are they doing?”  The biggest threat to her childhood is Facebook, and its constant need to compete and conform and gain acceptance.  Having more likes, and more friends, and more updates, and revealing things about yourself you’ll regret for years.

I’ve been on the internet since the beginning, of its public phase anyway.  I had a CompuServe address in ’92.  CompuServe, my god, if you remember that I’ll be impressed.  At the time I remember halfwit journalists and ignorant politicians going on about how corrupting it was and how it would mainly be used for terrorism.  At the time you could download a text file that told you how to make explosives.  It was quiet funny as I recall; the page detailing how to make nitro-glycerine in your bathroom included in the list of ingredients, a new bathroom.  Or you could, and still can, buy a textbook on exothermic reactions.  In fact you could do that before the internet.

The internet is the greatest tool for social, economic, and possibly political change for, I don’t know how long; possibly ever if you take the rapidity of change in to account.  Certain traditional media likes to make us afraid of the internet saying it’s a bad thing; mainly newspapers and record companies.  Bad for their business model is all I can see.  The car, telegraph, steam engine, automatic loom, and printing press, were bad for someone’s business model.  Tough; we want our progress.  The internet is a mirror; if it exists in human society then it exists online.  No one has ever suggested we ban our children from human society.

Since I work in IT I know how to setup my firewall and secure my wireless, and I can bypass my ISPs DNS and use a third party that stops any malware I might get from reporting back to its controller.  Florence will use a network that I am capable of monitoring and she will know that.  Not everyone can do that I understand.  But that is not going to make her safe; education will make her safe.  If someone helps her, she says thank you.  If she goes in to a shop and runs away with a packet of sweets, she’s in trouble.  These are the rules.  The internet is the same, it is a collection of humans, it has rules, not technical rules; social rules.  By learning and applying them she will have no trouble at all, just as I, in my twenty years online, have never had a single issue, apart from that spammer who wanted to buy my car on Autotrader, who I toyed with for a while to see what I could make them do before they realised I was taking the piss and stopped talking to me.

How to be a domestic godess

Perhaps it is because I’m a dad, playing at being mum, or perhaps it’s because I am a dad playing at being dad, but I’ve noticed a distinct difference between myself and almost all the adults that Flo and I come across.  I’m not uptight about her food.

I like to socialise and I like to take Flo with me, as she likes to go places, see people, and play.  As a result we have eaten in a number of situations and contexts, with other children, and in child free environments.  And there, I have noticed the definite trend towards making children finish their meals, which I’m sure is not even a revelation to most of you and indeed is to be expected.  That’s what parents do, they nag their children to eat their greens or whatever it is the child is fussing over.  ‘They have to be grateful and eat what they are given.’

Now, there are times when you make a child do something because it really matters.  Stopping on the curb for instance is hyper important.  Pushing their wriggling feet into shoes while they try and escape because you have to be in the car right now or you’re going to be late, is certainly a moment to make them do what you want; but eating?  Make?  It means forcing, coercing, imposing; pushing aside their thoughts and wishes and replacing them with your own.  Florence and I are a team, we have to be, there is no one else; it’s us against the universe and we need to make sure we have it outnumbered.

The whole clearing your plate idea is a war time mentality; it’s rationing, it’s pre industrial agriculture.  If we look at the reality now, food is not a scarce commodity to be eked out, food now, is killing us.  We have so much nutrition that nothing in our evolutionary history has prepared our body for vast amount of cheap nutrients it will face.  Then there is the whole subject of her femininity and the realm of the body image and society.  Eating disorders all stem from the same thing.  Food as an issue.  Food as an enemy.  Too much food.  Good food.  Bad food.  This food, that food.  Food food food.  The psychology of gourmandization.

I don’t force her to sit at the table and eat.  I don’t do it to myself so I won’t do it to her.  I was made to sit and eat as a child and it made meals miserable.  She doesn’t have a mum, she has cause to be miserable without me creating spurious new reasons.  Food is fun.  Food is great.  Food is one of the best things there is.  Food is the foil to misery.

I made cakes recently.  Never done it before, and everyone agreed they were great.  The only reason I did it is to practice so we can bake together.  I bet we’re going to make some awesome cakes, with lots of icing, and smarties, and jam.  I’m only saying that to lighten things a bit and bring out the sunshine as it’s all going rather heavy.

Amongst my friends there are a few people who struggle with their weight; some of them yo-yo and some of them just yo, and I’ve noticed they are all plate clearers.  Why, because they were made to by their mum and they’ve never questioned it.  Me, I question almost everything and I’m not doing it to Flo just because someone did it to me.

At this point I have to come clean and say I am thin.  I always have been, and I live on fat, sugar, and alcohol, so obviously food is not an issue to me and I dare say I appear hypocritical to those who do have to watch what they eat, and think about it, and turn it in to an issue for the sake of their own good health.

This is all personal experience of course, but I’m not a plate clearer and I think that is a big part of my success.  When I’m hungry I eat, sometimes I get through vast amounts, sometimes a quick bite and I’m done, and when I stop been hungry I stop eating and throw it in the bin.  That’s it.  That’s the David diet.  I’m unlikely to make a million from that book?

Sometimes Flo is a bottomless pit.  Sometimes she will pick at her Cherrios in the morning and eat three of them, once, I refilled her bowl three times at her insistence.  As often as is practical I make sure we eat together.  I try and make the same thing for both of us, or variations on the same thing.  She doesn’t like bacon or mushrooms in her pasta, my fish is normally a fillet as opposed to fingers.  We listen to the radio and she talks about her day.  Sometimes she gets confused and tells me about Bob the Builder’s day instead.  I encourage her to eat of course, and will persuade if she’s not had much.  Let her rest for a moment, have a drink, distract with whatever comes to hand.  Stealing her food and eating it in front of her is a good trick, unless she joins in and feeds me handfuls of her dinner.  I’ve told her bolognaise is not finger food but she won’t listen.

But I don’t force her.  I don’t bully or threaten, removing desserts or an episode of Pingu before bed.  I eat with her, and if she won’t eat then I let her get down and that’s it.  I never pre-emptively mention sweets so I can take them away, I just don’t give her any if she says she’s not hungry and doesn’t want her dinner.  She has the power to make decisions so must learn they have consequences.  Many people seem to learn this far too late, only when they’re in debt or pregnant.

Florence will, I suspect, not be an habitual plate clearer; I hope she’ll have broad tastes and be willing to try new and potentially exciting foods, and enjoy a good meal as much as I do without fearing that she’ll jeopardise some artificially imposed expectation of form.

And like cakes.