A very interesting lecture by Robert Sapolsky:
Nature
June 10, 2009
May 14, 2008
March 02, 2008
Creationism and Global Warming
There’s a terrific essay by J. Michael Plavcan titled “The Invisible Bible: The Logic of Creation Science,” in the book Scientists Confront Creationism: Intelligent Design and Beyond. Specifically, Plavcan does a wonderful service by describing the ideational paradigms that support the idea of “creation science.” As I was reading it, I was struck by the similarities between the way creationists view science with respect to evolution (and isotopic dating) and the way conservatives view science with respect to global warming. They both seem nearly identical in the that they both do the following:
- contribute no new data to the discussion but confine themselves to attacking existing scientific postulates;
- consistently use old scientific data which has since been corrected, updated or discarded by those within the scientific field – or has otherwise been exposed to the self-correcting rigors of the broader scientific community - to make their case;
- regard evidence as “not ‘scientific’ but rather [as] an interpretive construct that arises from a faith”;
- point to technical debates within isolated scientific disciplines as evidence that fundamental questions of fact are “in dispute”; and
- take a universalistic approach to reasoning that dictates that if one piece of data is incorrect, all data so gathered must be incorrect as well.
Most revealing, however, is the way in which the ‘cognitive dissonance’ model is useful in understanding the anti-science mindset of many conservatives with respect to global warming. To be sure, dogmatic positions from across the political spectrum are often accused of being associated with cognitive dissonance; usually without a great deal of merit because political convictions “do not offer … clear, absolutely falsifiable, prediction[s]” and are therefore not, strictly speaking, memes of cognitive dissonance. However, like creationists, environmental conservatives have a great deal invested in their view of the world; i.e. that market behavior, strong protections for property, and ‘enlightened self-interest’ are better suited to maintain long-term prosperity than regulation and collective responsibility. Faced with overwhelming data which supports the idea that we are collectively responsible for hastening the destruction of the biosphere, conservatives are rightly concerned that admitting as much would be a repudiation (of sorts) of their most closely held beliefs. Like the creationists, the anti-global warming conservatives have effectively been reduced to a small but vocal cadre of hard-liners that appear immune to reality-based efforts of suasion. It is the last bastion of the faithful; and there is no evidence that the light of reason will ever breach it.
UPDATE: Think Progress on Fox News and "Global Cooling".
UPDATE 2: David Keith at TED on Climate Change.
September 17, 2007
The Innocence of Babes
I've been making my way through Douglas W. Mock's book, More Than Kin and Less Than Kind: The Evolution of Family Conflict. It deals primarily with the behavioral ecology of birds and the discernable patterns, causes, and manifestations of conflict within nests. Although I'm only halfway through, it reads surprisingly well – and is far more interesting than I had anticipated. Principally, the focus seems to be on uncovering the evolutionary justification for widely occurring (but little understood) phenomena like siblicide and parent-offspring conflict.
One interesting, albeit obvious, subject that he touches on is the genetic disposition (as codified by evolution) for infants to use deceit to overstate their true physiological needs. It's easy to see in infantile begging: parents are better served by reacting to certain types of false alarms because the potential cost of not doing so could prove enormous, and the children take advantage of this when competing against their nestmates for resources. Interestingly, the fight for resources – such as it is – is continuous, brutal, and often independent of the whether such resources are scarce or plentiful. As such, the preconditioned propensity toward dishonesty comes to characterize competition itself:
Field experiments with American Robins have shown that nestmates are highly attuned to on another's begging levels. The idea is that chicks solicit food with varying levels of vigor, thus can adjust their behavior in accordance with how valuable the next food item is and how high a personal cost they ware willing to pay for an enhanced likelihood of getting it. Usually the chick that begs the fastest and loudest and/or has positioned itself most favorably is the one that gets fed. So if one chick is removed from its nest and deprived of food for a while (kept warm and well cared for otherwise), it pulls out all the stops when returned home and, on average, gets more of the next few deliveries. And when one chick is thus manipulated into raising its ante, its undeprived nestmates escalate their begging also. The game is intensified.
I couldn't help but notice that there are similarities in the way American Robins and American Humans behave in this respect (see Lessons on the surge from economics 101, via eponymagain). More importantly, I think it's helpful to recognize that there are thousands of precedents in the natural world for behaviors that we routinely label as "evil" in our own species; particularly with respect to competitive conflicts. When individuals or groups act in seemingly irrational ways in response to competition from other groups, we are quick to find fault in cultural differences, an absence of competent leadership, or a flawed "moral universe." Things might make more sense if we stick with assessing one another as we really are: animals.
