Tag Archives: culture

Death from overwork – Karoshi

The Japanese have a word, Karoshi, for “Death from Overwork.” This was sent in by alert reader Robert, who (unlike the Jester) cares about my welfare. I’m not going to work myself to death. I’m going to work myself to exhaustion, then go to Germany. I worked all night last night. I did not get the data I need. I will have to do it again. I have had 9 hours of sleep in the last 48. I have no sense of humor about this fact.

On the other hand, punctuation is hilarious! Gabe and Tycho know! And I agree. What about this phrase “What is f___ing natural?” Is it an intensifier for “natural” in the sense of “What does ‘natural’ even mean?” Or are we to infer a question about the existence of natural coitus? Is there a punctuation solution?

Ah, conversations in lab. I’m so tired. I feel like Ze Frank expresses it best.

-Peter

A biography of T. Edison, comparisons to Tesla, and TANSTAAFL

This little snippet of a book review is 100 years old. It was written about Thomas Edison while he was still alive.

Thomas Alva Edison: Sixty Years of an Inventor’s Life. By Francis Arthur Jones. From Nature 11 June 1908: This biography should do much to disillusion the impressions which are so commonly formed about successful men, that they only have to invent something to make a fortune. It shows clearly that the only road to success is through failure. His career as a telegraph operator was most precarious, and one of his first inventions—a vote-recording machine for election purposes—was refused, really because it was too ingenious and perfect; in fact, it could not be tampered with.

Common wisdom holds Edison above Tesla in terms of fame and historical import. Edison certainly made a great deal more money. Scientifically, it is probably a fair statement that Tesla was the more gifted. The underground conspiracy culture holds Tesla in high regard and supposes that his inventions were so good that they were suppressed so that Edison (and his like) could make more money. Of course, they are not called the conspiracy culture for nothing. I think that the comparison between the two inventors illustrates this: that the balance between science and what we would now call marketing is as fine as a razor’s edge.

Tesla lacked the marketing savvy to get credit for his science. Edison had talent, but also a shrewdness that allowed him to capitalize on it. Ironically, the conspiracy culture that idolizes Tesla is the embodiment of his opposite: they are all savvy and no science. The market for free energy devices is as active as it was 800 years ago, and its success is as imminent now as it was then. It’s too bad that Tesla’s name is caught up with those memes.

-Peter

P.S. TANSTAAFL is the universal principle that There Ain’t No Such Thing as a Free Lunch.  So don’t you forget it.

the battle of the sexes: taking a look back at dating, roles and culture

I read an article the other day over at The Last Ditch. It concerns the notion that the sexes have different roles to play in the world. A lot of people would find it offensive, but not me: I’m not easy to offend. I think there are some nuggets of wisdom in there, and at the very least I can identify a talented rhetorician when I read one. In any case, the point he makes is this: the sexes are not identical and, to a degree, they are equipped for different tasks; that different equipment affects their economic roles. In these vague terms, it seems obvious. I hope it’s hard to argue with that framing.

The problem (and the place that people get offended) is that the people who ‘agree’ with the sentiment are agreeing for the wrong reasons, and the people who are offended are offended for the wrong reasons. Men who feel like victims of women will see this article as saying that women should have a role in society determined by their biology. Those who disagree will see another opresive man trying to determine womens’ future through control of the culture.

There are tendencies given to us by biology and culture, but neither determine us. There is plenty of evidence that Nature and Nurture both play important roles in the development of an adult human. Twins can have the same genes and very different personalities, even to the point of one having a terrible debilitating mental illness and another being spared. At the same time, identical twins separated at birth have been shown to lead remarkably similar lives in many cases.

 

What’s the answer? Are women determined by their two x-chromosomes to be homemakers? Of course not. Should they be required to be homemakers? Of course not. Is it shameful to consider the possibility that many women might be happier being homemakers than doing other things? I don’t see why. The big upshot is that one bias is as bad as the other. Being offended by a proposition that maybe families would be better off with a mother around is as foolish as asserting that women are irrational. Taking the position that the culture is wholly responsible for peoples’ lives is as foolish as assigning that responsibility to genes. All of these foolishnesses ignore personal choice. More on that next time.

-Peter

green politics, chemistry, utopia and simplistic economics: greenwashing

Green is fashionable now, and that is great. “Green chemistry” is becoming a buzz word, and that is great, too: “green is the new nano!” Nanotechnology, as we all know, is derived from the Greek root meaning “successful grant application.”

If you asked me 10 years ago, I would have told you all about the Future when we would do away with material scarcity and people would have “enough“. I was young and naive. There is enough right now. And I’m not a communist: I don’t think the solution is taking it away from those who have in order to give to those who have not. The solution is not try to make more stuff, but to try to live a happy life. The solution is not to satisfy more wants, but to want good things. The solution is not for the rich to have less, but for people to see each others’ needs instead of their own desires. A happy culture is one that values service over material prosperity.

Where does Green fit into this? It’s hubris to think that we can grab the world by the carbon and shake the prosperity out of it. “Better living through chemistry,” is only half of the issue. We can make more stuff (e.g. chemicals, beef, plastic, homes, anything), but it has to be directed by a culture of service or it is just that: stuff. For it to be wealth, it has to represent substantive connections between people. Green can be just more stuff, or it can start to recognize the interdependent nature of the scientific game we are all playing. Our research means better living not through chemistry, but through the contribution we make to a safer, cleaner world – a goal that is only definable in terms of our connectedness to it and to each other.

The big upshot is that green is good, but look out for “greenwashing.” Greenwashing is where an organization cashes in on the Public Relations benefits of going green without making changes that reflect the rhetoric. It’s the same with the term ‘organic.’ It’s fine, but be careful that it represents what you think it represents. As Mark Bittman tells us in his TED talk while chilean farmed salmon fed organic chicken bones flown on ice in a huge freight plane from south america to your doorstep may be technically organic, it doesn’t represent the ideals. It’s elitist and unsustainable and the green sticker doesn’t change that.

-Peter

a strange document from the undusted shelves of the internet

I just read an interesting essay on the subject I discussed some time ago with a labmate: does the scientific worldview imply some kind of faith… The most I could claim was that the enterprise of science rests on the idea that there are universal and consistent laws of nature… but I was forced to concede that the practice of science does not require “faith” in universal consistency. Practicing science on a daily basis only requires that these laws appear consistent to us at any given moment.

 

I think that science is philosophically void if physical laws are inconsistent beyond a certain degree. Interestingly, I suppose that they could be inconsistent to a certain (calculable?) extent before it would be possible to notice. But in the extreme case that the laws of nature are totally inconsistent, the both science and philosophy are bankrupt in general. So for the purposes of any discourse, it’s sort-of a fundamental premise. Even so, it doesn’t mean you have to believe science is philosophically valid to keep doing it. It might just be fun.

At the same time, all of this got me thinking. Here’s a quote that really summed it all up: “The dominant belief in all Western Cultures is that this universe runs on material causality and is thus comprehensible to reason.” -Peter Carroll

If we don’t take some form of physical determinism as a working theory, then we might as well give up on trying to figure out how the world works by science. But I don’t know if a ‘working theory’ is the same thing as faith. Certainly it’s not the same thing as the faith some religious ‘authorities’ seem to require. That ‘faith’ is just loud, stubborn (sometimes violent) insistence. Like a little kid who says ‘Yes it is! Yes it is a million times no backsies!” Faith, right?

Well, I see a stronger faith in someone who allows honest scrutiny and change… and who makes it a working assumption that the “universe runs on material causality and is thus comprehensible to reason.” A person of faith accepts this without proof… and is willing to admit that there might not be such a thing as proof for some beliefs.

-Peter