j a c k *

Illiberal Liberals…

The relentless but remarkably unoriginal attacks on Atheist authors, particularly Richard Dawkins for his best-selling The God Delusion, have finally stumbled onto a meme that is resonating with liberal bloggers. The idea, from Damon Linker in The New Republic, is that so-called “new” atheists are illiberal.  Yglesias piles on here and gets trashed in the comments, and DJW and Rob of Lawyers, Guns and Money come to his defense. Melissa of Shakespeare's Sister also seems to buy the “illiberal” line, based mainly on this quote from Dawkins:

Following a lecture in Dublin, he recalls, "I was asked what I thought about the widely publicized cases of sexual abuse by Catholic priests in Ireland. I replied that, horrible as sexual abuse no doubt was, the damage was arguably less than the long-term psychological damage inflicted by bringing the child up Catholic in the first place."

I don’t have the book in front of me (I read it originally from the library; I guess I’m going to have to buy a copy to find counter-quotes) but my recollection is that this exchange was the start of his “consciousness raising” about the subject of children and religious indoctrination. The rest of the chapter he lays out and carefully argues a thoughtful and nuanced position. If Ms. McEwan or Mr. Farley really want to know what Dawkins means by this quote it’s a simple matter to read the book. As for Linker, he knows that Dawkins is not advocating banishment of religion. He’s just taken the quote out of context and then plays dumb:

Why Dawkins refuses to take this idea to its logical conclusion--to say that raising a child in a religious tradition, like other forms of child abuse, should be considered a crime punishable by the state--is a mystery, for it follows directly from the character of his atheism.

This is a dead giveaway that Linker has created a strawman. He ascribes beliefs to Dawkins that are inconsistent with the latter’s actual position, and then has the temerity to accuse Dawkins of hypocrisy. In a rare twofer, Linker then pushes his strawman down a slippery slope. Dawkins’ irrational hatred of religion will lead inevitably to a totalitarian atheist state where children will recite anti-god chants in school and anyone caught teaching religion to children will be treated like a molester. It’s so ridiculous as to be funny except that liberal bloggers are joining  the attack as an opportunity to demonstrate their evenhandedness.

The rest of the article is no better, but it’s standard fare which PZ Myers ably dismantles. Linker tries to argue that good atheists are those that politely question while accepting that religion may be true, and bad atheists are those that try to impose their conviction through forced conversions. Needless to say this is a false dichotomy that fails to get at the substance of the current debate. The “new” atheists are distinguished by their willingness to speak up about their beliefs, and to question the role of religion in the public square. We don’t want to outlaw religion; we want to debate it. People like Linker know that on a level intellectual playing field religion cannot triumph, so he seeks to silence critics with claims of illiberalism. It’s a shame to see otherwise smart people falling for it.

- jack*

Maxwell’s Material Mind…

One of the great unanswered questions in science is the basis of consciousness, but what about thinking generally? What is the nature of thought and intelligence? There is a long tradition that tells us that thinking is something apart from materialism, that it’s a process or activity that can be best described as an intrusion of the spiritual world into the physical realm. Even if low-level perception and cognition is mechanical, the highest levels of human insight surely lie beyond mere brain wiring to something transcendent.

Interestingly, science can address this question, and the answer is: no. In fact we can show that minds have measurable attributes, and thus must be material. The argument is relatively simple, but it proceeds from the assumption that the laws of thermodynamics are true.

Specifically, the second law of thermodynamics states in part that the total entropy of any isolated thermodynamic system tends to increase over time. It has been well established in the physical, chemical and biological sciences that this law is not only true, but represents a bedrock principle. If it can be shown to be false, then virtually anything we have come to understand about the universe can be shown to be false as well. As Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington said in part in 1927:

[…] if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.

A restatement of the second law is that a system at thermal equilibrium can do no work. If we have a vessel with a hot gas on one side and a cold gas on the other we can place a fan between them and as the gasses mix – the hot rushing into the cold – the fan will spin, doing work. However, if we have a vessel which has a gas at a uniform temperature, the fan will not spin.

We know from statistical mechanics, however, that not all the molecules in the gas are moving at the same rate. Some are moving fast and some are moving slow. Suppose we could use this difference to generate work – that would be a way around the second law. Therefore, if we assume that the second law is true – as we do – then the ways to get around it must be invalid.

Brownian motion is a kind of thermal random motion easily observable under the microscope. Surely we could place our fan into a gas and it would spin with similar thermal motion. It would, but in both directions equally thus doing no work. Suppose, however, that we add a ratchet to the fan so that it will only spin in one direction. Then it would do work, would it not?

Actually, no. As the legendary physicist Richard Feynman demonstrated, the problem is that the ratchet will be of the exact same scale as the fan and will be subject the same random forces. Thus it will operate randomly in the same manner as the fan and there will be no net work. This is good, since violations of the second law show that everything we know is wrong, all things being equal we’d rather that it be right.

But what if the ratchet was under intelligent control? Normally a ratchet requires more force to move one direction than the other. This was the condition that Feynman assumed in his calculations which led him to conclude that the second law could not be violated by a simple mechanical system. But let’s imagine that the ratchet is instead a freely moving axis with a lock. The lock as two positions: open and closed. In the closed position the fan is locked, while in the open position the fan moves without friction. The closed and open positions have neutral entropy – that is whatever change in entropy is the result of going from open to closed is undone by going from closed to open.

Now we have a situation, originally envisioned by James Clerk Maxwell in 1867, in which intelligence could be used to violate the second law of thermodynamics. Someone with the knowledge of the location and momentum of molecules in the gas could decide when to open and close the lock attached to the fan. This “demon” – as Maxwell imagined it – could perform work using just the ambient temperature of the gas. The entropy of the lock itself would average out and the result would be work – the rotation of the fan – despite the uniform and random distribution of gas trajectories. Thus thermal energy plus intelligence equals real work.

Let’s assume, for as we did at the start, that the second law of thermodynamics is sacrosanct. What has to give in this thought experiment? In order for the smart fan not to violate the second law, intelligence itself has to increase entropy. At the most fundamental level, the thinking – the observation and computation – that’s required for the smart ratchet has to equal or exceed the entropy that is diminished by the turning of the fan. Since thinking must affect entropy, this means that thought is material.

This is a huge result. There are many who believe that thinking, understanding and belief itself reside totally outside the physical realm. If that were true, however, it’s not an exaggeration to say that everything we know and can validate scientifically would be false. So if we know anything, we know that thinking, knowledge, and belief are things that have a material basis. Knowing something must have a physical analog that forces it to waste as much entropy as it could possibly generate. This derives simply and logically from the second law of thermodynamics, like night follows day.

- jack*

Liberal Talkers: the Good, the Bad, and the Crazy…

Someone recently made fun of how little I commute.  It’s only around an hour a day, which I admit is pretty small for someone in Silicon Valley.  On the other hand I used to work at home, so any kind of driving is frankly objectionable. And with time – like the cost of gas – a little bit each day starts to be noticeable over the course of a month or 12.

As result I am intimate with Air America radio programming. Our local affiliate seems to change its schedule every few weeks, so I have been exposed to a wide range of voices. I have ranked my favorite hosts on three criteria – intelligence, passion, personality – which I hope will be of use to casual listeners or to the Air America programming department. Take notes if you’re out there.

Intelligence is very simple: does the host know their stuff? When they talk to callers or interview guests if they have the facts at their fingertips and can address the talking points then they get a thumbs up from me. Passion says whether they care about the progressive cause and are willing to fight for it. Personality is a matter of being likeable, which matters a remarkable amount when I’m considering if I will listen to someone chat with strangers for half an hour.

So here’s my countdown, Olbermann-like, from worst to best:

7) Mike Malloy does not lack of passion. Too bad he’s a nut. He knows the superficial facts of the news stories he covers, but he has no depth, and his passion for the cause allows him to accept uncritically some of the most embarrassing garbage that his callers spew forth. Personally he seems a little crazy, and I don’t really enjoy listening to him.

6) Ed Shultz is supposed to personable – the host you’d like to have a beer with. I guess, if you like sports. The whole “I’m an outdoorsman who’s also a liberal” shtick could be pretty good if he didn’t keep jamming his ego into everything. His passion for progressive causes seems to be limited to that which can benefit Big Ed. My main problem with him though is that he’s just not well prepared. He’s so easily derailed by right-wing callers that he’s almost the proverbial liberal straw man all by himself. They just call in with their absurd arguments and knock him over.

5) Lionel (who’s named after .. what, the train set I had as a kid?) seems quite smart and has definite passion. But he’s also kind of a jerk. I’ve not heard him much, but his snooty attitude makes me un-inclined to seek him out. Also I’m not so sure we even align ideologically.

4) Randi Rhodes used to be one of my favorites. She’s smart and funny, and employs both assets dispatching trolls most effectively. If someone had a right-wing argument that I couldn’t refute I’d say run it by Randi – if she can’t tear it apart then maybe you have something we should seriously consider. Recently she has fallen in my esteem, however, because she’s starting to sound, well, a bit crazy. Perhaps it was the lawsuit, perhaps it’s personal, I don’t know. It’s just not as fun to listen to her anymore, and I don’t think it’s just me.

3) Thom Hartman is about as smart as they come. He talks like some kind of professor or something, which is great if you think that academic arguments are sufficient when dealing with wingnuts. Unfortunately despite his obvious personal charms, they are not. If he could crank up the passion enough to find a little genuine outrage when it’s called for he could be a great host. I’d urge him to take off the tweed jacket and put on some boxing gloves.

2) Sam Seder has gotten a really raw deal. When his actress co-host Janeane Garofalo ditched him to, you know, do acting, he was probably wasn’t quite ready to be anchor of a high-profile radio show. But he’s matured fast. He’s sharp dealing with callers, personable on his own and as passionate as anyone could ask for. I try to find his show when I can; I only wish he had more than three hours a week.

1) Rachel Maddow is my new hero. I cherish her show when I get to hear it, which is rarely since at the moment it doesn’t coincide with my commute too often. She’s so smart that she not only knows today’s talking points, she has three or four humorous or ironic takes on each one. She (and her staff) range from highly personable to side-splitting, and the passion is implicit. They don’t have to talk about liberal causes and issues – they embody them. If you can’t embrace some aspect of being progressive after enjoying the show, you’re a lost cause. ‘Nuf said.

- jack *