More Questions Than Answers

"More questions than answers", they say, as if that makes them sound wise. This study, or expedition, or mission raised more questions than it answered. But did it?

Twenty days ago we didn't know what Pluto looked like, let alone anything significant about its atmosphere and surface features. Today we have this:

New Horizons revealed a world we'd never truly seen before—and a world we'll never not know again. Venkatesh Rao has some thoughts on the matter, but I want to address a different problem.

New Horizons did not do a thorough survey. A great deal of Pluto was not imaged in such high resolution, and what was imaged was not truly studied at length. Already we have new questions: why is there haze in the atmosphere? What's causing those ice flows in Sputnik Planum? How about the terrain of Tombaugh Regio?

Some of these will be answered as the rest of New Horizon's flyby data is downlinked over the next several months, but some will persist for decades. It may be that New Horizons raises more questions than answers, but the statement doesn't sit well with me. Information is missing.

When one says "more questions than answers", they don't say anything about the kind of questions. Specifically, the questions that New Horizons raises are questions we never knew to ask before. Our overall picture of the universe has improved, and now we're working on the details.

I'm reminded of Asimov's The Relativity of Wrong, in which he writes:

I RECEIVED a letter the other day. It was handwritten in crabbed penmanship so that it was very difficult to read. Nevertheless, I tried to make it out just in case it might prove to be important. In the first sentence, the writer told me he was majoring in English literature, but felt he needed to teach me science. (I sighed a bit, for I knew very few English Lit majors who are equipped to teach me science, but I am very aware of the vast state of my ignorance and I am prepared to learn as much as I can from anyone, so I read on.) 

It seemed that in one of my innumerable essays, I had expressed a certain gladness at living in a century in which we finally got the basis of the universe straight. 

I didn't go into detail in the matter, but what I meant was that we now know the basic rules governing the universe, together with the gravitational interrelationships of its gross components, as shown in the theory of relativity worked out between 1905 and 1916. We also know the basic rules governing the subatomic particles and their interrelationships, since these are very neatly described by the quantum theory worked out between 1900 and 1930. What's more, we have found that the galaxies and clusters of galaxies are the basic units of the physical universe, as discovered between 1920 and 1930. 

These are all twentieth-century discoveries, you see. 

The young specialist in English Lit, having quoted me, went on to lecture me severely on the fact that in every century people have thought they understood the universe at last, and in every century they were proved to be wrong. It follows that the one thing we can say about our modern "knowledge" is that it is wrong. The young man then quoted with approval what Socrates had said on learning that the Delphic oracle had proclaimed him the wisest man in Greece. "If I am the wisest man," said Socrates, "it is because I alone know that I know nothing." the implication was that I was very foolish because I was under the impression I knew a great deal. 

My answer to him was, "John, when people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together." 

The basic trouble, you see, is that people think that "right" and "wrong" are absolute; that everything that isn't perfectly and completely right is totally and equally wrong.

Asimov is right, of course. Some ideas are less wrong than others. Saying the earth is flat is less wrong than saying it is concave, and saying it is spherical is less wrong still. In truth, we live on oblate spheroid which is biased towards the south, with a considerable number of irregularities.

But we expect short inferential differences. We expect to say either the earth is flat or the earth is round. Explaining what's meant by "oblate spheroid" is too much for Greek commoner who has only the loosest grasp on astronomy and geometry. Similarly, the modern public expects scientific questions to have simple, straightforward answers. Most outstanding questions either have not been investigated or have considerable evidence on both sides. That's a level of nuance even those members of the public interested in serious questions has to muster. When you say "more questions than answers", most listeners aren't envisioning an ever expanding and detailed worldview. They see a list of questions getting longer, faster than we cross them off.

It frustrates me when space advocates say things like this. If we want to get a follow up mission to New Horizons (principal investigator Alan Stern has some ideas), it's going to take a better approach to science communication than that. The public is interested, but that interest could easily wane over the many years before another spacecraft can be designed, approved, constructed, and launched.

I love cool toys as much as the next person, and New Horizons is absolutely delightful in that regard—but that isn't why our governments spend billions of dollars every year to fund their space agencies. We're doing it understand our universe, our world, and ourselves. Space exploration is about exploration. We need enthusiasm for learning about the cosmos as we pursue the future of human spaceflight.

Irresponsible Amateur Punditry: GE 2015 Edition

Wikimedia Commons

For those who haven't been paying attention (in other words, most of North America), the UK had their 2015 general election last night.

A quick summary: The Conservatives, formerly in a coalition with the Liberal Democrats, won a full majority. Their erstwhile partners were absolutely destroyed, winning a total of just eight seats. SNP won almost every seat in Scotland, making it the third-largest party by number of MPs.

The leaders of the Liberal Democrats, Labour, and UK Independence all resigned after their parties' poor showings. David Cameron remains Prime Minister.

This isn't at all the result the polls predicted. Pollsters had the Conservatives in the lead, but not winning a majority. No one expected the Liberal Democrats to do just as badly as they did. It seemed very plausible that a progressive coalition between Labour, Lib Dems, and the SNP would form the next government.

Nate Silver and the rest will have very interesting things to say about poll bias and herding over the next few days, but I'd like to discuss something else: Duverger's Law.

The UK has long been treated as a counterexample to the rule that first-past-the-post voting tends to produce two party systems. Despite being underrepresented in MPs per votes received, the Liberal Democrats have held their place as the third-largest party, swinging elections and occasionally a coalition government. But after yesterday, they hold less than 2% of the seats in Parliament.

At first glance, it seems that SNP has just replaced the Liberal Democrats as the nation's centrist party. However, the SNP won all of its seats in Scotland--it's a strictly regional party.

In the rest of Britain, the division between Conservatives and Labour is considerably sharper. The UK is suffering from the same polarization that all first-past-the-post electorates suffer from. Votes are cast tactically, to deny the least-favored viable party the win.

To illustrate this for Americans, let's say you have a simplified ballot with the Greens, Labour, Liberal Democrats, Conservatives, and UKIP. If you lean right, you might favor UKIP over the Conservatives, but fear Labour will squeak out a win if you vote for them. You vote Conservative.

On the other side, you might favor the Greens over Labour, but fear a Conservative win if you do. You vote Labour. Moderates face a similar choice--which of the two major parties seems like the worse choice?

(It's important to remember that in many constituencies, there's really only two serious contenders. The UK is often less a three party systems and more a patchwork of interlocking two-party systems. However, the same principle applies when voters start thinking on the national scale.)

The fate of the smaller parties isn't really clear at this time. Maybe they'll rebound in time for the next general election, and we'll see another coalition government in the 2020s. Maybe they'll reform into protest vote parties, forcing Conservatives and Labour to alter their platforms or lose seats. Maybe they'll attach themselves to major parties, shifting their center of balance.

The best hope for political diversity, however, is to abolish the first-past-the-post voting system. There's a lot of different ways to go about doing this (personally I favor Singe-Transferrable Vote, but the Alternative Vote would probably be easier to implement). Regardless, I encourage you to watch C.G.P. Grey's series on the subject. I've embedded the first video below.

Disdain for Elections, or Why I'm (probably not actually) Moving to Canada

Recent post to the contrary, this is still a political blog.

We're seven months out, and I'm already getting worried about the 2016 Presidential Primaries. Specifically, the seeming inevitability of both parties nominating a terrible candidate. Right now, it looks like we'll be seeing another Bush or Clinton in office, despite the fact nobody actually wants either of them.

Obviously party nominations are Molochian process riddled by lies, misperceptions, and short-term thinking. But this is a uniquely frustrating problem for me, since I've yet to come up with a solution that's politically viable. Neither party will nominate better candidates, no one will vote for third parties, and no one will support actual voting reform. So what do we do?

I have no idea. Maybe I should just move to Canada. They seem to be stable, above us on both conservative and liberal freedom indices, and a fair bit less partisan. The big problem, of course, is that I hate the cold.

New Zealand is always a substitute.

On a Personal Note

I'm less than six weeks from finishing this semester at community college, and less than two months from returning to a conventional university. Unfortunately, my work and familial obligations are doing their best to keep me from devoting the proper effort to academics. Revealed preferences are fun.

All this has got me thinking  about conscious living, interpersonal relationships, and egoism, but conclusions are a long way off. There's a lot of other things I'd like to write about, but again, there's no time to ruminate on them properly. I'm in the process of setting up a less public blog where I can reflect on various small things without the pressure to state things completely.

For the time being, I'm not going to worry about it. If something comes up that can be written out quickly, it will be; otherwise, this blog will be in effective hiatus until June. Hopefully I can resume regular posting at that time.

Year In Space

This blog is intentionally not focused on current events, but I'm making an exception to remind everyone that the NASA/Roscosmos Year In Space mission launches tomorrow from Baikonur Cosmodrome for the International Space Station.

It's a far cry from the duration called for by most Mars mission architectures, but this is a large step forward. Astronaut Scott Kelly will set a new duration record for American astronauts, while cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko will spend more time in space than any Russian since the deorbiting of Mir. 

The third passenger on their Soyuz flight to the ISS, Gennady Padalka, has been practically forgotten by the media. Padalka will only spent the normal six months on orbit, but upon landing will emerge with the human time-in-space record.

Of course, it's not all butterflies and rainbows. Kelly and Kornienko will occupy slots that could have been assigned to other astronauts and cosmonauts, delaying when they get more flight assignments. Considering how much more science year-long missions will yield, it's entirely possible this is the new normal. However, the astronaut corps has shrunk significantly in the post-shuttle years, so I may be worrying about a non-issue.

Altogether, this is a very exciting time in our push to the planets. Let's hope for a nominal launch.

Smarter Every Day interviews Scott Kelly

Pi versus Tau: a case of nominative determinism?

Tomorrow is Pi Day, which to most people is a day to celebrate mathematics and pretend to like nerds. It seems like good, clean fun, but behind the false front, a battle rages on. Do we keep π, or abandon it in favor of τ?

For those who don't know, τ is a mathematical constant which can be approximated 6.2831853071... or precisely 2π. Many argue that τ is a more elegant and efficient way choice, and a better way to teach mathematics. But that debate is not what this post is about.

No, I want to investigate a different phenomenon: the effect one's name has on their position in the debate.

This first occurred to me when I was watching a Numberphile video on the debate. Brady Haran cleverly replaced letters from the debater's names with their respective constants. It's just two data points, but it got me thinking: do the letters in your name affect how your opinion?

Mere cleverness, or important evidence?

I wondered if this extended beyond Steve and Matt, so I started looking around. My name, in case you forgot, is Nathaniel. It has a T, like Steve, but also has an H right next to it. Where do I stand on the issue? Well, I think τ is more beautiful, but the switching costs are too high to attempt an actual change. I'd rather we just introduce the concept when teaching trigonometry.

My friends are relatively nerdy, but the sample size is too small to drawn any conclusions. I might be seeing a trend, but then again I might be fitting data to the theory. Until I see a rigorous psychology of science study on the subject, I'm putting this one down as "plausible."

No More Politics?

For some time, I've been disinterested in your everyday object-level politics. However, I've taken a sort of hiatus from even metapolitics, and it's quite pleasant. It's quite possible I'm not going to go back.

There's several reasons why this is the case. For one thing, it's draining. You argue and explain and grind away, and it never seems like you're making any progress. In the end, you're faced with a dilemma: explain the 101 material for the umpteenth time, or veer into more advanced territory that's off-putting to newcomers. A Grunted and Hinged post on beginners and burning out described this process in detail. My experiences with libertarianism/Objectivism conform pretty well to the model.

Politics is also mind-killery. I don't think I need to walk anybody through this one. We've all felt it, that frenzy when your beliefs are being attacked. We instantly lose all ability to reason, fixating on discrediting our opponent's position, no matter how eloquently the argue or how much evidence they put forward.

That sensation is a product of our ape brains, still mostly optimized for life on the savanna. To my knowledge, there isn't a direct solution for this, but there are a few hacks to avoid being in that situation to begin with. The most popular tactic is keeping your identity small--or, if you prefer more colloquial terms, "being independent." Of course, Independent and Person-With-A-Small-Identity are still identities, and people will attack you for them.

(If you're thinking "I could be independent without making that part of my identity," I'm afraid it's too late. You also just lost the game.)

Furthermore, there's usually a reason someone starts identifying with a particular ideology or movement. You don't wake up one day saying "I think I'll be a feminist!" Going back to Gruntled and Hinged:

Let’s oversimplify a bit, and presume that the only question that feminism seeks to answer is whether or not women and men are equal.  So you, New Feminist, get involved in feminism (for the purposes of this exercise, and because I’ve already slightly oversimplified, please assume you’re female). You start identifying as a feminist, and as a result start having conversations/arguments/discussions about whether or not men and women are equal.

I emphasize this point, not to comment on feminism, but because your beliefs necessarily contribute to your identity, which then contributes to your behaviors.

Take my own example. I decided I valued natural rights, the Constitution, and limited government, and consequently began thinking of myself as a libertarian. Since I was a libertarian, I began discussing libertarian ideas. Wasted countless hours on the internet arguing about politics, and wasted my vote* on Gary Johnson.

But what did all that accomplish? I stressed over things I couldn't control and didn't shift the political landscape significantly. Meanwhile, my education (both formal and informal) languished. I paid the price for that, too--itself a reason to get out.

So now, I'm realigning my identity away from politics. My beliefs have shifted** and so have my priorities. How I label myself is important, because it's a way of caching the self. What political label you use will impact the direction your beliefs update. As a libertarian, I became more anarchistic and extreme, as a radical centrist the reverse occurred.

You should also try to replace the symbol with the substance. For a long time, I called myself a nerd, because it seemed like an accurate identifier. Even if we ignore the social connotations, though, it wasn't very useful. Nerd implies a lot of things to different people. For me, however, it referred to a relatively succinct set of interests in ideaspace. Now, I'll say "I'm interested in philosophy and spaceflight" instead of introducing myself as nerd. I still am one, but a very particular type of nerd.

The same goes in politics, but that's a lumper's game. Nuance dies upon first contact with the political. If you want to talk about complex ideas intelligently, getting out of politics is the way to go.

*I don't actually consider my vote wasted, since Romney was guaranteed to win Kansas. You could argue that voting at all was a waste of time (especially since I had to do the mail-in forms), but I was 18 and really wanted to.

**More on that later.

Agnostic Lent

“Even now,” declares the Lord,
  “return to me with all your heart,
  with fasting and weeping and mourning.”
Rend your heart
  and not your garments.
--Joel 2:12-13

I am not a very religious person. This probably isn't much of a surprise to those who know me, but in case there was any doubt, there is it. Most of my spiritual life has been spent in the agnostic/deist/rationalist school of thought, thanks in no small part to my secular parents and a wide range of reading materials.

Since my grandmother died, however, Mom and Dad have started attending church again regularly. Naturally I've been towed along to a few services over the months, which for the most part haven't impressed me. Without the promise of eternal life, true altruism breaks down as a moral system.

(I may have to do a post on that sometime.)

So naturally, I wasn't expecting very much when we piled in the car for my first ever Ash Wednesday service. Lent, after all, is traditionally presented as a time of penance and self-denial. We give up something we like to grow closer to God (and each other). Not exactly an egoist nonbeliever's cup of tea.

But that wasn't the path our pastor took. Many people give things up for Lent, she said, things like junk food or alcohol or cigarettes. For the most part, they give up things they should be giving up anyway, because they're self-destroying. She asked us to abstract that into the intellectual sphere. She asked us to try--for 40 days--to give up self-destructive mindsets and behaviors, like blame, procrastination, and greed.

I disagreed on some of her particulars (thought it might've been a case of the definitions), I still think that's a very good message. Lent makes a good Schelling point for changing one's behavior. So does the New Year--yes, making resolutions does have value, if you know what you're doing, and are willing to stick with it.

I'm not giving up anything in particular this Lent, in part because I need to figure out what behaviors to modify. Thanks to our pastor, though, I have a better notion of how to approach this.

Oh, and I got one of those dorky ash crosses:

Updates

I'm way overdue to update this blog but not-finishing-drafts is a bad habit inherited from tumblr. Instead of something meaningful I'm going to do an internal affairs and links post.

Internal affairs first. After many grueling months, I finally finished Leonard Peikoff's Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand. I didn't find it terribly rewarding, but at least I can move onto other things. I plan to start writing book reviews, but may keep those off this blog. My reading list here on out goes like this:

1. The Martian, Andy Weir
2. An Astronaut's Guide to Life On Earth, Chris Hadfield
3. Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman
4. The Foundations of Morality, Henry Hazlitt
5. Introduction to Logic and Critical Thinking, Merrilee Salmon

That last is an optional textbook for my Logic and Critical Thinking class (the textbook titles in this subject are really uncreative). It's a rental, so that gives me a time limit, but I'm reading a lot faster now that OPAR is over.

What's concerning is how simple and straightforward the class' material is. This should be cultural common knowledge, but it isn't. I may go ahead and do a series of blog posts on basic logic topics.

However, I'm not very good at planning blog posts. Remember last fall when I was all worked up about post-scarcity, and only wrote about it twice? Possible solution: list out the topics in advance, with deadlines. Might be effective, might just clutter up the blog even more.

On the subject of clutter, I've got too many bookmarks, which perhaps I'll start archiving here. Alright, enough whining. Time for the links!

One of my friends made a post on status systems in social justice, which goes a long way toward dissecting the Oppression Olympics. And it reminded me I never update my blog.

I read a kinda old article last week on the topic of left versus right libertarians. Once again, it seems I don't fall into any particular political category comfortably. Maybe "radical libertarian centrist" would do? But I also read Paul Graham's essay Keep Your Identity Small, so slapping labels on everything doesn't seem like a good idea.

(I found that through LessWrong's Rationality Materials page. Lots of interesting stuff, but overwhelming when you get started. Someone should write it up in book form someday.)

The Allusionist Podcast discusses what it means to go viral, why podcasts don't, and confirms my disgust for Buzzfeed. Related: Wired Magazine interview Roman Mars.

On a more technological note, the Lunar Escape System was a contingency vehicle for the proposed long-duration Apollo missions. In the event the Lunar Ascent Stage failed, astronauts could essentially climb into a rocket-propelled chair and rendezvous with the Command Module. Somehow, I'm glad these never flew.

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln's Astronomy Department has a number of online astronomy tools, for those who want a better intuition of star and planet motions.

That about does it for now. I'll plan on making a links post on a monthly basis from here on out.

Failure in the New Year

We're a month into the New Year, and I'm already falling down on my resolutions. Not that I had anything formal, but I was hoping to finally meet my one-post-per-week goal and start flossing regularly. I have been successful at brushing my teeth left-handed.

It's interesting: I had a giant post planned about How to Make 2015 better. It won't be published, though its content will probably slip out elsewhere. I missed a major point, though: conceptualization. I'll be doing a proper post on it soon (maybe), but the problem we have is that we don't adequately conceive, plan, and execute our goals.

Resolutions fail because we use them to wrap up self-improvement in glittering generalities. Success requires concrete percepts and a clear vision forward, covering all the necessary points. That's hard, so most people don't bother. Who cares about making progress when you can feel good?

I do.