I usually enjoy the website www.iflscience.com, but this time they've blown it. On a post labeled Top 10 Insane Unexplained Discoveries, I can find only 3 real mysteries of the 11 things listed. 5 of the others are worth pursuing but are not really mysterious and I don't think anybody deserves to be a considered a crank for the other three, just wasting time on something unlikely to be fruitful. The video is pointlessly long and conveys its largely incorrect message painfully slowly, exacerbated by especially irritating music.
Here they are:
10: Hastatic Order: There seems to be a mysterious force that occurs in certain Uranium compounds while cooled to superconductivity. This is a real mystery, worth pursuing.
9: Variable Constants: The speed light in a vacuum is a constant. Under poorly understood circumstances, the speed of light in certain far away galaxies can be observed to be changing. There are several completely plausible explanations: gravitational lensing, for one. What's not known is which it is. Definitely worthy of scientific pursuit.
8: Disappearing Europeans. They found a substantially colony of dark skinned, blue eyed paleolithic europeans that have died out. Lots of colonies have died out. Not really a mystery at all.
7: Tetra Neutrons. Irreproducible.
6: Ultra energetic cosmic rays. There are several mechanisms that might cause it. The leading candidate, a supernova, was incorrect. But there are others. Certainly a phenomenon worth pursuing. But it's unlikely to generate a new principle of physics or biology or something.
5: Placebo Effect: many people have shown substantial cures when given placebos. Clearly the mind can make you sick, and clearly it can quit doing it. No mystery at all. It's worth study--maybe it can be used in presently unanticipated ways.
4: Kuiper Cliff. There's a region of the Kuiper belt which has apparently been swept clear of the usual asteroids, etc. This would take a substantial planet, but no such thing is evident. This is not a mystery at all. Something happened to make the planet go away too recently for the asteroids to fill the space, but not recently enough to still be apparent. It might be another large object bulls-eying the planet such that the fragments spread far (probably from outside the solar system) or more likely, it might have been captured by another planet on the way through. Maybe it'll be discovered, probably not.
3: c-value enigma. the complexity of organisms was thought to be related to the complexity of the DNA that produced them. But it turns out that there's a lot of "junk" DNA in a lot of organisms and complexity of DNA doesn't correlate well with the complexity of the organism. If you understand what junk DNA is, this is not a mystery at all. There's a small mystery in why some simple organisms have simple DNA. My guess is that larger organisms (and their immune systems) tend to protect junk DNA, while single celled ones are much more susceptible to the junk causing problems and evolutionary pressure eliminates them. There might be a new understanding of DNA in there, so it's worth figuring it out.
2: Cold Fusion. This is an engineering problem, not really a scientific mystery. Some people think that nuclear fusion can be done in a context contained enough that we can get useful energy out and there have been suggestive experiments that it might be, although so far they've all been a bust or worse. But it remains an unsolved engineering problem, and it may for a long time. It sure would be great if somebody figured it out though.
1a: Dark Matter: Galaxies hold together in a way that suggests they have at least 20 times the mass that can be observed. Something that is presently unobservable is in there. It might be black holes, or it may be something else. Definitely a big mystery, but not as big a mystery as dark energy, which is unrelated, apart from having also been discovered by astronomers and given the term "dark"
1b: Dark Energy: The universe can be seen to be expanding in a way which contradicts inertia. Something is pushing. What it is is the biggest mystery of physics. There are several attempted explanations, none of which fit the "standard" model, which would require a substantial rewriting to fit it. (the last time we had such a rewriting of the laws of physics (by Einstein and others), the atomic bomb, the transistor and a lot more came out of it. the time before (by Faraday and Maxwell), most of what we know about electricity came out of it, including electric motors, radio, and more.)
31 May 2015
27 May 2015
Death Penalty
Nebraska has voted to ban the death penalty. This makes a lot of sense. The death penalty is cruel and unusual, it is irreversible, it is much more expensive than life in prison, and there is no particular evidence it deters crime.
Blackstone suggested that it is better that 10 guilty go free than one innocent be punished, and several of the founders expressed the same opinion. It turns out that that's pretty close to the rate of erroneous convictions. The Illinois Innocence Project exonerated 11% of death row inmates when DNA evidence became available. Other similar studies have found different numbers--few lower than 6%. Through incompetent defense, irresponsible prosecution, misuse and misinterpretation of evidence, and more, the criminal justice system is imperfect. It's the best we've figured out, but it makes enough mistakes that we should not resort to irreversible punishments.
Justice Blackman, when he was retiring, stated that he was opposed to the death penalty as a violation of the 8th amendment. It cannot, he said, be applied fairly in this society with various forms of discrimination.
Over the years, the method used has changed. During my lifetime, it switched from the electric chair, then to the gas chamber, and then finally lethal injection. Before that, hanging, decapitation and firing squads were used, among others. Each switch was made because previous methods were deemed to be cruel and painful. Lethal injection uses a sequence of drugs--one to render the subject unconscious, and then further drugs to kill them. The doctors of the world have decided that they are firmly against the death penalty and have banned doctors from administering lethal injections...and have pressed the pharmaceutical companies of the world to stop providing the required drugs to anyone who might use them this way. The botched lethal injections we've seen recently have been the result of medical amateurs using drugs that were not designed for the purpose they were being used.
Many people argue that capital punishment is more economical than life in prison. Not True! Because of all the necessary legal processing, capital punishment is as much as ten times as expensive as life in prison.
There is no particular evidence that the death penalty deters crimes. The deterrence effect only works if you're thinking rationally and suspect you might be caught. Killers either aren't thinking rationally or they are being very careful and don't think they will be caught--think of a mob hit man.
The one real thing that the ultimate penalty does is give some finality and retribution to the victim and their families. That's small consolation for the thousands who have been wrongly executed. The urge to vengeance is very destructive. Jesus himself spoke to this subject. Vengeance is mine, sayeth the lord. Not you or me and not the courts. Only god.
The goals of our penal system should be: #1: to get dangerous people out of society. #2: to deter crime. #3: to rehabilitate those who can be. Life in prison does this without the irreversibility of the death penalty.
I think there's one situation in which capital punishment is acceptable: When the criminal themselves want it. This is uncommon, but not at all unheard of. Gary Gilmore, Ted Bundy, and several others have concluded that their lives were not worth living. I am opposed to suicide for someone who is simply depressed, but if a person is objectively in a situation where their life is irretrievably no longer worth living, euthanasia is the most humane solution. This is appropriate for people with terminal diseases that kill slowly and painfully. And this is appropriate where the convict agrees that they did the deed and there is no possibility of them living a life outside of prison. Of course we should do it in the most humane way practical--unless the convict, as did Gary Gilmore, wants something more dramatic.
addenda 10 June 2015
Scalia's perfect capital punishment case-falls apart
Blackstone suggested that it is better that 10 guilty go free than one innocent be punished, and several of the founders expressed the same opinion. It turns out that that's pretty close to the rate of erroneous convictions. The Illinois Innocence Project exonerated 11% of death row inmates when DNA evidence became available. Other similar studies have found different numbers--few lower than 6%. Through incompetent defense, irresponsible prosecution, misuse and misinterpretation of evidence, and more, the criminal justice system is imperfect. It's the best we've figured out, but it makes enough mistakes that we should not resort to irreversible punishments.
Justice Blackman, when he was retiring, stated that he was opposed to the death penalty as a violation of the 8th amendment. It cannot, he said, be applied fairly in this society with various forms of discrimination.
Over the years, the method used has changed. During my lifetime, it switched from the electric chair, then to the gas chamber, and then finally lethal injection. Before that, hanging, decapitation and firing squads were used, among others. Each switch was made because previous methods were deemed to be cruel and painful. Lethal injection uses a sequence of drugs--one to render the subject unconscious, and then further drugs to kill them. The doctors of the world have decided that they are firmly against the death penalty and have banned doctors from administering lethal injections...and have pressed the pharmaceutical companies of the world to stop providing the required drugs to anyone who might use them this way. The botched lethal injections we've seen recently have been the result of medical amateurs using drugs that were not designed for the purpose they were being used.
Many people argue that capital punishment is more economical than life in prison. Not True! Because of all the necessary legal processing, capital punishment is as much as ten times as expensive as life in prison.
There is no particular evidence that the death penalty deters crimes. The deterrence effect only works if you're thinking rationally and suspect you might be caught. Killers either aren't thinking rationally or they are being very careful and don't think they will be caught--think of a mob hit man.
The one real thing that the ultimate penalty does is give some finality and retribution to the victim and their families. That's small consolation for the thousands who have been wrongly executed. The urge to vengeance is very destructive. Jesus himself spoke to this subject. Vengeance is mine, sayeth the lord. Not you or me and not the courts. Only god.
The goals of our penal system should be: #1: to get dangerous people out of society. #2: to deter crime. #3: to rehabilitate those who can be. Life in prison does this without the irreversibility of the death penalty.
I think there's one situation in which capital punishment is acceptable: When the criminal themselves want it. This is uncommon, but not at all unheard of. Gary Gilmore, Ted Bundy, and several others have concluded that their lives were not worth living. I am opposed to suicide for someone who is simply depressed, but if a person is objectively in a situation where their life is irretrievably no longer worth living, euthanasia is the most humane solution. This is appropriate for people with terminal diseases that kill slowly and painfully. And this is appropriate where the convict agrees that they did the deed and there is no possibility of them living a life outside of prison. Of course we should do it in the most humane way practical--unless the convict, as did Gary Gilmore, wants something more dramatic.
addenda 10 June 2015
Scalia's perfect capital punishment case-falls apart
26 May 2015
The Problem Isn't Immigration, It's Carrying Capacity
There are immigration crises happening in North Africa with people trying to get away from the catastrophe that Libya has become, from West Asia, trying to escape the civil wars in Syria and Iraq, from South East Asia with people trying to get away from Myanmar and more. There's an imaginary crisis of people coming from Latin America into the US and the very real one of cruel deportations back. These all reflect real problems in the regions these people are trying to escape. No one nation can hope to accommodate all the refugees, nor should they. Much of the hostility toward immigrants, in both our country and in others, is racist or xenophobic.
in the 19th and early 20th centuries, there were massive immigrations to the United States from nearly every part of the world. In hindsight, nearly all of these groups have been widely accepted, although there was certainly a large amount of intolerance when they were first coming over. Small amounts of this remains, especially towards groups who can't pass for Anglo-Saxon. These groups enthusiastically embraced American culture and added their distinctiveness.
It all went well, because America had wide open spaces. It had small cities wanting to become big ones. It had seemingly inexhaustible natural resources, including water, oil, coal, aluminum, iron and lots more. Perhaps most importantly, it had lots of places to dump the stuff you couldn't figure out what to do with. That included setting off atomic bombs in secret when you weren't quite sure what would happen and wanted to make sure nobody was watching.
Today, this is gone. There's basically nowhere that isn't feeling some pressure from overcrowding. Even the great barren places of the southwestern desert and the almost uninhabitable hinterlands of Alaska are seen to be somebody's back yard. There is really nowhere left, anywhere on the planet, if you truly want to be left alone.
I think this is all a symptom of an ecological phenomenon called Carrying Capacity. The carrying capacity of an ecosystem for any particular species is that which is stable, consuming only the resources that the rest of the ecosystem can produce. If it exceeds it, the population will crash, and won't recover until the resources are replenished. These crashes are very traumatic, and many ecosystems never recover.
There are ways to fool this: a small, well tended aquarium can support lots more fish than a much larger, poorly maintained one. The same is true for people. Sophisticated farming and transportation can provide food well beyond what a foraging culture could achieve. Well managed countries have much higher carrying capacities than corrupt or incompetently managed ones. If something bad is happening in your community, you will do what you can to get away from the problem.
I think the carrying capacity of the planet is somewhere between 1 and 2 billion people. We crossed 1 billion shortly after 1800, and 2 billion in 1929. Today we are over 7. Several countries have recognized that their excessive population is a problem and have acted with various levels of aggressiveness to deal with it. In many cases, this has left them open to the consequences of immigration from countries that have not done this. Immigrant populations always struggle to fit in, but if the whole society is struggling with the limits to the carrying capacity, the stress of this seems inordinately worse.
I think America's share of world carrying capacity should be about 10%: 100-200M people. (we arrived a little late, crossing 100M in 1915 and 200M in 1968). The infrastructure we have, which was mostly built in the 1940s through 60s, could handle this. Instead, we have about 320M, and we quit building and repairing infrastructure in the 1970s. We need to understand what we are doing to ourselves. I think we need to look at various incentives and barriers to get our population back to this sustainable level. And other countries must do the same. A lot of our problems--many of the civil wars, pollution, climate change, etc., can be greatly reduced if we do this.
in the 19th and early 20th centuries, there were massive immigrations to the United States from nearly every part of the world. In hindsight, nearly all of these groups have been widely accepted, although there was certainly a large amount of intolerance when they were first coming over. Small amounts of this remains, especially towards groups who can't pass for Anglo-Saxon. These groups enthusiastically embraced American culture and added their distinctiveness.
It all went well, because America had wide open spaces. It had small cities wanting to become big ones. It had seemingly inexhaustible natural resources, including water, oil, coal, aluminum, iron and lots more. Perhaps most importantly, it had lots of places to dump the stuff you couldn't figure out what to do with. That included setting off atomic bombs in secret when you weren't quite sure what would happen and wanted to make sure nobody was watching.
Today, this is gone. There's basically nowhere that isn't feeling some pressure from overcrowding. Even the great barren places of the southwestern desert and the almost uninhabitable hinterlands of Alaska are seen to be somebody's back yard. There is really nowhere left, anywhere on the planet, if you truly want to be left alone.
I think this is all a symptom of an ecological phenomenon called Carrying Capacity. The carrying capacity of an ecosystem for any particular species is that which is stable, consuming only the resources that the rest of the ecosystem can produce. If it exceeds it, the population will crash, and won't recover until the resources are replenished. These crashes are very traumatic, and many ecosystems never recover.
There are ways to fool this: a small, well tended aquarium can support lots more fish than a much larger, poorly maintained one. The same is true for people. Sophisticated farming and transportation can provide food well beyond what a foraging culture could achieve. Well managed countries have much higher carrying capacities than corrupt or incompetently managed ones. If something bad is happening in your community, you will do what you can to get away from the problem.
I think the carrying capacity of the planet is somewhere between 1 and 2 billion people. We crossed 1 billion shortly after 1800, and 2 billion in 1929. Today we are over 7. Several countries have recognized that their excessive population is a problem and have acted with various levels of aggressiveness to deal with it. In many cases, this has left them open to the consequences of immigration from countries that have not done this. Immigrant populations always struggle to fit in, but if the whole society is struggling with the limits to the carrying capacity, the stress of this seems inordinately worse.
I think America's share of world carrying capacity should be about 10%: 100-200M people. (we arrived a little late, crossing 100M in 1915 and 200M in 1968). The infrastructure we have, which was mostly built in the 1940s through 60s, could handle this. Instead, we have about 320M, and we quit building and repairing infrastructure in the 1970s. We need to understand what we are doing to ourselves. I think we need to look at various incentives and barriers to get our population back to this sustainable level. And other countries must do the same. A lot of our problems--many of the civil wars, pollution, climate change, etc., can be greatly reduced if we do this.
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