"Hiking"

I recently went backpacking with nine friends for five days in the Torres del Paine national park in the extreme south of Chile. I saw a glacier for the first time, but was most impacted by interactions with my companions.
So here's one way to express it. The poem jumps, but so does thought when you're hiking.

Hiking
“I’m going to die” you think as you look up the steep ascent.
You stretch your shoulders and feel the 20 kilos of your pack pressing into your hips and shoulders, the weight compressing and bending your lower back
Your eyes fix on the ground a foot or two in front of your feet as you begin to step on and around rocks and roots. After a few days of hiking in poorly made boots, you notice everything you step on.
Your thighs burn. In a gym, that would be great. “I can really feel it.” Ha.
It’s also two hours to the nearest campsite, where you will arrive only to have an hour or two of work to do before dinner.
When you stop at the top of the hill, put your pack down, and breathe, it feels wonderful.
The ration of water that you greedily sip is relaxing.

I enjoy observing the landscapes, flora and fauna as I hike, but I am most impressed by a sense of anxiety
I move outside of my comfort zone when I hike with a group
In the world of hiking, values are similar, but slightly different
Carrying more weight, cooking, cleaning, starting a fire
Recognizing if a backpack is “sitting right” on you
Getting out of bed when it’s cold and no one else will
Reciprocity is splitting the cost in labor instead of dollars
It is a different game – basketball instead of golf or some analogy like that

You notice that the mountain in front of you is covered in tens or hundreds of thousands of trees. An hour ago it looked like moss.

There’s a humbling aspect of hiking that I enjoy.
I struggle walking uphill, then downhill, then uphill again – because just as everything that goes up must come down; every time you walk downhill, you will to have to walk uphill again –
As difficult as it might sometimes feel, these are trails that have been walked by thousands
These are trails that people have worked on, made easier to walk - building bridges, cutting steps, moving stones
We hike for entertainment with gas stoves, manufactured tents, and carefully designed backpacks
We pale in comparison to Hannibal and his elephants, but they in turn pale next to human advances
Hiking underscores technology for me specifically because I don’t have to hike or hunt or forage
We aren’t “getting back to nature” by buying food in the supermarket and thermal underwear from a department store just as we don’t connect with our ancient African past by watching lions at the zoo.
There is no going back and that is all right.
Atop a mountain, we stand as well on a grand staircase, with bricks laid by each generation that has preceded us - trailblazers carrying machetes and concrete, but also pens and paper - explorers, architects, physicists, conquerors, bards

Darwin in Chile

2009 is the Year of Darwin. Born in 1809, it is the 200th anniversary of his birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species. Earlier this year, I went to an interesting lecture series here in Chile that talked about the intellectual legacy of Darwin in the 21st century. I only was able to hear four of the lectures (Dennett, Cosmides, Tooby, and Pinker), but recently came across some good coverage of the event. Finding the coverage by Edge brought to mind some fun quotes from Dennett that I wanted to share.

He discussed the importance of the "strange inversion of reasoning" [description of natural selection by a critic of Darwin in 1868] that "in order to make a perfect and beautiful machine, it is not requisite to know how to make it," or rather, that something can have the appearance of design without being consciously designed. I think that he is correct in his assessment of the importance of that element of natural selection, and that the lecture has more of an introductory tone that some of the others which are more focused. He begins with examples of complexity from single celled organisms and animals and goes on to discuss humans, language, ideas, and culture.

"Why was Darwin's idea so great? It united the world of purposeless causation with the world of meaning. From physics to ethics and poetry in one unified perspective."

"Our natural tendency to interpret all design as top-down, as representation-driven, is both anachronistic and anthropocentric." By this he means that humans are the first "intelligent designers" and when we see that in other things, we are projecting what modern humans would do onto older processes without conscious design.

"Musician" take 2

Musician
A friend once mentioned to me that some instruments could be sexy.
I was skeptical
“Come on, imagine –
That saxophonist: savage, encircled by a senseless storm of music - sharp, simmering, suffocating - sliding his fingers as the sax sings - sliding, stopping, sliding – a salve, a sanctuary in which to lose the self, somewhere, the sound shooting down your spine, and it feels like he’s playing you as you sit there stiff, spellbound, shattered, surrendered, and safe.”
“Sounds surreal”
I was skeptical
Not anymore
I saw the first person I’d describe as Powerful,
There was this bass guitarist at a concert
And she wasn’t loud, or big, or strong, but
She radiated energy
She dominated the room
Everything about her defied the world.
She didn’t play the guitar
She struck it and slid her hand up the neck
She sang music, not words; sounds, not ideas and shook you physically
It didn't matter that you didn’t understand her lyrics
Because your body understood
Freedom
Defiance
Pride
Self

I've done a little bit of playing around with "Musician" and thought I'd share. The changes are all in the second half. I tried to simplify what I had, convey more, and work on balancing the first and second halves.

"The Relativity of Wrong"

Part 2 of A Mechanistic Universe, or Objective Reality

I recently came across an article that offers a good jumping off point for another topic that I was originally going to write about in "A Mechanistic Universe." In it, Isaac Asimov responds to a critique by an English major.

"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.

However, I don't think that's so. It seems to me that right and wrong are fuzzy concepts, and I will devote this essay to an explanation of why I think so."

I will resist the temptation to cite the entire article and simply hope that you will all be enticed to read it. For those that don't, he goes on to specifically discuss the development of our concept of the shape of the earth over the last 2500 years and more generally says

"What actually happens is that once scientists get hold of a good concept they gradually refine and extend it with greater and greater subtlety as their instruments of measurement improve. Theories are not so much wrong as incomplete.

This can be pointed out in many cases other than just the shape of the earth. Even when a new theory seems to represent a revolution, it usually arises out of small refinements. If something more than a small refinement were needed, then the old theory would never have endured."

My own point revolves around several recent discussions on the topic of Objective Reality, Subjective Reality, and the inclusion or exclusion of intelligent design (ID) from school science curricula.

I believe that there is an objective reality, which is to say a reality that exists independently of our minds or what one might call the 'truth,' that we all live in with subjective perspectives - perspectives that change for each person. I was reading a book earlier on qualitative methodology for sociology and it said "For the qualitative investigator, all perspectives are valid. The investigator doesn't seek truth or morality." From the perspective of a sociological qualitative investigation, it seems to run against the advice to say that evolution is right and ID is wrong. This idea is rooted in the belief that "The reality that is important is that which the people perceive as important."

However, to place evolution and ID on equal footing is quite mistaken. I recently saw a definition by Jerry Coyne of 'what do we mean by a scientific "fact" (truth)?' - 'An assertion for which there is so much evidence that it would be perverse to deny it.' There is a tremendous amount of evidence that backs up evolution and we (the human species, including those that support ID) have found nothing that goes against it. The advantages of science is a fairly lengthy discussion in itself, but I like to think of the primary advantage as specific, falsifiable, reproducible, predictions. For example, regardless of the cultural background of a person, if that person jumps, they will fall according to the laws of gravity. Their speed and position will at any given time be able to be predicted with extreme accuracy by traditional physics.

I'd like to make an analogy to compressing data to discuss one difference between physics and sociology that I think is pivotal to the discussion. The analogy goes as follows: If you wanted to compress an image, you could take shortcuts based on patterns. In describing a patch of light blue, you could say "Pixel 1: 69 Red, 155 Green, and 203 Blue; Pixel 2: 69 R, 155 G, 203 B; Pixel 3: 69 R, 155 G..." and so on up to the last pixel in the batch, or you could say "654 pixels of 69 R, 155 G, 203 B. In binary terms, that saves a lot of space. Just because something can be described with a pattern or formula doesn't mean that it has to repeat or that it has to be simple. The Mandelbrot Set is a fantastic example of simplicity that represents complexity. The set is described by "Z_n+1 = Z_n² + c, but is quite complicated.

Similarly, the language of physics and math allow us to take shortcuts to understand the world around us. In the example of falling, we don't have to describe each and every person in every circumstance as long as we have a rule that they all follow. Now, if our picture had many variations or a pattern that was not yet completely discernible, it would be much more difficult to compress the image. Perhaps we could condense some parts, but not others. The patterns of people are complicated. It's one reason that paying detailed attention in sociology is so helpful. A quantitative approach can miss a lot of the detail in trying to compress the data. However, this is not to say that there is not an objective, mechanistic universe. It is simply that we don't yet have the tools to describe it in full. The qualitative approach gathers data of a complicated, but natural process. Qualitative findings help us to approach a more complete understanding of reality.

We continue to refine our understanding of the objective reality that affects us all. In considering the shape of the earth, we go from a x100 magnification to a x1000 magification to a x5000 magnification. However, as Asimov points out, small refinements can have drastic implications. The Earth is "almost" flat, but

"the flat earth presupposes the possibility of an infinite earth, or of the existence of an "end" to the surface. The spherical earth, however, postulates an earth that is both endless and yet finite, and it is the latter postulate that is consistent with all later findings."

Similarly, with limited tools, living things have "the appearance of design." However, as we learn more of anatomy, embryonic development, genes, fossils, geographical distribution and other fields that support evolution, we can see that the postulates of ID are not consistent with our findings while the postulates of evolution are.

A mechanistic universe

[Originally, this was a much longer note, but the size got out of control and I pruned it back]

I believe in a mechanistic universe, which tends to lead to debates. At it's core, the belief is that everything behaves without fail to natural laws (though we might not know or understand them all). As a result, the more we know of those laws, the more we are able to explain. The alternative is that there is 'something more' that is above or outside of those laws whether it be God, ghosts, a soul, or love. (Very important: I am not saying that love don't exist. I'm a fan of love. I just don't think that it's supernatural)

A friend recently told me that I was underestimating and taking away from the majesty of the universe. I told her that she was underestimating the capabilities and majesty that can arise from purely mechanical phenomena.

A computer is an excellent analogy. Everything on a computer can be represented by zeroes and ones. Every video or movie that we watch can be represented in zeroes and ones (as most that we see are edited on computers). There's a computer game called Second Life which is, as it sounds, a sort of virtual second life. Characters interact in the game, buy and sell goods (to the point that some people make a living entirely from the game), they can go to church, they can do almost anything they can imagine. Now, from the point of view of one player, everything in the entire world - all that is done by millions of real people, can be described by zeroes and ones.

Another example I enjoy is the Mandelbrot set. The set (to quote wikipedia) "has become popular outside mathematics both for its aesthetic appeal and for being a complicated structure arising from a simple definition" - it is described by "Z_n+1 = Z_n² + c. I highly recommend watching a video that zooms in on the Mandelbrot set.

And of course, the brain and DNA are both mechanistic, but can very clearly lead to some astounding results.

Thank Goodness by Dan Dennett

Thank Goodness by Dan Dennett

This is a piece that came out in 2006 written by one of the "New Atheists" (and a Tufts professor!) on the phrase "Thank God." It was written after an emergency hospital experience.

"I saw with greater clarity than ever before in my life that when I say "Thank goodness!" this is not merely a euphemism for "Thank God!" (We atheists don't believe that there is any God to thank.) I really do mean thank goodness! There is a lot of goodness in this world, and more goodness every day, and this fantastic human-made fabric of excellence is genuinely responsible for the fact that I am alive today. It is a worthy recipient of the gratitude I feel today, and I want to celebrate that fact here and now."

Article

C.E. Joad and Bertrand Russell

C.E. Joad, The Present and Future of Religion, 1930
"To say that there is a God is not to say anything more than that we need to think there is, and the need is in no sense a guarantee of the existence of that which satisfies it. Thus the great religions of the world are not theology, but pyschology; witnesses...to the inventive faculty of man."

Bertrand Russell, Why I am Not a Christian, 1957
"I may say that when I was a young man and was debating these questions very seriously in my mind, I for a long time accepted the argument of the First Cause, until one day, at the age of eighteen, I read John Stuart Mill's Autobiography, and there I found this sentence: 'My father taught me that the question, Who made me? cannot be answered, since it immediately suggests the further question, Who made God?' That very simple sentence showed me, as I still think, the fallacy in the argument of the First Cause. If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God, so that there cannot be any validity in that argument. It is exactly of the same nature as the Hindu's view, that the world rested upon an elephant and the elephant rested upon a tortoise; and when they said, 'How about the tortoise?' the Indian said, 'Suppose we change the subject.' The argument is really no better than that. There is no reason why the world could not have come into being without a cause; nor, on the other hand, is there any reason why is should not have always existed. There is no reason to suppose that the world had a beginning at all. The idea that things must have a beginning is really due to the poverty of our imagination."

Confucius's Golden Rule

I've heard it said that Western morals are largely based on Christianity, especially on Jesus's Golden Rule. I've also heard it argued by others that the Golden Rule comes from the physiology of our brain and has been a part of homo sapiens interaction long before Christianity.

I recently came across a fun bit of trivia that might at least clear up the myth that the Golden Rule originated with Christianity. I'm sure there are other examples, but this is the one I stumbled across. In Confucius's "The Analects," (written ~2,500 years ago) he writes 己所不欲，勿施于人, which could be translated to "What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others" or "Do as you would be done by."

I came across a nicely done image that I thought I'd share.

A bit of Marx

It's a particularly famous quote, but I thought I'd post a bit more of it than is typically mentioned.

“Religious misery is in one mouth the expression of real misery, and in another is a protestation against real misery. Religion is the moan of the oppressed creature, the sentiment of a heartless world, as it is the spirit of spiritless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion, as the illusory happiness of the people, is the demand for their real happiness. The demand to abandon the illusions about their condition is a demand to abandon a condition which requires illusions.” (Marx, A Criticism of the Hegelian Philosophy of Right)

"Picky Eater"

Picky Eater
“I am allergic to milk,
Not lactose intolerant,
And if I have a reaction,
I can die”
Harsh, but true

“Wait, you can’t have pizza?”…
“Wait, you can’t have ice cream?”…
“Wait, you can’t have cheese?”…
…“That must be terrible.”
No, it’s not terrible
“Oh, it must because you’ve never had it,
You don’t know what you’re missing”
I’m not sure you get it

I suppose a reaction could kill me
But it’s not likely
I’m pretty careful
I’d never try so much as a spoonful of ice cream
That could be dangerous
But I do have reactions
It’s the caramel coloring or the hydrolyzed casein or the
Non-fat dry milk
That can take you by surprise
It transforms me
Asthma
Eyelid to fingertip covered in poison ivy
It happens several times a year
It lasts for a few hours
I deal with the symptoms
It’s not pleasant, but it’s not the part that bothers me.

What does it mean to have an allergy?
Or even to be vegetarian? Vegan? Kosher?
It means that every dish costs a question too
Some cost several
Each dish is a struggle
Each costs time - yours and the waiter’s and the chef’s and the manager’s
Each costs worry – yours as well as the worry of the friend that invited you over for dinner
Each singles you out
Each costs questions like –
“What’s in this soup?”
“How is that meat prepared?”
“Did this touch something unfriendly?”
That’s the word I use – “Is this a friendly dish?”
Ah, no, that’s not friendly
Some restaurants are not friendly
French restaurants are definitely not friendly
Greek is also dangerous
Chinese on the other hand is one of the friendliest

It’s a restriction, a handicap
One that is invisible most of the time
One that you wish was invisible all the time
One that you can keep invisible,
All it takes is avoiding new things, that’s all
Well, maybe not all
Because familiar things change too
A cereal that was safe last week decided to make a change
One bad night and it goes on the unfriendly list

You know what really gets me though?
Sharing
You get to a point where it’s just not worth it to ask the questions
Especially when you have to ask it for everyone else’s dish too
Why not just eat the meal silently
Default food
It’s the plain chicken breast, cooked on tin foil so it won’t touch the grill
It’s the hamburger without a bun that you have to eat with a fork and a knife
Having an allergy means that breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert, you stand out unless you eat alone

You know what else it means?
It means you appreciate the food you get.
It means you appreciate the moments you get.
When a person makes something for you, it is the sweetest food in the world
When someone buys a dessert that you can actually eat, it brightens your day
And it means that some of the best days of your life are days when you get to share.

"Eve"

Eve
How is Eve sinful?
She dared to reach up into the heavens and deliver the gift of fire to man
She taught man to question
She taught man to understand the difference between right and wrong
Perhaps because evil didn’t exist before she bit into that apple?
After all, evil doesn’t exist if we don’t question the world around us
To call something evil means that it is condemned, that it is denounced, that it is reviled
How can something that no one questions be evil?
Genocide made sense once. It’s there, right alongside the story of Eve in the bible –
God does it
Joshua kills thousands
Even the marvelous Moses orders the deaths of women and children
It’s the ability to question that Eve gave us
It’s not the ability to know right and wrong – that’s just the beginning
The true gift is the ability to learn right and wrong

"Dos Estrellas" / "Two Stars"

In English and Spanish and directed at those other gringos who have felt lost in downtown Santiago.

Two Stars [Translated and edited from the Spanish]
There are two stars
For the gringo blown off course in the ocean of downtown Santiago.
Two stars at which he can aim his astrolabe,
Or point her telescope.
Of course there is la cordillera –
The massive bulk of the Andes seems to attract every compass in Chile –
But
There is also la Virgen en el Cerro San Cristóbal –
Which feels more like one’s own.

Once the sun sets,
When you can no longer make out la cordillea
La virgen remains – always
Delicate
Illuminated
Miniscule in the expansive night
Surrounded on all sides by the lights – red and blinking,
The eyes of an unknown, nightmarish beast advancing from its shadowed lair –
That help the planes, but seem menacing beside a treasure.
And then the sun rises,
And the creatures slink back with the dark,
And the treasure transforms into something exceedingly personal and nostalgic – a family shrine to a guardian saint,
A figurine on a bed of green felt
That can fit in the pocket of that lone, lost gringo
But
Is a powerful woman
On her feet
Towering over a forest
Who can make or do whatever crosses her mind –
Hands raised like a conductor,
Ready to orchestrate all that goes on within the city

Dos Estrellas
Hay dos estrellas
Que pueden usar los gringos perdidos en el centro de Santiago
Claro, está la cordillera – la meta de las brújulas chilenas
Pero
También está la Virgen en el Cerro San Cristóbal –
Algo más personal.

Después de la puesta del sol
Cuando no puede ver la cordillera
Todavía está la Virgen – siempre –
Delicada
Iluminada
Pequeña en la noche inmensa
Rodeada por los luces – rojos y parpadeantes
Como los ojos de bestias en una cueva,
Que ayuda a los aviones, pero parecen amenazantes al lado de un tesoro.
Sin embargo,
Cuando el sol sale
Y los monstruos se retiran con la noche
El tesoro se transforma en algo sumamente personal – un santuario familiar –
Una figurita en fieltro verde
Que cabe en el bolsillo del gringo perdido
Y a la vez
Una mujer poderosa
De pie sobre un bosque
Que puede hacer cualquiera cosa –
Con los manos elevados
Para orquestar los eventos

"Masterpiece" and "Math Proof"

Two poems today

Masterpiece
We live in a world marked by time
Caressed, destroyed, worn down, built up by time
Weathered
Sculpted
Polished
Wrinkled
Elegant in the simultaneous simple and ornate construction –
All objects, all interactions –
Repeating like a fractal:
And no matter how far you zoom in or out
Though the image might change
It remains astoundingly elaborate, detailed, complex
And perfect – flawless – a single unbroken union
Marked by time


Math Proof
Have you ever seen a beautiful math proof?
It sounds silly to most people
It sounds silly right up until the moment you see it

Elegant -
That’s the best word for it -
Simple and brilliant -
Something that seems clear from the moment you first see it
But demonstrates just how unintuitive it is.

It has Quality
Not that cheap day-to-day stuff – not “I slept well” - but the kind that comes with effort
The kind that comes with thought
The kind that Edison called one percent inspiration and ninety nine percent perspiration
The kind that inhabits speeches, artwork, engineering,
The kind that exists in that teacher that you still remember ten, twenty, thirty years later
The kind that inspires
And there’s Quality all around us

Translucent

In the lights, in the cameras, in the books, in the food, in the thoughts
Filtering, shifting, pushing
Invisible unless you look back or look down or look in or look around
Really stop and look
There’s your inspiration to go out and create your own Quality

"My Old Age"

My Old Age
It’s the end of the rainbow
My heaven if you will, (I won’t)
Why work hard all your life?
Why do more than you need to?

I can’t think of a greater reward for a life well lived -
Certainly not seventy-two virgins: how shallow, how temporary, how physical, how limited -
Than to grow old with someone

I think that is a goal worth striving for
Certainly not easy, but the work makes a lot more sense than avoiding ‘sins’
I think that’s a better reason to live a good life than fear of ‘hellfire’

To pass conspiratorial winks to others
To walk outside each morning and feed the birds like my grandfather
To complain and complain and enjoy and enjoy
To have billions of reasons for that smile to keep crossing your face
To be that old couple, slow dancing –
So close together, with both their bodies and their movement –
That they seem like one

"Musician"

Another poem. It feels unfinished, but I like it for the moment as it is

Musician
A friend once mentioned to me that some instruments can be sexy.
I was skeptical
“Come on, imagine –
That saxophonist: savage, encircled by a senseless storm of music - sharp, simmering, suffocating - sliding his fingers as the sax sings - sliding, stopping, sliding – a salve, a sanctuary in which to lose the self, somewhere, the sound shooting down your spine, and it feels like he’s playing you as you sit there stiff, spellbound, shattered, surrendered, and safe.”
“Sounds surreal”
I was skeptical
Not anymore
I saw the first person I’d describe as Powerful,
Not only did the room reverberate with the sound of her bass guitar
But she radiated energy
Everything about her defied the world
She challenged the world and the world backed down
She didn’t play the guitar
She struck it and slid her hand up the neck
And the sound shook you from your chest out through your arms to your fingers
She sang music, not words; sounds, not ideas, and it slammed into you

"An Old Friend"

An Old Friend
I don’t see him all that frequently,
Sometimes he’s busy
Sometimes I’m busy
But it’s always nice when he comes around
When I can stop and say, ‘Nice to see you again’
Or, ‘It’s been a while hasn’t it.’
I always spot Orion’s belt first.
Sometimes I mention it to him,
“You know, I don’t normally talk to people about their weight,
But maybe it means something that people always see your waist first.”
I suppose it would be disconcerting if that garish belt he always wore wasn’t there
It’s reassuring
In 70 years, he’ll probably STILL be wearing that same, old, beat up, obnoxious belt.
I saw him a lot this past year in Boston
Especially in February
Maybe he and the Mrs. were having issues
I never found out; he’s always been a quiet type
But that was okay
That’s just how our friendship worked
We didn’t need to talk about everything
Or even anything
He’d catch up with me as I was getting out of the library after a night of studying
And we’d just sort of pass the time on the walk back
This year I’m studying in Chile
Just about two full continents away from home
And a couple weeks ago - who should show up, but Orion
“I hope you get frequent flyer miles,” I told him
I joked for a while,
But seeing an old friend made a difference
You know?