Zen and the Art of Scientific Inquiry

One of my favourite books is "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" by Robert Pirsig. I have already written one blog about that book, and several others mentioning it in passing. Now I'm coming back to it again, but this time in the context of science.

One thing that was obvious to me on reading the book was that the title could just as well have been "The Scientific Method of Motorcycle Maintenance". Although it might lack the punchiness, it would have been more accurate.

This sets up my question of the day. Does the title of the book reflect the fact that Americans are afraid of science?

Although he was an intellectual, Robert Pirsig was not a scientist, he was more into literature and philosophy. These intellectual activities had begun early in his life, at a time when he was sliding into a mental disorder. During his recovery, he discovered motorcycling. As part of motorcycling, he first became frustrated at trying to get his motorcycle maintained properly by professional mechanics. Then he decided to fix it himself, and almost accidentally stumbled across philosophical questions while troubleshooting and repairing his bike. One of these questions was about the usefulness of "scientific method" in dealing with motorcycle repair and maintenance.

Robert Pirsig started to understand that there is no black magic in a motorcycle, it can be completely understood in terms of science and engineering. So he learned something about the scientific method, and began applying it to solving the motorcycles' many problems. Soon his motorcycle was working like a charm, and he was then able to embark on a long ride far from his local mechanic, without fear of a breakdown.

Along the way, in Pirsig's voyage of discovery, he noticed that not everybody shared his enthusiasm for science. His travelling companion, a musician named John, riding a BMW motorcycle, hated technology. Every time something went wrong with John's bike, he had to find a professional mechanic. During the trip, John was reluctant even to understand the function of the choke. Later, the handlebars of his BMW began slipping. In this case an argument ensued because Pirsig suggested a way to solve the problem scientifically, and John refused to consider it. Robert Pirsig's suggestion was to take a square of aluminum from a beer can and use it as a shim to tighten the handlebar clamp. John had to find a BMW dealer, which wasted time and ended up with the same solution. Except that they used an expensive BMW shim made of aluminum instead of a cheap (free actually) shim from an aluminum beer can. Scientifically, there was no difference, as a shim only needs to resist compression on its thickness, so stiffness and tensile strength of the alloy are unimportant. Also, with a shim of this type, thickness and size do not need to be precise. Only the softness of the metal is, and any aluminum alloy is going to be soft enough to conform to the shape of the handlebar without scratching it, and strong enough to not be compressed by the adjusting bolts. But John regarded all such arguments with skepticism as if this science was some strange new religious cult.

So Robert Pirsig had embraced science and saw its usefulness particularly as it applied to motorcycle maintenance. But he learned that not all his countrymen do. Starting with the mechanics who destroyed his bike instead of repairing it, continuing with his friend John. In publishing the book, I don't know who decided that "art" rather than "science" would appear in the title, but I'll bet the decision had something to do with the American public's willingness to buy the book. In other words, no matter who thought of that title, the publisher apparently agreed that leaving "science" out of the title, but including "art" would not hurt sales. So we have the strange title with "Zen" and "Art", but no "science", that quite likely helped make the book the huge success it was.

There are plenty of well known examples showing that mainstream Americans are a bit leery of science. Russians, who do embrace science, were the first to put a satellite in space and a man in space, not the Americans. When the Americans needed to build up their space program to compete, they used Germans, notably Werner Von Braun, who they captured from the Nazis after WW2. While thinking about WW2, it was Germans escaping from the Nazis before the war, who developed the atomic bomb for America.

Coming forward to the present day, the most highly paid specialists in America are not engineers or scientists. They are bankers, who are not scientifically trained and have very little understanding of scientific method. If they did, the economy would not be crashing repeatedly. Also highly paid are musicians, actors, writers, sports heroes, doctors, lawyers, and TV evangelists. Scientists struggle in obscurity and at relatively low wages. And when they do make discoveries that are important to the world, Americans generally heap scorn on them. (I'm thinking of global warming).
Right wing Christian fundamentalists are formidable opponents of science in the US. They are still engaged in an epic struggle against the Theory of Evolution. And now they seem equally prepared to oppose global warming, and even stem cell research.

Some of the hostility for science seems to come from a dislike for the Nazis and the Communists, both were seen by Americans as scientists or engineers gone wild. So now science is somehow connected in the average Americans' mind as not only foreign, but Godless, the enemy, and totally lacking in morality.

On the other hand, Americans do seem to love technology, especially pickup trucks and guns. But they keep telling themselves that their technology was invented by God fearing religious people such as Thomas Edison, not atheists such as Darwin. The reality is that Edison was actually an atheist and Darwin was religious, but you would have to be kind of scientific, to even want to look that up.

As far as I'm concerned, the truth is that science is no less moral than religion, and maybe even more moral. And science is not inherently opposed to religion either, although there is a certain skepticism in science that could severely limit the wealth potential of some charismatic evangelical leaders. You know the ones I mean, the ones who sell valuable "miracles" on TV and live in palaces in gated communities.

Picture: The motorcycle riding robot. This is an English robot, they affectionately call her "Flossie". But the label of this web page from "Popular Science", an American Magazine, is "robot rides more efficiently probably kills more efficiently", in my opinion, another indicator of the ambivalence of Americans toward science.

http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2009-07/robot-rides-motorcycles-more-efficiently-probably-kills-more-efficiently

Motorcycling in other Countries: Attitudes

I am re-reading a book by Ed Culberson titled "Obsessions Die Hard" about motorcycling the Pan American Highway's Jungle Gap. Just to explain, the Pan American highway has a notorious gap in it, between Panama and Columbia known as the Darien Gap. Ed's obsession was to not only drive a motorcycle through, on the planned route of the road, but to do it as part of a full length trip on the Pan Am highway that reaches from Alaska to near the tip of South America at Ushuaia. As far as I know, this gap still exists.

I own a copy of this book, which I bought personally from Ed at a BMW rally in North Carolina, USA in 1993. I am now in the process of re-reading the book. Probably the most important difference between Ed and I in our motorcycling is that he is from a military background, which I will characterize as traditional conservative. I am from a more liberal background, and my overseas experience has been as a CUSO volunteer, which is more analogous the the US Peace Corps, rather than the Marine Corps.

When I met Ed we did talk a little about motorcycling at this rally, and I remember specifically he was chiding me for not shaving. Yes, back then I didn't bother shaving when I was on a motorcycle trip. My attitude was that shaving was a waste of time that could be better spent riding. I didn't even carry a razor or an electric shaver with me. But I did consider Ed's words, and thought maybe he did have a point about presenting a cleaner image to others. So a few days later when I reached Florida for the "Sun Your Buns" rally, I went to a barber shop in Venice. I was not really a frequent patron of barber shops, so I didn't know what to expect, but I had seen movies, and I thought it was normal to ask for a haircut and a shave. There was an immediate reaction to this. I was told "No, a shave is impossible". When I inquired innocently why not, I found out that apparently everyone was afraid of catching aids, so barbers were no longer allowed to shave people. Well there went the main reason why I was in the shop in the first place, which again was mainly because of Ed. But I decided since I was there anyway, to go ahead with a hair cut. "How do you you want it?" he said. "Bush, Perot, or Clinton?" Apparently, between these three Presidential candidates, you just about covered 99.9% of hairstyles men asked for in a barber shop in 1993. Check out the pictures. I chose Bush, because I am always middle of the road in everything.

So getting back to Ed and his book, the more I thought about it, the more I noticed that we had a completely different viewpoint not only on motorcycling, but on our view of local inhabitants. One aspect of motorcycling I liked was that local people were more friendly to motorcyclists than they are to car drivers. Each time I approached a military road block in Sierra Leone, somebody always came to meet me and wave me around all the cars that were lined up being searched. To this day I can't explain why that always happened, but it was part of an overall friendlier attitude to motorcycles than to cars. I got the same treatment over and over again in different ways. It's quite different in the USA where bikers are seen as more threatening than car drivers. I got the feeling in Africa of being trusted more because I was on a bike, and it also fit in with my CUSO philosophy that I tried to respect local culture, and I was in Sierra Leone trying to help the people. Ed, from a military intelligence background, instead used his motorcycle as a cover for his intelligence gathering operations. He had noticed the same attitude that I did, and took advantage of it. I saw that as being not only an opposite attitude, but that Ed was actually undermining the trust people had for motorcyclists. These days we have kidnappings of health workers and so on in various countries, with the pretext that they could be spies. Well, if real spies are using motorcycles for cover, I suppose that could be true.

From reading his book, Ed also seemed to have a suspicious attitude toward locals. For example, he writes that he got offered a boat ride to a place he needed to go. When he asked "How much?" he was told, no charge, just pay for the gas. I would call that a friendly offer and would say thanks. But Ed wrote that he thought it was a scam, because the boat owner also insisted once the trip started, that he needed more gas to return to his home. Which again to my unsuspicious mind would be fair, as the guy has to get home. Then Ed complained that the gas was 4 dollars a gallon. Well, again, he is in a place with no roads in or out. Anyhow, I was just reading this in the book, and I didn't get a chance to ask Ed about it or I might have mentioned that gas even in the UK is four times the price of the USA. But once again, I think Ed and I had different attitudes, could it be military vs. liberal? Because for sure it was all about appearances vs. sincerity, if you consider the spying and the shaving.

Nowhere is it more obvious, though than in the task Ed took on for himself of carving a path through the Darien Gap. Although I sometimes got off the beaten path myself in Sierra Leone, I never took on this kind of "conquest" you might call it. One time I went into a military restricted area with a letter of permission from my school principal. On other adventures I found back roads that hardly anybody knew about, that were great shortcuts for getting around the country. One place I crossed a small river that had no bridge. And that was about it. I suppose some CUSO volunteers were more adventuresome than I on motorcycles. But Ed was taking on a life threatening 100 mile trip where the motorcycle had to be carried as much as driven. That is starting to resemble a military campaign more than a ride in the park.

I read this part again with greater interest than last time:

"some observers claim that the myth of the Darien may have been transformed into something more sinister - the Curse of the Darien."

Then Ed gives many examples of people who challenged the Darien and died, mysteriously or not. He writes further:

"These stories did not overly concern me in 1985 as I was preparing to make my first attempt at the gap. Not being superstitious, I did not really care whether the myth had been destroyed or transformed into some sort of curse, or even if it existed at all. I could not afford to worry over vague tales of how Darien Gappers had struck down in retribution for their trespassing."

Here at least, about superstition, Ed and I are in agreement. However two years after I met him, four years after he printed the book with those words, Ed Culberson died of ALS.

The Subliminal Message of Avatar 3D

Now that Avatar 3D has taken in over 600 million in ten days, it looks set to be the first movie to break a billion dollars. And Mary Ann and I have not even had a chance to see it the second time yet. When we did go, the theatre was so full we had to sit dead centre of a row with over 50 seats. Then I had to leave before the movie for a pit stop, or I would not have made it through the movie without a major interruption. Then when I came back, I accidentally came in one row below my seat, and when I finally fought my way back to the middle of the wrong row, Mary Ann sympathetically had her biggest laugh of the day. So I was kind of hoping the crowds would thin out a bit, but it doesn't look like it's going to be happening soon. Anyway, I will prepare next time by not going for coffee just before the movie.

I just read in the New York Times, an editorial by Adam Cohen who said both the technology and the message of Avatar are about "seeing". The 3D technology of the movie allows you to "see" the movie in depth. There are also several points in the movie that reinforce the subliminal message, for example the movie begins and ends with eyes opening, and later on you discover the Na'vi have a saying "I see you" which is explained carefully in the movie. It means not just "seeing" superficially, but seeing into, and understanding the other.

I didn't get the hidden message of "seeing" and how it fit in with the 3D technology the first time I saw the movie. For me, it was a subliminal message, which I probably did get at a subconscious level. But this hidden message is relevant to propaganda, which I have written over 60 blogs about, and is one of my favourite subjects. (along with motorcycling)

Two complementary aims of propaganda are to either open peoples' eyes to what is going on, or to help keep people from seeing what is going on. One typical reaction people have, when they get involved unknowingly in a propagandized debate, is frustration with the other side. Often you hear something like "Why can't you wake up and see what's going on?". It is a clue to the fact that this issue is propagandized. Once you understand that, you know that the debate is not really taking place in the conscious world of logic, but in the psychological world of propaganda, where what you "see" is controlled behind the scenes.

To some people, Avatar is propaganda to support environmentalism, and anti-military. If so, the military and mining interests must have really dropped the ball to let this enormous piece of propaganda get out where millions of people will see it, and it could very well degrade their ability to either wage war or to make money in destroying places like the Amazon.

I have a link to a clip from Avatar, where the new recruits arrive at the moon of Pandora and are greeted by Colonel Quaritch, who gives them a military briefing and, I think, a superficial view of this moon and its indigenous people. But the rest of the movie makes it pretty clear that when you live among other people, you see them as more than just cardboard cutouts to be used for target practice. That's why 3D technology is vital to this movie's message, especially given the problem that the Na'vi cannot be filmed live (they are not real), but need to be done in animated drawings.

(UPDATE: Jan 7, 2010 I have seen Avatar a second time and have written another blog called "Judge for Yourself if Avatar is Simplistic." )


Picture: From the military briefing "You're not in Kansas any more", video clip

http://www.tribute.ca/trailers/avatar+clip:+not+in+kansas+anymore/12783

Some Titanic Delusions

I have a theory to explain why so many people are easily duped by ideas that have gaping holes in their logic. I think much of it has to do with watching too many fictional movies. If movies were logical, or realistic, maybe we would not be so gullible, but most movies are based impossible assumptions that apparently are accepted as absolute truth.

Many movie plots contain coincidences that would rarely if ever happen in real life. Movie characters behave in ways that real people almost never would. Even technology, which you might think would be easy to judge on it's realism, is not realistic. In every case, the movie's plot, and the success of the hero depends on these unrealistic assumptions. And millions of people continue to watch the movies and are satisfied with how they turn out, and do not question the impossibility of the whole thing.

In real life, there are people who cannot figure out that movies like "Die Hard", and TV shows like "24", could never happen, and the very same people are making up their own minds about such things as going to war in Iraq, whether global warming is real, and how the economy should be rebuilt after a crash.

Sometimes the errors are hard to spot, and that's because we don't all have the experience to spot the errors right away. But just ask a real policeman to look at an average movie about police work. Ask a real teacher to look at a movie like "To Sir With Love", ask a real mental hospital worker to look at a movie like "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest". You will find out that all of these are impossible, yet people walk out of those movies wondering why we still have problems of mental health, when all it takes is a bit of plain talk and all those psychos would be cured.

For people who have never been to war you have movies like "The Great Escape". It is based on a true war, and true events, but had to be so changed to make it believable to people who had never been in a war. I think this is true of most war movies even when based on real events. The war movies that are pure fiction are even worse. They glorify pretend war to the point that people can no longer begin to comprehend real war.

Out of all the thousands of fictional movies that have been made I want to pick one example, because I happen to have a bit of experience that most people do not have. Titanic, by James Cameron, who just released "Avatar". I'm not going to comment on Avatar because I have never been off planet Earth. And of course I was not on the Titanic either. But when I was 10 years old, I did go on two transatlantic crossings on one of the last of the classic ocean liners. I mean ships that carried people across the Atlantic before airplanes made them obsolete.

What are some of the images of Titanic that come to mind? Jack and Rose standing on the bow of the ship. That would not happen. The entire plot seemed to revolve around Jack Dawson having access to every part of the ship. Also would not happen. Here is why. When I did my trip, the ship was divided into first class and second class sections. Only two classes compared to four or more classes on earlier ocean liners like the Titanic. The back of the ship was for second class, the front of the ship (roughly) was for first class. Now I was only ten years old, but I had fourteen days with not much else to do but run around the ship exploring every nook and cranny. Plus, there were other kids my age exploring, and telling each other what we had found. My best shot at getting into the first class (or front) of the ship was to climb into the balcony at the movie theatre, which was nearly impossible anyway. But is was much easier than cutting through steel bulwarks, or diving into the ocean, swimming faster than the ship, and climbing four stories to the deck at the front. For some reason, the Cunard line had cheaped out and used the same movies for first and second class passengers. But each class had their own entrance, and could barely see each other because first class was in the balcony, and second class was below. By the way, I also never managed to get into the engine room, the captain's cabin, the bridge, or the front of the ship. So how did Jack (from steerage class) ever see Rose (from first class) on the Titanic, much less talk to her? It was never explained in the movie.

There are people who study movies very closely for errors and goofs, and here is a page on the Titanic, with hundreds of goofs from the coins used, to the type of pistol, to the type of engines used on the ship. One of the errors refers to the fact that steerage passengers "would not have been allowed on the promenade deck". Another goof mentions "Passengers were not allowed at the forecastle head". This is quite an understatement, in reality it was more than just "not allowed", I would say "not remotely possible".

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120338/goofs

Putting the Christ Back in Christmas?

At our Christmas family gathering, my mother was telling me that she had just bought a new bumper sticker for her car, "Put the 'Christ' Back in Christmas". This of course is the same woman who started a chain of events that eliminated religion from all the public schools in the province of Quebec* and I am very proud of her for it. And now she is upset that Walmart hangs up signs that say only "Season's Greetings", and not "Merry Christmas".

I said, but Mom, the heathens had Christmas first. "How could that be?" she asked. Well, they celebrated the day that the sun started coming back up. The Christians, not wanting to appear "different", started celebrating that day too, or they might be thrown to the lions. So the early Christians wondered, what could they celebrate on December 25th? Some genius suggested, why not make it Jesus's birthday. Nobody knows when Jesus was born, it could be December 25th as easily as any other day. But later, once people were used to having Christmas on December 25th, somebody noticed it was written right in the bible that Jesus could not have been born on December 25th. Because in the bible it says "When the shepherds watched their flocks by night", and any shepherd in the holy land could have told them that could not be winter.

Now here is a link to a Christmas song by Tim Minchin. This song might be called a pro-reason Christmas song. Maybe even atheistic.

* If you didn't see the story of my mother and public schools, it is in this blog "What Do Canadians Really Believe", starting at fifth paragraph from the end.

Picture: My mother's brothers and sisters, with her on the far right about 1937 in Leicester, England. Two Rudge motorcycles.

Solving the Gun Problem Just in Time for Christmas

I feel bad that yesterday I was not able to give a solution to the problem of the shooting sprees, although I had just finished bursting the bubble of one of the most cherished solutions. To make up for it, today I am going to give an even better and cheaper solution than arming every schoolroom in the country, and I'm going to wrap this one up for you to open tomorrow, which is Christmas day. I know it's last minute, but that's the way I roll.

Here is how the solution goes. Ever notice how, in almost every case the psycho could have been stopped beforehand? I think every one of the psychos made threats well ahead of time. Yet no one ever did anything, because psycho behaviour is actually considered pretty normal. Here's your solution. If normal people toned down the rhetoric a little, the real psychos would be much easier to pick out ahead of time. It might not be 100 percent, but some lives could be saved, and at very little cost, too.

One example is a Canadian who was reading a British website and noticed psychotic behaviour. He immediately placed a phone call to the local police in Britain who picked up the psycho and averted a disaster. And yes, they found physical evidence that this psycho had all the equipment needed to carry out his threats.

It might even be possible to turn down the rhetoric with just half the effort that has been made to arm every classroom and workplace. To start with, it would be easy to insist that national TV networks stop calling for assassinations. I believe Fox News strongly hinted that a certain doctor who performed abortions deserved to die, and then some psycho obliged. Then, the Christian Broadcasting Network has called for the assassination of a democratically elected head of state whose only crime was to insist on a bigger share of his country's oil revenue, which he subsequently used to raise social benefits for the poor. And not only that, also offered to use some of that money to help poor Americans. In another event, a Christian minister hinted publicly in his sermon that Obama should be done away with, and next day one of his flock took a loaded gun to welcome Obama to town. Then you also have books, for example, "America Alone" by Mark Steyn, that "predicts" genocide for Muslims. This same book proudly proclaims on its cover "Soon to be banned in Canada". For obvious reasons.

It is realistic, and possible to tone down the rhetoric. We have done it in Canada to a large degree. While Obama gets 30 death threats a day, Prime Minister Harper's "Death Threat" inbox is empty. Try Googling "Barack Obama" and "Death Threat", you get 300,000 hits. The same search on "Stephen Harper" will get only 17,900. And half of those pages refer to threats made by Stephen Harper.

Start with the responsible people, the public figures and celebrities first. Let's all get together on the logical side of this topic instead of the usual emotion based left vs. right. Let's agree that guns and killing does not solve every problem. Wasn't it Jesus who said "God rest ye merry gentlemen and put those guns away. Remember I, your saviour was born on Christmas day!"? A Christian nation should be able to live up to those simple words.

Why Santa Feels Safer in Canada

Another of my jolly Christmas specials concerns Santa's safety. I'm not saying that Santa was ever shot at in the USA, but there is a different attitude towards guns in Canada and the US. I started to figure this out at a motorcycle rally in North Carolina, and I guess I was about the only Canadian there. I was conversing with a group of Americans around the campfire. They were apparently interested in some of the differences between our two countries, including our colourful monopoly money. Then we got onto the subject of guns, and I decided to tell this little joke to illustrate the difference in attitudes.

"In 1990, there were 3225 gun related deaths in Chicago. In the same year Toronto had 4. Because apparently, Americans don't tolerate as much bullshit!"

In Canada this would have been a joke. But none of the people around the fire were laughing, they were nodding sagely, "so true, so true".

The same debate starts every time an armed maniac enters a building in the US and shoots and kills a lot of people. Was this incident caused by too many guns, or not enough guns? Although we have incidents like this in Canada, I've never yet heard people seriously suggesting we need more guns to put an end to the problem.

One argument in favour of more guns is that these shootings never take place at gun shows or other places that people carry guns, only in gun-free zones like schools etc. Therefore, if you could make every place like a gun show, there would be no more killing sprees, or to be more accurate, the killing sprees would be shorter.

Now I'm being completely serious, this is how we would argue the point in Canada.

1. Gun shows are not the target of these killers because usually the psychos don't lose their jobs, or have arguments at gun shows. They don't even spend much time there, compared to school, for example. Furthermore, it is a mistake to think a massacre could never take place at a gun show.

Update: recently several armed policemen were killed in Washington state, in a surprise attack in a coffee shop by an armed psycho. This could be considered a real live test of the "let everybody carry guns" idea, and apparently it didn't work, not in this case anyway.

2. Let's think the situation through before we decide to bring loaded, easily accessible guns into every classroom, and every office space in the country. To stop a lunatic shooter we need somebody with a quick, accurate, shot to kill a fellow student who has just turned psycho. We are actually assuming a lot more skill and judgment from the armed students than we have any right to expect. We would at least need some guidelines for deciding when your co-worker or fellow student has flipped out in a dangerous way, or is just a harmless idiot. Do we have to allow them to actually kill somebody first, or can we shoot them as soon as they pull out a gun? If everybody in Canada is armed, you just know that at some point, people are going to be pulling out those guns without actually intending to kill anyone.

Let's assume we are really cautious about this, and first let the psycho kill somebody before you shoot them dead. This might happen: You hear a bang and somebody falls to the floor with blood spilling out, lots of people are already pulling out their guns. Who do you shoot? They are all co-workers or fellow students, including the actual psycho. Did you actually see the first shot fired? Are you sure who it is? And if you fire and miss, killing an innocent student, are you guilty of murder or what? And is this whole scene just a prank or is it real?

This infusion of guns will not only be increasing the number of unpremeditated shootings, also the number of tragic accidents, as loaded guns tend to go off for practically no reason.

3. And even if everybody, at every school in Canada has a loaded gun, then the psycho's plan "B" is to bring a bomb. Psychotic people have already bombed buildings, killing hundreds at a time. And not just foreign terrorists, Timothy McVeigh was an American army veteran. It has happened already, in Canada too, and guns are no defense against this tactic.

We don't have a final answer to this problem in Canada, but until we hear some logical arguments, or see something that proves guns actually help, we are betting that more guns is not the solution. So come on down that chimney, Santa, we won't shoot.