MYcrobes or Ourcrobes

Sometimes this space features egregrious examples of fallacious thinking. Today though we excerpt an article from an Oxford University Press blog. We like it for a complex look at man's interconnectedness. We like it so much we will not even stress how it understates this interconnectedness.


Missing the opportunity to learn something about microbiology is a mistake. The uninformed are likely to be left with a distorted view of biology in which they miscast themselves as the most important organisms. For example, “Sarah” is a significant manifestation of life from Sarah’s perspective, but her body is not the individual organism that she imagines, and nor, despite her talents, is she a major player in the ecology of the planet. Her interactions with microbes will include a healthy relationship with bacteria in her gut, bouts of influenza and other viral illnesses, and death in old age from an antibiotic-resistant infection. Sarah’s microbiology will continue after death with her decomposition by fungi. In happier times she will become an expert on Milton’s poetry, and delight students by reciting Lycidas through her tears, but she will never know a thing about microbiology. This is a pity. Learning about viruses that bloom in seawater and fungi that sustain rainforests would not have stopped her from falling in love with Milton.

How to fake it

The Atlantic magazine asks this question. We quote large amounts of the article.

Could a Computer Think Up as Many Unique Snowflakes as Nature?

Given enough time, enough storage, and enough information on how a snowflake's path affects its growth, the answer is... maybe.

....

while computers can easily model snowflakes, they're missing the natural, unpredictable element to snowflake formation: the way they grow.

"The final shape of a snowflake depends on its complicated growth history," he says. "No two crystals follow the same complicated path. On a computer it would take forever, just because the number of combinations is very large."

.....

Our excerpt above shows the researcher skirting the nature of an infinite with vague phrases like "forever...very large." The fact is any concluding item in an infinite series, is contradictory, because by definite, an infinite has no end. That however is not the impression this report suggests. The concluding last lines of this article:

In other words, a computer could simulate snowflakes, but coming up with just as many unique ones as nature can requires knowing how many permutations are possible at all, of which there would have to be a concrete, albeit astronomically large, amount. "A snowflake's certainly not random," Libbrecht says. "The growth depends on a very well defined temperature and humidity, and we understand some of it."

But understanding the rest of it wouldn't be possible without man-made tools. In his lab, Libbrecht grows tiny hexagons, the smallest of snowflakes. Then, one snowflake at a time, he uses a computer to model what they might become.

The conclusion, in other words--- is that the giraffe on the balcony, -- the incomprehensibility of a real infinite, -- is ignored in this article. I highlight this sentence again, in fact, the concluding one of any cognitive value: 

But understanding the rest of it wouldn't be possible without man-made tools. 

The conclusion in other words ignores the central text of the their own argument, which at least hints at the meaning of the word 'infinite', with a reassuring pat on man's rational, binary, shoulders.

Eaters of the dead are rarely considered charismatic animals.

"Eaters of the dead are rarely considered charismatic animals."  This is a line from a jstor article. I hope the link is good for awhile. It goes to a fascinating article talking about how important vultures are. The facts noted point to how everything is connected, and it is apparent that this Work commonplace does not come easily to those called scientists. 

But what startled me was the clueless, and unqualified statement: Eaters of the dead are rarely considered charismatic animals. It is clear from the context the author is talking about vultures and trying to generalize. Is it not obvious if you think about it. Why should people not be considered part of the animal world. Myself, I eat the dead, not a lot, but gotta have that chicken fix once in a while. I like my dead with mustard and relish. You'll have to take my word for how charismatic I am, but -- I am. 

The author Matthew Wills is not being called out. I am certain his thinking sounded few alarms or chuckles in the positivist and science popularizing crew. Just step back, a bit. How COULD ecology, his theme, not include us? 

The robots have already taken over

Quoting: phys.org, an article header---

Artificial intelligence: Hawking's fears stir debate
There was the psychotic HAL 9000 in "2001: A Space Odyssey," the humanoids which attacked their human masters in "I, Robot" and, of course, "The Terminator", where a robot is sent into the past to kill a woman whose son will end the tyranny of the machines.

I guess everyone has read the conversation. Stephen Hawking thinks that there is a chance robots will be a threat to the human race. His assertions are a great example of the limitations of ordinary, binary thought--- that rational part of the mind, where everything is this or that, as a principle of processing talk. Jan Cox used to laugh and say scientists could only count to two, and this is what he meant. No amount of binary programming can topple humanity. What Hawking misses is the whole dimension of human creativity, the unprogrammable side which feeds, inflects, and furnishes human reality. Hawking has no place for this because it is not rational -- the unknown is not either/or, But this other dimension is a constant aspect, not just an incidental accidental occasional thing people trip on. Jan called it various things. C Flow is one label. It is a constant aspect of our world. It is not the only causal feature, but it is critical and makes calculating the future a different chore than the spokespeople for rational man realize.