Never underestimate the power of a person’s ability to deceive themselves.

Let me preface this post by saying that a number of years back I used to work part-time for a certain major Canadian coffee chain. I must have brewed hundreds, or maybe even thousands, of pots of coffee in the short time that I worked there. Occasionally, somebody would forget to take the coffee grounds out of a machine before brewing the next pot of coffee, causing the same grounds to be used twice. The result was a very light-colored, but very bitter tasting, coffee product. Naturally, we would just spill this pot out and brew a fresh one.

This morning, I was in the kitchen pouring some coffee, when my mom commented on how strong/bitter the coffee tasted this morning. I took a taste, and noticed that it did taste bitter – a lot like the coffee grounds had been run through the machine twice. Examining the color, I noticed that it was lighter than usual… also consistent with my hypothesis. I told my mom that the coffee grounds had probably been accidentally re-used and that we should spill the coffee out and make a new batch. It’s important to understand that my mom hates wasting food; I’ve seen her drink lumpy milk before in an attempt to forego spilling it out. So it didn’t surprise me that she was opposed to the idea of spilling out the coffee. What came next did surprise me, however. She took another taste of her coffee, and then told me that it tasted fine to her. Not more than 60 seconds after she had pointed out the bitter taste of the coffee, she was now telling me that it had a perfectly normal taste. She genuinely seemed to believe that the coffee now had a normal taste, even though nothing about it had changed.

So what’s the lesson of this story? Never underestimate the human mind’s ability to self-deceive. What something is often takes a back seat to what we want something to be.

Well, we’ve recently hit a drought of posts here at Lintbox lately, due possibly to the fact that we’re lazy loafers.  I have recently, however, managed to fix quite a few remaining problems with the site’s layout, and have yet again updated the categories with new, flashier icons and a few additional topics.

We should be back in action soon!

In the meantime, be sure to check out Joss Whedon’s latest project, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog if you’re one of the very few remaining who haven’t.  The awesome series has become a huge online hit, and rightly so.  This is, after all, the Joss-Whedon’s-Firefly Joss Whedon we’re talking about.  If you’re late in the game, though, you should know that the series is scheduled to no longer be available for free today (As of the writing of this post, it’s still up).  Luckily, it can be found on iTunes for only $1.99 per act, and Dr. Horrible is worth every penny.

Also be sure to check out the related Captain Hammer’s Be Like Me, a wonderful short expository comic on the story’s antagonist (who is, ironically, a superhero).  The character Captain Hammer, as it turns out, is a brash, self-important and dim-witted brute who shows more interest in himself than the rest of society.  Most nefarious of all (and very related to the topic of skepticism) he follows the principles of figures such as Pol Pot in condemning the very appearance of intellectualism and the scientific pursuit in general.  Captain Hammer is, in fact, the very personification of the vapid, malicious anti-scientific sentiments skeptics and scientists alike aim to expunge.

In short, it’s awesome.  Watch it as many times as our linear timeframe may allow (or more)!

Recently, I’ve been thinking as to the criteria that would cause me to accept the existence of an intelligent god that interacted with humans.

So here’s my challenge to God: start answering prayers. More specifically, start answering the prayers of sick people. If everybody¹ with some sort of disease, who prays to God to be healed, is instantaneously healed of that disease (without medical intervention, of course), I would take this as pretty conclusive proof that there is some sort of really powerful, if not omnipotent, God (if not some other powerful intelligence watching us).

The ball is in your court, God.

Today I had two hard drives (one of them was my system drive) fail on me at the same time. With computers, it is common knowledge that if something is going to go wrong, then a bunch of things are going to go wrong all at the same time.

Of course, that’s not true. Computers constantly have problems, and usually the problems are easy to fix when they happen in isolation. All it usually takes is a few minutes of tinkering, or a fresh install of the OS, and all of my problems go away. However, the times that I tend to remember are the ones where multiple things go wrong all at once. These problems are usually more serious, result in a lot longer repair period, and usually mean a bunch of lost data (and a lot of inconvenience). It isn’t that these situations are more common, it’s just that they’re more memorable. This phenomenon applies to all events that we remember and not just computers (think, “When it rains, it pours”).

Now of course, there might be a certain amount of truth to correlations between computer components failing at the same time. Computers are large and complex systems, and for a component to function properly, it often depends on other components. Hardware malfunctions can cause software to appear corrupted, and one broken piece of equipment can sometimes damage other pieces of equipment. This is especially true when dealing with software where one corrupt program (especially if it is the OS) can cause a whole host of other problems; sometimes these failures are clustered. However, usually this is not the case.

Science and religion are similar in that they both seek to answer questions about natural phenomenon. They both try to come up with plausible explanations for how observable phenomenon appear. Whereas science tells us how inheritance and natural selection causes genetic variance in populations over time (evolution), religion tells us that a divine being (God) guides the development of species to a predetermined goal. Scientists firmly believe that their answer is the most correct model of evolution to date, whereas religious people believe creationism to be an equally compelling theory.

Where science and religion differ greatly is in how they go about answering questions about our world, and more specifically, how they go about evaluating and improving their theories for how the world works. Both theorize as to possible causes for natural events. Science explains natural phenomenon by way of many tiny interactions of universal forces that act upon each other to create complex systems, and religion usually explains natural phenomenon by way of one, or many, gods (usually omnipotent and omniscient beings that are both creators and designers of the universe). However, this is where the two processes differ. Once a theory has been arrived at, science goes on to ask whether it is the only possible theory, and if so, if it is the best possible theory. Scientific theory is constantly under evaluation, and the instant something with more predictive power comes along, the new theory is integrated into the body of scientific knowledge. Religion lacks this constant drive for self-improvement. It comes up with one answer, and sticks to it.

Now, some might argue that religious theory is perfect, because it was handed down by a god/gods in its present form, and therefore requires no improvement. There are two problems with this argument, though. The first, and most obvious, problem with this argument is that our interpretation of religious laws changes over time. Religious teachings now are not what they were 1000 years ago. And in some cases (like Judaism), a great deal of emphasis is placed on studying our interpretation of the holy texts and laws contained therein. Regardless of whether or not the laws are perfect, if we acknowledge that our interpretation can be flawed, then this leaves room for improvement.

If it is the case that religious teachings have always been right, and that we are capable of improving our interpretation of them (i.e. by studying them we can gain a greater understanding of what they mean), then it begs the question of why scientific findings (also a method of human learning and understanding) are diverging, rather than converging, on religious theory. Either there is something deeply flawed with the scientific method (which is always a possibility, but not something that has been shown yet), or the two types of knowledge should be growing closer over time. The fact that they aren’t seems troublesome, and given that both branches acknowledge the fallibility of human knowledge, science seems to be the only one correcting for this, by constantly questioning its own assumptions, and improving as a result.

I recognize that this probably won’t convince anybody who’s deeply religious (and let’s face it, if you’re deeply religious you probably aren’t reading this blog anyways), and some people are comfortable with not questioning their beliefs too deeply, but it’s such a small step that can have such a large impact on how you view the world. Never stop questioning your beliefs.

This is just a purely awesome video. I’ll give it to you up front; with my reasons for posting it below.

So what does this video have to do with science/skepticism?

[Read more →]

Piracy and DVD sales are putting the theaters out of business… or so we’ve been told. I managed to take this picture while driving around downtown¹ a few days ago²:

It turns out that a new movie theater is going into a plaza around Sheppard and Don Mills. This isn’t your average run-of-the mill theater either; this is one of Cineplex’s giant “Silver City” theater complexes. This isn’t an isolated incident either; theaters are still being constructed amidst giant box store malls all over Ontario. While this isn’t necessarily proof that the theater companies aren’t in trouble, it makes me wonder if they’re doing as bad as most people seem to think.

You might have noticed that the names of two new authors have recently appeared on our side bar; this is because we have (surprise) two new authors!  I’d like to welcome Dulcinea and Bryan to the Lintbox community.

Also, and so this post isn’t completely devoid of science, here’s NASA’s APOD:

With global warming all the rage in government, the media, and the scientific community; and the recent introduction of the new Liberal carbon tax plan, a lot of talk has focused on the issue of who should be footing the bill for our increasing energy use. Whereas proponents of the bill think that Canadians have to start paying attention to our levels of carbon emissions, opponents of the bill point to the fact that Canadians are already burdened with high energy costs and require relief, as opposed to increased taxes, at this time.

First: a few facts. We know that there are a number of externalities from carbon emissions. Global warming has more or less been universally accepted at this point in time, and we know that the effects will range from moderate to severe harm to our environment. Even if you don’t believe in global warming, you probably still acknowledge that combustion processes, that are the source of most carbon emissions, are significant contributors to smog and other pollutants. These things are both bad for our health and for our environment. We also know that, currently, these costs are not factored into the price of using fossil fuels and other carbon-emitting power generating processes. As a result, we grossly underestimate the cost of using these energy sources, and neglect to factor in the environmental and personal harm that we inflict when using them¹.

As previously discussed, while proponents of the carbon tax generally recognize that it is our responsibility to mitigate the above mentioned harms, critics don’t believe that the average Canadian citizen should be punished via increased energy costs. Some people don’t believe we should be paying these costs at all, but this is clearly not a [long-term or sustainable] solution. So if the Canadian citizen isn’t footing the bill for these costs, who should be the one to do it? Big corporations? Distributors? Producers?

Taxation tends to be misunderstood. If you levy a tax against a big corporation, nobody seems to care, but levy the same tax against your citizens and there is a big outcry. The truth of the matter is that no matter who is taxed, the consumer is always the one who will end up paying for it². Why is this the case?

The economic principles behind this phenomenon are rather simple. In an ideal (closed) free market economy, businesses are driven by two distinct mechanisms:

1. Profit Maximization: Businesses will always try to maximize their profits through minimizing expenses and maximizing the price of its products.
2. Competition: Consumers will choose to purchase the cheaper of two (or more goods), assuming comparable function and quality, businesses will compete to try and achieve a larger portion of the consumer market, and thus competition will drive businesses’ prices down.

These two factors work together to develop a market equilibrium where a company’s revenue will equal its expenses. By taxing the business, all you are doing is adding an extra expense that the business must factor in to their prices. Just like every other expense, this helps decide the price of the product that is sold to consumers: Raise the costs of production, and you will also raise the final price of the product. This will result in a new state of equilibrium, where consumers are paying more for the same product. The same process happens regardless of what stage of production you add the tax; it is factored in as an extra cost, which is then passed on to the consumer. People don’t care as much when the tax is added on earlier in the process. Just because you don’t directly observe the price increases from a business being taxed (unlike seeing the sales tax being added on when it comes time to pay for something), it does not mean that you aren’t paying a higher price because of that tax.

Obviously we don’t live in an ideal free market economy, but the principles are more or less the same. The result is that there is virtually no difference between taxing a business and taxing the consumer. Of course, in a more complicated system, where you have to compete to retain business and jobs on an international scale, whom you tax becomes more important. However, the fact remains that taxing will ultimately affect the consumer. So remember: the next time the government decides to tax a big, greedy corporation, and give the money to honest, hard-working citizens, that corporation is just going to turn around and pass that expense onto the consumer³.

If there’s one thing I hate, it’s when people take science and corrupt it for their own political ends. In recent years, global warming has been - pardon the pun - a rather hot topic; hardly a day goes by when you don’t hear about it in one form or another. The environmentalists have championed the theory, the right-wingers have dismissed it as propaganda, and everything in between. For every Inconvenient Truth (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0497116/) there’s a Great Global Warming Swindle (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1020027/). We have to be more energy-efficient. We have to drive hybrids. There’s not a scientific “consensus”. Etc., etc., etc.

It wears on one’s nerves. And though I’m surely to be labeled a “global warming denier” or something equally as asinine, I’d like to explore what it IS, and what it IS NOT.

Global warming was originally an extrapolation from a predictive climate model. Depending on how you tweak the parameters, the same model will predict global cooling, or global temperature-not-changing-at-all. Granted, it does make logical sense. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, and levels are elevated due to human activity, therefore human activity is causing the Earth’s temperature to increase. But overly simplistic, albeit rational, explanations such as these have no place in an essentially chaotic system such as climate. (Side note: some models will predict that heating actually causes cooling in the long run: more heat causes more water vapour in the air, which causes more clouds, which reflect more sunlight away from the Earth, which causes the planet to cool)

Global warming is not something that can be tested scientifically. One big problem is that we only have one planet to “experiment” on. Even if we could somehow test multiple Earths in the laboratory, there are far too many variables to be able to pin down the effects of a single one. At the end of the day, it comes down to what is statistically likely. To put it more bluntly, the idea that humans are going to cause a significant increase in the average temperature of the planet is a guess. An educated guess, to be fair, and one that is backed up by historical data such as graphs of atmospheric CO2 levels and temperature:

So I’m certainly not trying to say that it is a “myth” or that it is “impossible” or anything of that sort. There is a clear correlation in that graph, which lends support (but certainly does not prove) to the idea that man-made cardon dioxide can increase Earth’s temperature.

But even if it turns out to be wrong, the rest of the environmentalist message is still absolutely correct. Use less electricity. Drive more fuel-efficient cars. We KNOW that pollution from car exhaust and coal power plants kills tens of thousands of people annually; there would be no downside to getting rid of that. And maybe global warming alarmism is what we needed to give us a kick in the “green” direction. Hell, if all it means is the demise of the hideously obnoxious Hummer H2, then it is absolutely worth it.

Just… seriously… it’s not a political platform, it’s not a news headline attention-grabber, it’s a bloody computer model. It’s not even scary anymore; sorry, fear-mongering media, you’ll have to find something new to frighten us with.