Tag: Society and Science

Nonexistent due process on the internets

From Ars Technica: A Silicon Valley Democrat Representative looking for GOP help:

At 9:30pm PST on February 11, US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) seized the domain mooo.com. They ordered the domain name’s registrar to redirect all traffic headed for mooo.com to a government IP address, one which displayed a single stark warning that the domain name had been seized for involvement with child pornography.

But the mooo.com domain name was shared between 84,000 sites; every one suddenly displayed the child pornography warning. The mistake was soon corrected, but the free domain name provider running mooo.com warned users that removal of the banner from their sites might “take as long as 3 days.”…

Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), who holds a law degree, is furious about the mistake. At a recent Congressional hearing, Lofgren grilled IP Czar Victoria Espinel about the incident and stood up for the 84,000 affected sites. “If I were them, I’d sue the department,” she thundered.

The article goes on to indicate that Rep. Lofgren is looking for GOP support to block a disappointing Democratic leadership-endorsed bill that would run roughshod over due process when it comes to internet seizures. If the GOP actually cared about due process for people without deep corporate pockets, Rep. Lofgren might have a chance. Her best hope is that the GOP blocks this simply because they hate Dems.

More importantly, this is just yet one more reminder that, as a society, we haven’t yet figured out how previously cherished ideals of due process, free speech, privacy, etc. apply to the rapidly evolving technological thicket of the internet.

Education makes you dumber…

At least in this case:

From “Education, politics and opinions about climate change evidence for interaction effects” (PDF):

Abstract U.S. public opinion regarding climate change has become increasingly polarized in recent years, as partisan think tanks and others worked to recast an originally scientific topic into a political wedge issue. Nominally “scientific” arguments against taking anthropogenic climate change seriously have been publicized to reach informed but ideologically receptive audiences. Reflecting the success of such arguments, polls have noted that concern about climate change increased with edu- cation among Democrats, but decreased with education among Republicans. These observations lead to the hypothesis that there exist interaction (non-additive) effects between education or knowledge and political orientation, net of other background factors, in predicting public concern about climate change. Two regional telephone surveys, conducted in New Hampshire (n=541) and Michigan (n=1,008) in 2008, included identical climate-change questions that provide opportunities to test this hypothesis. Multivariate analysis of both surveys finds significant interactions. These empirical results fit with theoretical interpretations and several other recent studies. They suggest that the classically identified social bases of concern about the environment in general, and climate in particular, have shifted in recent years. Narrowcast media, including the many Web sites devoted to discrediting climate- change concerns, provide ideal conduits for channeling contrarian arguments to an audience predisposed to believe and electronically spread them further. Active- response Web sites by climate scientists could prove critical to counterbalancing contrarian arguments.

There seems to be something here that explains a lot about beliefs other than climate change: evolution and political subjects like health care and economic policy – pretty much any subject where an intellectually indefensible position is in fact defended by ideologically-driven snake oil outfits whose product is scientific-sounding doubt of some mainstream scientific consensus. See “The Merchants of Doubt”.

UPDATE: Here is some follow-up material on this issue, some of which shows that on the subject of evolution, there is still an enormous conservative/ liberal split (with reality favoring the liberals again), but education doesn’t make you dumber.

Gleick, master of science writing

The NY Times has a review of James Gleick’s new book, The Information:

“The Information” offers this point-blank characterization of its author: “James Gleick is our leading chronicler of science and modern technology.” This new book goes far beyond the earlier Gleick milestones, “Chaos” and “Genius,” to validate that claim…“The Information” is so ambitious, illuminating and sexily theoretical that it will amount to aspirational reading for many of those who have the mettle to tackle it. Don’t make the mistake of reading it quickly.

Chaos and Genius are on my list of all-time greatest science books. If The Information is in their company, then this is going to be _the_ science book to read this year. I’m not sure what “aspirational reading” means, but The Information is sitting on my desk and I’m ready to savor it.

Worth reading today

From Ars Technica, why tablets are yet one more way to waste your time:

In fact, even when I’m traveling, I don’t bring the iPad if I plan to be productive. I find most apps to be a waste of time—often they’re incredibly fun and fascinating wastes of time, but they’re still time wasters. And even the productivity apps that I love, like scientific and/or financial calculators and things like OmniFocus, have desktop counterparts that I’m faster with….

Some of the really savvy new media efforts like Flipboard are exciting, but after the initial “wow” factor wears off, these apps mainly serve to remind me that there’s already too much good stuff to read out there, and that my life is slipping away from me in an infinite stream of interesting bits about smart animals, dumb criminals, outrageous celebs, shiny objects, funny memes, scientific discoveries, economic developments, etc..

And, from the NYRB, Freeman Dyson on James Gleick’s forthcoming book:

Gleick’s book has an epilogue entitled “The Return of Meaning,” expressing the concerns of people who feel alienated from the prevailing scientific culture. The enormous success of information theory came from Shannon’s decision to separate information from meaning. His central dogma, “Meaning is irrelevant,” declared that information could be handled with greater freedom if it was treated as a mathematical abstraction independent of meaning. The consequence of this freedom is the flood of information in which we are drowning. The immense size of modern databases gives us a feeling of meaninglessness. Information in such quantities reminds us of Borges’s library extending infinitely in all directions. It is our task as humans to bring meaning back into this wasteland. As finite creatures who think and feel, we can create islands of meaning in the sea of information.

Melville on Science vs. Creation Myth

From Melville’s under-appreciated Mardi:

On a quest for his missing love Yillah, an AWOL sailor pretending to be a demi-god travels the (imaginary) Mardi chain of Polynesian islands via canoe fleet, in the company of fellow demi-god King Media and his entourage. After viewing some fossils, the group’s resident philosopher, Babbalanja is asked how the islands were created. A scientific explanation being unsatisfactory to the group, Babbalanja presents an alternate hypothesis:

Media said:—”Babbalanja, you love all mysteries; here’s a fitting theme. You have given us the history of the rock; can your sapience tell the origin of all the isles? how Mardi came to be?” Continue reading “Melville on Science vs. Creation Myth”