What We Know, and Don’t, and Why

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Yeah, I already used this title once before. It’s a good title, okay? Cut me a little holiday slack here.

By way of slightly-warmed-over blogging, I present to you the slides from a talk I gave a few weeks ago at Villanova, my undergrad alma mater. The original mandate was to talk about scientific literacy to a collection of undergrads, but I didn’t know how to make that fascinating. So I took it to the next level and went a bit meta, talking about the way science works. It was at a fairly abstract level — I didn’t go into building detectors, and error bars, or anything like that — but not too highbrow philosophy-of-sciencey — I didn’t get into Kuhn vs. Popper, much less Feyerabend or the Strong Programme, although you’ll find touches here and there.

To bring things down to earth (relatively speaking), most of the talk consisted of an extended look at the battle between “dark matter” and “modified gravity.” It goes all the way back to Leverrier and the discovery of Neptune, whose existence was inferred via its gravitational tug on the orbit of Uranus. Neptune was the first successful prediction of dark matter — some unseen substance whose existence is revealed by its gravitational influence. Leverrier tried again with the similarly-discrepant orbit of Mercury, positing a planet called Vulcan; but this time it turned out that gravity itself was the culprit, after Einstein showed that general relativity correctly accounted for the precession of Mercury’s orbit. So the lesson from history is — different ideas work in different circumstances. Keep an open mind until the data come down on one side or another. (And once they do, admit it.)

Today, of course, we’re dealing with an analogous problem, given that 25% of the universe is apparently some kind of dark matter that doesn’t fit into the Standard Model of particle physics, and 70% is some kind of dark energy that is even more mysterious. Modified gravity might be at work here as well, and I talked about the prospects.

Along the way, I drew out some of the lessons about how science works that these various investigations have taught us. I intentionally did not try to wrap it all up with a neat bow into a catch-all philosophy of science, as I think the reality is kind of messy, and it’s worth admitting that. The closest I came was the famous quote from Professor Rumsfeld, previously shared. This led to a series of cautionary homilies warning against misuse of the hypothesis-testing nature of scientific inquiry. The truth is, scientific knowledge is inevitably tentative, not metaphysically certain. But that doesn’t mean that anything goes — some things we really do understand! So I cautioned against various mistakes, using perpetual-motion machines, Intelligent Design, and What the Bleep Do We Know as good examples of what not to do.

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The Real World

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The Real World In her post below, JoAnne refers to “the real world” in the literally accurate sense — the physical reality that exists independently of our understanding, in contrast to the tentative frameworks put forward by theorists as hypothetical models of that reality. But there’s a more metaphorical sense in which physicists (and academics more broadly) use the phrase “the real world” — to refer to the socio-economic milieu peopled by those outside the academy. We say things like “she spent a couple of years in the real world before going to grad school,” or “most of the time I hang out with physicists, but I do have some friends in the real world.”

I figure we can’t be the only people who talk this way. Professional actors or musicians (I’m guessing, and would love to hear confirmation/refutation) might think of themselves as being distinct from “the real world,” as might people serving in the military, or working in politics. We have the idea that certain kinds of lifestyles are stereotypically “real,” while others are somehow in a separate zone. And it’s generally a point of pride to consider one’s self and colleagues as non-real — we are privileged enough to operate outside the petty concerns of conventional reality, concentrating our powers on esoteric specialties with petty concerns of our own.

So, is there a flipside to this, with a corresponding feeling of pride? That is, are there occupations or milieux that think of themselves as quintessentially “real,” and wouldn’t have it any other way? (Presumably ones where people don’t babble on about “milieux.”) My many non-physicists friends are generally happily cocooned in lifestyles that are just as non-real-world as mine, so I don’t have much data here.

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Putting Your Money Where Your Beliefs Are

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David Sklansky, well-known poker theorist, is challenging Christian fundamentalists to a battle of standardized-test-taking skills! (Via Unscrewing the Incrutable and Cynical-C.)

This is an open challenge to any American citizen who passes a lie detector test that I will specify in a moment.

We will both take the math SAT or GRE (aptidude test). Your choice. We will both have only half the normally allotted time to lessen the chances of a perfect score. Lower score pays higher score $50,000.

To qualify you must take a reputable polygraph that proclaims you are truthful when you state that:

1. You are at least 95% sure that Jesus Christ came back from the dead.

AND

2. You are at least 95% sure that adults who die with the specific belief that Jesus probably wasn’t ressurected will not go to heaven.

If you pass the polygraph you can bet me on the SAT or GRE. Again this is open to ANY one of the 300 million Americans.

Also, for those who think I am being disengenuous because I would make the offer to anyone at all, you are wrong. I am now so rusty that at least one in 5000 Americans are favored over me and I would pass on a bet with them. That’s 60,000 people. If the number of people who would pass that polygraph is between 10 and 30 million, which I think it is, that means that at least 2000 of these types of Christians are smart enough to be favored over me. Given such Christian’s intelligence is distributed like other American’s are.

But I’m betting fifty grand they are not. Their beliefs make them relatively stupid (or uninterested in learning). Or only relatively stupid people can come to such beliefs. One or the other. That is my contention. And this challenge might help demonstrate that.

(I’d feel better about Sklansky’s chances if he knew how to spell “resurrected” — good thing he’s sticking to the math test.)

This sounds like an interesting way to get publicity, but the theory behind it is kind of … dumb. It relies on the idea that there is some unitary thing called “intelligence” that correlates in some simple way with both test-taking skills and religious beliefs. If only it were anywhere near that simple.

Assume for the moment that belief in the literal resurrection of Jesus really does indicate a certain amount of credulity, lack of critical thinking, etc. (Obviously not an unproblematic assumption, but let’s grant that it’s true for the sake of argument.) Why in the world would that be inconsistent with being a math prodigy? The human mind is a funny, complicated thing. There are extraordinarily basic mathematical calculations — taking the square root of a fifty-digit number comes to mind — at which a pocket calculator will always do much better than any human being. Yet if you asked the calculator to invent a theory of gravity based on special relativity and the Principle of Equivalence, it wouldn’t get very far.

Some people (and physicists are among the most guilty, for obvious reasons) seem to think that the ability to do math is the quintessential expression of “intelligence,” from which all other reasoning skills flow. If that were true, scientists and mathematicians would make the best poets, statesmen, artists, and conversationalists. And faculty meetings at top-ranked physics departments would be paradigms of reasonable discussion undistorted by petty jealousies and irrational commitments. Suffice it to say, the evidence is running strongly against. (It’s true that physicists are incredibly fashionable and make the best lovers, but that’s a different matter.)

There really are different ways to be smart. Which is not some misguided hyper-egalitarian claim that everyone is equally smart; some people are very smart in lots of ways, while others aren’t especially smart in any. But it’s very common for people to be intelligent in one way and not in others. David Sklansky, for example, is a great poker player and quite mathematically talented. But his understanding of human psychology falls a bit short.

(I should add that Sklansky may in fact know exactly what he is doing, judging that hubris will be enough to lead more people he can beat to accept the challenge than people he will lose to. But from the discussion, it seems as if he really doesn’t think that anyone fitting his criteria will be able to beat him.)

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The String Kings

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Who says our commenters are anything less than perfectly awesome? In the course of reading Alejandro Satz’s review of Lee Smolin’s book, I came across a link to a comment on one of Clifford’s old posts. An elaborate review of a film that is completely imaginary, but demands to be made; it’s brilliant, and somehow I don’t think it got the attention it deserved when originally posted. It’s by “Steve,” but I don’t know anything more specific — if the real Steve would like to step forward, I’d be happy to give credit where it’s due!

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The “String Kings”, Scorsese’s latest, is a highly violent but satisfying gangster movie, certainly on a par with Goodfellas or the Godfather trilogy, and does give the viewer insights into the raw and violent world of fundamental string theory research. The film also boasts a first-rate Hollywood cast: Joe Pesci as Michael “Mo “Green; Burt Young as John Schwarz; Antonio Banderas as the hot-bloodied Juan Maldacena, who is as fast with a flicknife as he is with an ADS duality; Leonardo deCaprio as Lubos “The Kid” Motl; Robert de Niro as Tom Banks; Harvey Keitel as Joe “the (quantum) Mechanic” Polchinski, Michael Douglas as Michael Douglas; Amanda Peet as Amanda Peet, Terrence Stamp as Lenny Susskind, Jackie Chan as Michio Kaku, Samuel L Jackson as Clifford V. Johnson and Eugene Levy as “Boss of Bosses” Ed Witten. The film is characterised by some extreme and gratuitous violence and is not for the mathematically squeamish, but this is to be expected considering the subject matter.

In the film, Lubos Motl becomes involved with the string mafia at a young age. As he says in the film, “I always wanted to become a string theorist”. As an undergraduate he idolises the string theory gangsters in the US and eagerly studies every page of GSW, Vols. I and II. Upon graduating, the local Syracuse mob captain Tom Banks sees his potential and helps cultivate the boy’s developing criminal string career, offering him a postgraduate position. In graduate school Lubos is arrested by campus police for intimidating researchers in medicine, biology, engineering, arts and humanities into citing string preprints in their work. He admits nothing and is lauded by his superiors as a “stand-up guy”. Upon getting his Phd he moves to Harvard and gets to rub shoulders with some of the “made guys” within the east-coast string underworld. Ruthless and violent and described as “perturbatively unstable” he quickly establishes his reputation. From his Harvard base he helps the mob take over local bars, clubs, businesses, casinos, hotels, libraries, graduate schools and journal editorial boards. They run a sleazy escort agency called “Matrix Models”. The also conspire to channel, siphon and launder millions of dollars worth of grant money from the government. However, at this time the FBI also begin to keep a close watch…

Perhaps the most violent scenes in the film follow when “Boss of Bosses” Ed Witten, from a huge luxury mansion in Princeton NJ, calmly gives the order for a long list of people to be “taken out” (spoiler alert). In a chilling sequence, the film repeatedly cuts between the increasingly violent mob hits and Ed giving a seminar on the twistor space structure of 1-loop amplitudes in gauge theory. Lee Smolin is seen shot multiple times in the back as he writes LQG constraint equations on a blackboard. There is a scene showing work on an extension of the New Jersey turnpike, involving string henchmen (disguised with hard hats and overalls) a large cement truck and Peter Woit. Carlo Rovelli is kidnapped and strapped to a chair while the Kid goes through his quantum gravity monologue page by page with seething criticism before finally bashing his head in with the hardback edition. Another LQG theorist gets his dimensions compactified in a car crusher. These violent scenes generally stay with you long after the film is finished and have an unsettling effect.

The film also cuts to the west-coast string operation where Stanford mobsters are experimenting with hard drugs. With on-location filming at the ITP (now the Kavli Institute) we see Polchinski (Keitel) and Johnson (Samuel Jackson) working on a lecture series, unfortunately with awful dumbed-down dialogue from Jackson:”This D-brane primers gonna kick serious ass mutha”. However, back east things go awry and the kid ends up in jail replete with orange jump suit taking the rap for his superiors, following an FBI sting (string?)operation. But he starts to run an operation from his cell smuggling in drugs and arxiv preprints for his fellow inmates.

However, the film badly degenerates into 70s and 80s actioner kitch near the end when the east-coast string bosses decide to take over Kaku’s NY pop science, popular book, tv and radio operation, thus stopping him making string theory understandable to “the stupid people”. It turns out though that Kaku who has 4 black belts can shatter a stack of D-branes with a single karate blow, and takes on the string mob, joined by fellow populariser Brian Greene played by Steven Seagal. However, some of the mob back west are not hapy including boss John Schwarz who says, “Kaku was writing string theory papers when some of you guys were struggling with high-school algebra”. What follows is an all-out turf war in NY’s China Town, with a badly dubbed Kaku (even though being Japanese), a sinewy, oiled lean, mean fighting machine…every muscle tensed ready to explode with lightening reflexes, taking out the string mob one by one in a scene shamelessly ripped off from the end of “Enter the Dragon.”

Overall, String Kings will appeal to fans fo the gangster genre and despite the ending will probably still become a Scorsese classic.

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A Policy Question: Comments

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As most of you know, we pride ourselves here on being a top-down blog. We’re not one of those touchy-feely people-powered sites that are all “What would you like me to post about?” and “Whatever can we do to serve you?” Our attitude is, we know what’s best for you, and we’re taking time from our busy schedules to provide it, and you’ll like it or learn to. At Cosmic Variance, that’s just how we roll.

There is, however, an obvious exception to the rule: the comment sections. (Or should that be “are, however, obvious exceptions”? Grammar is not how we roll.) That’s where the people, our beloved readers, can let their voices be heard. A Habermasian zone of free communication, where all are welcome to participate in reasoned and passionate dialogue concerning the nature of the universe and our place within it. Okay, I’ll stop there.

So the question is: how can the comment sections be better? To decode this for our more innocent readers: how can we increase the signal-to-noise ratio? Increasing the signal is one obvious way, but that’s hard. The real question that I’ve been wondering about (haven’t consulted my co-bloggers on this) is: should we take more dramatic steps to decrease the noise? In particular, should we have a much heavier hand in discouraging, deleting, or even banning people who are rude, disruptive, off-topic, or just plain crackpotty? And in most specific particular: if we did so, are there folks out there who would judge the comment sections to be more useful, and might even be more likely to join in themselves?

Personally, I rarely read the comment sections on other blogs, even my absolute favorites. But I enjoy our comment threads here, and we certainly have some insightful and articulate commenters. Sadly, there are also the crackpots. To be absolutely clear, I am not referring to folks who are not experts in science or whatever else we happen to be talking about, but would sincerely like to join in the conversation, add an outsider’s perspective or ask a question or two. We like those comments, in fact those are our absolute favorites! Indeed, those are the ones that I most worry are being squeezed out by the noise. Likewise, we’re very happy to see comments that represent strong but principled disagreement with what we are saying. (We’ve been accused, unsurprisingly, of taking delight in stifing dissent, but the briefest glance at any of our controversial threads makes that a difficult position to support.)

The crackpots to whom I refer are those who know little or nothing about the subject but are convinced that they do, and are likewise convinced that the world needs to know about their theories, yet have absolutely no interest in listening to what others have to say. You know of whom I speak: the guy who has read the first chapter of The Elegant Universe and come away convinced that he knows more about how spacetime really works than these groupthinking string theorists, or the gal who constructed a model from ordinary household appliances that predicts the masses of all the particles in the Standard Model. (Neither of these examples refers to actual people, at least not to my knowledge; but I wouldn’t be surprised.)

So, do people prefer to let a thousand flowers bloom, even if some are indistinguishable from weeds, or should we play a more active role in deleting the nonsense? We’ve always been willing to delete/ban people who are repeatedly obnoxious, but it’s never fun to do so. We recognize that the free-speech zone that everyone is in favor of is not each individual blog, but rather the blogosphere as a whole. If anyone wants to push their own crazy theories about the birth of the universe, they should feel free to start a free blog and explain away to their heart’s content; we’re very happy to accept trackbacks to nearly any blog.

But individual blog comment sections aren’t public squares; they are more analogous to private living rooms. The preeminent statement of this philosophy was offered by Eugene Volokh, when he explains that comment threads are like cocktail parties to which the blog owners have invited you. It’s not supposed to be a free-for-all fracas in which rudeness and craziness must stoically be tolerated; it’s supposed to be an interesting mix of viewpoints from a wide variety of backgrounds, but one that comes together in mutual respect to create a stimulating dialogue.

And yet… and yet we almost always err on the side of letting people ramble on, at least until they become so impolite and/or disruptive that we have little choice. So what do you think? Would this blog be a better place if the Heavy Hand of the State slapped down some of the noisier contributors, or is the chaos part of the charm? (Responses from people who don’t usually comment are especially welcome.)

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Messin’ Up Your Game

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You know how George Bush is constantly admitting that he’s made grave mistakes, and apologizing, and hoping to do better in the future? Hmm, no, I guess you don’t. Meanwhile, Barack Obama is leading by example, as this excerpt from Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me demonstrates. (Via Unfogged.)

The phone rings.

Lovelady: Lovelady. Newsroom.

Obama: Nicholas?

Lovelady: This is he.

Obama: Nicholas, this is Barack Obama.

Lovelady: Hey, how’s it going?

Obama: Man, I am calling to publicly apologize for messin’ up your game. I felt terrible. I didn’t know there were any ladies around. I just wanted to let you know that I’m deeply sorry. But if she was that superficial, then she wasn’t for you.

Lovelady: (chuckles) Well, I really appreciate it.

Obama: Well okay, man. Bye bye.

The call ends.

For context … read the whole thing. Audio here.

I would definitely vote for Obama if I hadn’t already pledged my support to The Editors.

How often do you get to vote for a dinosaur?

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Guest Blogger: Joe Polchinski on the String Debates

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You may have read here and there about the genteel discussions concerning the status of string theory within contemporary theoretical physics. We’ve discussed it on CV here, here, and even way back here, and Clifford has hosted a multipart discussion at Asymptotia (I, II, III, IV, V, VI).

We are now very happy to host a guest post by the man who wrote the book, as it were, on string theory — Joe Polchinski of the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics at UC Santa Barbara. Joe was asked by American Scientist to review Peter Woit’s Not Even Wrong and Lee Smolin’s The Trouble With Physics. Here is a slightly-modified version of the review, enhanced by footnotes that expand on some more technical points.

————————————————————————————

This is a review/response, written some time ago, that has just appeared in American Scientist. A few notes: 1) I did not choose the title, but at least insisted on the question mark so as to invoke Hinchliffe’s rule (if the title is a question, the answer is `no’). 2) Am. Sci. edited my review for style, I have reverted figures of speech that I did not care for. 3) I have added footnotes on some key points. I look forward to comments, unfortunately I will be incommunicado on Dec. 8 and 9.

All Strung Out?

Joe Polchinski

The Trouble with Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next. Lee Smolin. xxiv + 392 pp. Houghton Mifflin, 2006. $26.

Not Even Wrong: The Failure of String Theory and the Search for Unity in Physical Law. xxi + 291 pp. Basic Books, 2006. $26.95.

The 1970’s were an exhilarating time in particle physics. After decades of effort, theoretical physicists had come to understand the weak and strong nuclear forces and had combined them with the electromagnetic force in the so-called Standard Model. Fresh from this success, they turned to the problem of finding a unified theory, a single principle that would account for all three of these forces and the properties of the various subatomic particles. Some investigators even sought to unify gravity with the other three forces and to resolve the problems that arise when gravity is combined with quantum theory.

The Standard Model is a quantum field theory, in which particles behave as mathematical points, but a small group of theorists explored the possibility that under enough magnification, particles would prove to be oscillating loops or strands of “string.” Although this seemingly odd idea attracted little attention at first, by 1984 it had become apparent that this approach was able to solve some key problems that otherwise seemed insurmountable. Rather suddenly, the attention of many of those working on unification shifted to string theory, and there it has stayed since.

Today, after more than 20 years of concentrated effort, what has been accomplished? What has string theory predicted? Lee Smolin, in The Trouble With Physics, and Peter Woit, in Not Even Wrong, argue that string theory has largely failed. What is worse, they contend, too many theorists continue to focus their efforts on this idea, monopolizing valuable scientific resources that should be shifted in more promising directions.

Smolin presents the rise and fall of string theory as a morality play. He accurately captures the excitement that theorists felt at the discovery of this unexpected and powerful new idea. But this story, however grippingly told, is more a work of drama than of history. Even the turning point, the first crack in the facade, is based on a myth: Smolin claims that string theorists had predicted that the energy of the vacuum — something often called dark energy — could not be positive and that the surprising 1998 discovery of the accelerating expansion of the universe (which implies the existence of positive dark energy) caused a hasty retreat. There was, in fact, no such prediction [1]. Although his book is for the most part thoroughly referenced, Smolin cites no source on this point. He quotes Edward Witten, but Witten made his comments in a very different context — and three years after the discovery of accelerating expansion. Indeed, the quotation is doubly taken out of context, because at the same meeting at which Witten spoke, his former student Eva Silverstein gave a solution to the problem about which he was so pessimistic. (Contrary to another myth, young string theorists are not so intimidated by their elders.)

As Smolin charts the fall of string theory, he presents further misconceptions. For example, he asserts that a certain key idea of string theory — something called Maldacena duality, the conjectured equivalence between a string theory defined on one space and a quantum field theory defined on the boundary of that space — makes no precise mathematical statements. It certainly does. These statements have been verified by a variety of methods, including computer simulations [2]. He also asserts that the evidence supports only a weak form of this conjecture, without quantum mechanics. In fact, Juan Maldacena’s theory is fully quantum mechanical [3].

A crucial principle, according to Smolin, is background independence — roughly speaking, consistency with Einstein’s insight that the shape of spacetime is dynamical — and Smolin repeatedly criticizes string theory for not having this property. Here he is mistaking an aspect of the mathematical language being used for one of the physics being described. New physical theories are often discovered using a mathematical language that is not the most suitable for them. This mismatch is not surprising, because one is trying to describe something that is different from anything in previous experience. For example, Einstein originally formulated special relativity in language that now seems clumsy, and it was mathematician Hermann Minkowski’s introduction of four-vectors and spacetime that made further progress possible.

…

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The Flying Imams

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I don’t read many conservative blogs. I enjoy some quasi-conservative libertarian-types — Marginal Revolution, Daniel Drezner, Balloon Juice, The Volokh Conspiracy. (Even if libertarian policy principles are kind of crazy, they are often smart and provocative.) But the hard-core rightosphere, places like Little Green Footballs and Powerline and Michelle Malkin, I just find creepy. (But I must point out that I’m box office at The Free Republic: see here, here, here, and here. Freepers find me fascinating.)

It’s truly a different world, and worth an occasional glance, just to be reminded that the set of “important news stories” can be entirely distinct from what I might think. For example, I’d been completely ignorant of the menace of the flying imams, the subject of literally hundreds of breathless blog posts. Not being an aficionado of modern religions myself, at first I thought they had something to do with yogic flying, but it turns out that’s something else entirely.

Flying Imams (Walking) The story is that six Muslim clerics were removed from a US Airways flight from Minnesota to Phoenix a couple of weeks ago, accused of acting suspiciously. They were led away in handcuffs before being questioned and released, while their flight left without them. US Airways refused to let them travel on a different flight the next day; they eventually flew home on other airlines.

As far as I can tell, the suspicious behavior consisted of the following:

  • Praying.
  • Speaking Arabic.
  • Saying “Allah” out loud, several times.
  • Remarking unfavorably about US policy in Iraq.
  • Sitting in seats “reminiscent of a 9/11 hijackers seating configuration.” I think that means they weren’t all sitting together — some were even in first class!
  • Requesting seat-belt extenders, even though they weren’t really all that overweight.
  • Moving about the airplane, before takeoff, to talk with each other.

That’s about it.

To me, it sounds like the US Airways flight crew overreacted a bit. The seat-belt extender business is apparently suspicious because they could potentially be used as weapons. Picture in your mind’s eye, six imams (one of whom was blind) swinging their seat-belt extenders like nunchucks, overpowering a planeload of pasty Midwesterners. The “moving around” also has a relatively prosaic explanation — one of the imams who had upgraded to first-class decided to offer his seat to his blind colleague, who declined the offer. See, if they had been cold-hearted atheists who didn’t have religion to tell them to be nice to each other, all of this could have been avoided.

But, ultimately, I don’t place too much blame on the flight crew for reacting as they did. A situation unfolding in real time is always unclear, and caution is warranted; better to inconvenience a few people than put an entire flight at risk. Although I don’t think the situation was handled well, it was an understandable overreaction, and should be something we can put behind us. Mistakes were made, sorry about that, can’t be too careful, etc.

The bloggers who jumped all over the original reports, though — they don’t think that way. They can’t think that way. It must have been a real threat, or their entire worldview is in jeopardy.

Debbie Schlussel is outraged that the imams haven’t been banned from flying on airplanes for all eternity. (For what, exactly?) Instapundit thinks that anti-Muslim sentiment is their fault. Michelle Malkin claims that one of the imams admitted supporting Osama Bin Laden! Okay, the alleged support was against the Russians in the early 1990’s, and was encouraged by the CIA at the time. But still! Pajamas Media thinks it must have been a “dry run.” Apparently, it eventually dawned on some people that praying loudly and shouting “Allah” would probably not be recommended doctrine if you actually did want to sneak onto an airplane and stage a surprise mid-air coup, so all that praying and talking in Arabic must have been part of a coordinated campaign to soften up security personnel before the next actual attack. Or something like that; I can’t keep all the theories straight.

The entire incident is reminiscent of the time in June 2004 when journalist Annie Jacobsen freaked out at the presence of a group of Middle Eastern men on a plane. Not only were the men completely harmless Syrian musicians, but it turns out that Jacobsen’s own behavior had potentially put the flight in danger, in the opinion of air marshals.

What would you do, if you were Annie Jacobsen? Realize that you had overreacted just a tad, and examine how deep-seated fears can lead to unwarranted conclusions? No, if you were Annie Jacobsen you would write a book about how we’re not nearly afraid enough of dark-skinned people on our airplanes.

We’re very proud, in this country, of our commitment to equality, liberty, and the rule of law. But a lot of Americans are living in fear right now, and are willing to sacrifice much of the freedom that makes this country what it is in order to combat that fear. How far are they willing to go? Newt Gingrich is campaigning against the First Amendment. Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to the U.S. Congress (and the guest of honor at the conference the flying imams were attending), is accused by Dennis Prager of undermining American civilization because he will take the oath of office on a Koran instead of a Bible. When radio host Jerry Klein suggested — as a spoof — that American Muslims should be forced to wear identifying tattoos or armbands, reminiscent of Nazi measures against Jews, he was disgusted to hear many audience members call in to express their full-throated support for the idea.

This fear is real, and politicians will take advantage of it, shamelessly and unapologetically. I’m not worried that the U.S. will descend into actual authoritarian rule, as these things are understood worldwide. But encroachments on liberty in the name of security can be pernicious and severe even if they come very gradually. That’s a much bigger threat to our society than terrorism will ever be.

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Economics vs. Physics Love-Off

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Who gets more love, economists or physicists? Robin Hanson stamps his foot in frustration at the lack of respect economists receive, in a nicely self-undermining blurb (via Ezra Klein):

Consider how differently the public treats physics and economics. Physicists can say that this week they think the universe has eleven dimensions, three of which are purple, and two of which are twisted clockwise, and reporters will quote them unskeptically, saying “Isn’t that cool!” But if economists say, as they have for centuries, that a minimum wage raises unemployment, reporters treat them skeptically and feel they need to find a contrary quote to “balance” their story.

As Ezra and Kevin Drum point out, this is straightforwardly wrong on the merits: economists have a huge amount of influence over actual public policy, while admiration for physicists doesn’t get you too much beyond the “Isn’t that cool!” level, and occasional appearances on late-night radio. (It’s like conservatives complaining that most university professors are liberal, while they control the government, corporations, and the military.) Atrios and Echidne also point out that the single chosen example of economic wisdom, that the minimum wage raises unemployment, is wrong. And that physicists have quite the demonstrable track record of making statements about the universe that seem counterintuitive at first glance, but turn out to be right.

In fact, I think these three sentences point to a definite failure on the part of physicists to successfully get their message across. We physicists talk about crazy things all the time — extra dimensions, black holes, quark confinement, wavefunction collapse, conservation of momentum, the Earth moving around the Sun. Things that, on their face, seem to be incompatible with our everyday experience. But we don’t just throw these ideas out there randomly; they are hypotheses that we’re driven to by the constraints put upon us by the data. Some of these ideas may turn out to be wrong, and some may be right, and we have certain well-tested procedures for sorting them out. (In the wake of Milton Friedmann’s death, folks have been re-arguing his contention that successful predictions from an economic model are more important than correct assumptions underlying it. I would hope that both are important.) Unfortunately — and to a signficant extent this is our own fault — it’s not always clear to the person on the street which ideas are speculative and which have come to be accepted, nor is it clear that we have good reasons even for the wildest speculations.

But the idea that three dimensions are purple and two are twisted clockwise — that’s intriguing. I’ll have to look into it.

Update: Robin Hanson expands on what he meant about the minimum wage.

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To the Moon, Alice!

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NASA has officially announced its plans to put a permanent base on the Moon. This is all part of the Moon, Mars and Beyond program that has sucked the life out of astrophysics research at the agency. But going to the Moon would be incredibly exciting in its own right, if it didn’t cost any money. (Nobody knows how much it actually will cost.)

The plan is to first finish building the International Space Station using the Space Shuttle. The Shuttle is scheduled to be retired once and for all in 2010 — so I gather that we won’t actually be doing much with the ISS once we finish building it. Meanwhile, NASA will be developing a new set of spacecraft, featuring the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle that will be launched on Ares rockets. The goal is for the new system to be functional by 2014, if not earlier.

Orion Crew Vehicle

And then on to the Moon — reaching there by 2020, hopefully with a continually-manned station by 2024. Not much is known about what such a base would look like, although there is some idea of putting it somewhere that the astronauts could replenish some resources through mining. The South Lunar Pole is apparently an interesting destination, perhaps near Shackleton crater.

It’s frustrating to be so lukewarm about the Great Human Adventure in Space, about which I’d much prefer to be enthusiastic. But nothing about the operation inspires confidence, much less wonder. NASA Deputy Administrator Shana Dale described the program in this tired bit of management-speak:

“This strategy will enable interested nations to leverage their capabilities and financial and technical contributions, making optimum use of globally available knowledge and resources to help energize a coordinated effort that will propel us into this new age of discovery and exploration.”

Do people really talk like that? It sounds straight out of Dilbert. Complete with numbingly bullet-pointed Powerpoint presentation!

Maybe the concerns are misplaced, and NASA will be able to aggressively pursue human exploration of space without sacrificing their unique contributions to cutting-edge astrophysics. But I’d be just as happy to let NASA concentrate on the science at which they excel, and leave the space-cowboy stuff to the X-prize folks.

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