Playing smart
There was a saying my father used to use to describe people who got themselves into trouble by trying to treat their own serious ailments - 'playing doctor.' I have many memories of a frustrated physician coming home from the office having dealt with patients who could have been treated for a fraction of the time, pain and cost had they not tried to treat themselves. This was not an issue of pride or profit - it was one of genuine concern. My father is one of the few doctors I know who gave his home phone number out to patients with the plea that they call him before trying to self-medicate - free of charge. At the time, I was a teenager who knew nothing and thought I knew everything...watching him frustratingly sigh 'don't play doctor' under his breath never struck a chord in me.
Years later, I was driving back to Oklahoma having just graduated with a degree in Aerospace Engineering from Purdue University. The drive is long and boring, and I was getting tired, so I pulled over when I saw a nice-looking older man holding his thumb out on the side of the road. He was heading to Tulsa - right along my path - so I invited him in and we began to chat. He was very passionately Christian and as soon as he found out I wasn't, he began to proselytize.
"Did you know" he asked me, "that if the Earth was one mile closer to the Sun in its orbit, it would fall into it - and if it were one mile farther away it would spin off into the darkness of space? If that's not proof there's a God, I'm not sure what is!" I questioned whether or not to correct him - after all no harm was being done by his believing this...but what's the purpose of education if it isn't spread.
"Actually, that's a very common misconception" I began. "In reality the Earth's distance from the Sun varies by over three million miles over the course of its orbit." He had a quizzical look on his face as I continued. "Two body systems are inherently stable - in reality, in order for the Earth to fall into the sun, its orbital velocity would have to be decreased so drastically that its periapsis fell to below the Sun's radius. Likewise - in order for it to 'fly off into space', it's velocity would have to be increased to above a threshold known as the 'escape velocity' which is a function only off the Sun's mass and the Earth's orbital radius."
He looked at me suspiciously before emphasizing "well a scientist friend of mine told me this - he knows what he's talking about." I found myself frustratingly sighing 'don't play rocket scientist' under my breath. I was then that I understood what my father felt.
In the age of blogs and online communities, I find the same frustrations resurfacing more often. The internet is a wonderful tool which has made the world smaller in so many ways. However, one of it's unfortunate realities is that it has changed the process by which knowledge is verified. When you had to go to the library to research something, not only did you often have to read the better part of a book to glean the answer (often ensuring you learned some of the background information) but there was a check on the information made available. In order to make it into a book, whatever was being written had to convince the publisher, who often consulted a board of experts on the subject. Clearly there were ways around this (e.g. publishers with agendas) and there were disadvantages to this system (e.g. ideas took longer to be exposed and tested by the community at large since they had to gain a certain following before being published) - but there was a clear advantage as well. Before the internet, you generally had to know something about a subject before your opinion was advertised to the world.
I'm not saying I want to go back to the way it was and I'm not suggesting any sort of a solution. I'm only pointing out one flaw in a sea of advantages - when every plumber, accountant and lawyer weighs in on the debate surrounding evolution, global warming and stem-cell research and people listen to them as often as they do biologists, geneticists and biochemists, I have to imagine somewhere in a lab, someone is whispering 'don't play biologist' under their breath.
Years later, I was driving back to Oklahoma having just graduated with a degree in Aerospace Engineering from Purdue University. The drive is long and boring, and I was getting tired, so I pulled over when I saw a nice-looking older man holding his thumb out on the side of the road. He was heading to Tulsa - right along my path - so I invited him in and we began to chat. He was very passionately Christian and as soon as he found out I wasn't, he began to proselytize.
"Did you know" he asked me, "that if the Earth was one mile closer to the Sun in its orbit, it would fall into it - and if it were one mile farther away it would spin off into the darkness of space? If that's not proof there's a God, I'm not sure what is!" I questioned whether or not to correct him - after all no harm was being done by his believing this...but what's the purpose of education if it isn't spread.
"Actually, that's a very common misconception" I began. "In reality the Earth's distance from the Sun varies by over three million miles over the course of its orbit." He had a quizzical look on his face as I continued. "Two body systems are inherently stable - in reality, in order for the Earth to fall into the sun, its orbital velocity would have to be decreased so drastically that its periapsis fell to below the Sun's radius. Likewise - in order for it to 'fly off into space', it's velocity would have to be increased to above a threshold known as the 'escape velocity' which is a function only off the Sun's mass and the Earth's orbital radius."
He looked at me suspiciously before emphasizing "well a scientist friend of mine told me this - he knows what he's talking about." I found myself frustratingly sighing 'don't play rocket scientist' under my breath. I was then that I understood what my father felt.
In the age of blogs and online communities, I find the same frustrations resurfacing more often. The internet is a wonderful tool which has made the world smaller in so many ways. However, one of it's unfortunate realities is that it has changed the process by which knowledge is verified. When you had to go to the library to research something, not only did you often have to read the better part of a book to glean the answer (often ensuring you learned some of the background information) but there was a check on the information made available. In order to make it into a book, whatever was being written had to convince the publisher, who often consulted a board of experts on the subject. Clearly there were ways around this (e.g. publishers with agendas) and there were disadvantages to this system (e.g. ideas took longer to be exposed and tested by the community at large since they had to gain a certain following before being published) - but there was a clear advantage as well. Before the internet, you generally had to know something about a subject before your opinion was advertised to the world.
I'm not saying I want to go back to the way it was and I'm not suggesting any sort of a solution. I'm only pointing out one flaw in a sea of advantages - when every plumber, accountant and lawyer weighs in on the debate surrounding evolution, global warming and stem-cell research and people listen to them as often as they do biologists, geneticists and biochemists, I have to imagine somewhere in a lab, someone is whispering 'don't play biologist' under their breath.
posted by Nicholas at 4:18 PM
10 Comments:
Hi Nicholas - You are right - Al Gore really should be quiet. But it was nice of you not to mention him by name.
I finally switched to a blog reader but it won't pick up your site because it doesn't have an RSS feed. You probably knew that but I wanted to pass it along.
Hi Neil,
It is nice of you to assume I would know more about blogging - truth is, I don't even know what an RSS feed is! :-)
So is your beef with Al Gore, with the scientists for whom he speaks, or with the conclusions to which they have come?
Sorry for the confusion! I didn't mean to imply I was an RSS expert. I thought I was the last one to get on this bandwagon. Seriously, all I know is that you can use something called a "reader" that treats blog posts sort of like emails - instead of you going to the blogs, the blogs come to you. Here's a sample reader - http://www.google.com/reader/view/.
You just click "add subscription" and paste in a URL. Then when the blogs are updated it will tell you. It saves you from going back to the blogs to see if they have been updated. There are other features as well, but those are the basics.
Some blogs have "RSS Feed" buttons. It stands for Really Simple Syndication or something like that, and it somehow lets the readers pick up the posts from the blog. I pasted in your URL but it didn't take. No big deal. I just get here the old fashioned way.
My concerns with Gore's agenda are legion, covering all your examples. The 20x overstatements of estimates of rising oceans, the way it is being pushed on kids and even college students, the way the media is lapping it up uncritically, his gross hypocrisy etc. I am way less of a burden to the environment than he is, yet he has the nerve to preach to us all. Reminds me of Gov. Arnold, who is pushing the green agenda yet still owns 4 Hummers (but gee, two have been retrofitted to be more environmentally friendly - I feel better now!)
But I only mentioned Gore as a tongue in cheek response to your post. I assumed you weren't thinking of Gore, but I just thought it fit nicely.
P.S. If you will be at the recital Saturday please join us for lunch. I think we're going to the Katy Mills mall during the break(the same restaurant as last year - was it the Rain Forest Cafe'?) It would be good to catch up.
I see. To be honest, I don't know enough about global warming to comment...I think we can both agree that if everyone who wasn't qualified to draw conclusions held their tongues similarly, there would be less noise in the world :-)
I won't be at the performance on Sunday - but we will have to do coffee sometime this summer. Have a good one!
Your friend,
Nicholas
I don't know, Nick. I think that you needed to be just as careful with traditional books. After all, the publisher is mainly concerned with what will sell. Sure, you could make some judgements based on the reputation of the publisher, but that's not really any different than how you have to sift through the information on the internet.
In fact I would argue that the added awareness of needing to research the source on the internet may produce better research. Of course, there are always people that will believe everything they read, as long as it agrees with their preconceptions. :)
Good point Jen - I suppose it would be more accurate to say that the internet makes it easier for those who go looking for a specific opinion to find it.
The Internet has its pros and cons. I'm not a Wal-Mart basher, but hypothetically, how do I know that they (or any other group, for that matter) don't pay people to constantly update their Wikipedia entry?
On the plus side, it does give you many more outlets to choose from so you can rely on those that prove trustworthy over time.
Neil,
I feel that we are good enough friends for me to ask my own tongue-in-cheek question :-)
I admit I don't regularly read your blog, but I had a look through it tonight and I notice a multitude of entries supporting the claim that global warming is NOT caused by human activities and none supporting the claim that it is.
The scientific community is split on this issue (albeit not at ALL evenly), so I am wondering how you decided, with none of the background education necessary to understand the intricacies of the problem, that one side was right and the other was wrong?
This is honestly not an effort to embarrass - just to keep the conversation interesting :-)
Your friend,
Nicholas
Hi Nicholas,
No offense taken - that's a fair question. Anyone can go to my blog (http://4simpsons.wordpress.com/) and type in "global warming" into the search box and see what I have written or linked to. Please double check it. I don't think I ever claimed what you said.
I have pointed to some other views and experts as well as inconsistencies in the reporting and data of those with the microphones, but I never denied that there was some degree of global warming or that man MIGHT have something to do with it.
Here's a sample: "So the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change revised its expectations from their 2001 prediction of a 20-30 foot rise in sea levels all the way down to 17 inches. So they were off by at least 1400% in just six years. We can surely trust the latest figure and radically change our economy, regardless of the consequences, right? Sadly, the Left is using these distortions to frighten children and dramatically influence government policies and spending. But remember, you are as bad as a Holocaust denier if you don’t agree with them!"
I didn't deny there was any warming. I didn't deny the possibility that man MIGHT have caused some of the warming. But I do know how to read. You don't have to be a scientist to notice that within 6 years this group changed their estimates from a 20-30' rise in sea levels down to 17".
And you don't have to be a scientist to mock those who say I'm worse than a holocaust denier to even question the cause and possible cures for global warming.
I also don't think you have to be a scientist to realize that if Mars is also warming, as National Geographic news reported (I figure they are apolitical at worst), then maybe that pesky sun is part of the problem.
You also don't have to be a scientist to recognize gross hypocrisy (Al's carbon-offset credits, Arnold's Hummers, etc.) when you see it.
Back to your original post - the man may have been inelegant in explaining his point, but he was right in his broader point that the universe is spectacularly fine-tuned.
Should we exercise some humility inside and outside of our areas of expertise? Sure. But that doesn't mean there aren't some common sense questions to ask about the whole process or what the logical consequences of certain actions will be.
I agree with Jen's earlier point about books not necessarily being ultimately reliable as the authority on a given issue. I have some old 1960's astronomy textbooks that I imagine would give you a good laugh. The point does remain, however, that books must go through a far higher number of gatekeepers before being disseminated to the general public.
Regarding Gore, I, too, do not know enough about global warming to intelligently discuss the finer details. However, I do appreciate that people like Gore and Schwarzenegger are speaking out on these issues, assisting in bringing them to the public's attention. I do not think scare tactics are the best route, but I would prefer my children (who will perhaps be fed these potentially inflated statistics someday) to error on the side of caution in environmental policy than that of obliviousness. The fact of the matter is that technology has undergone a telescoping process of sorts. The speed at which new technologies are developed and implemented is accelerating at such a high rate that I think it safe to say that we do not yet know how human activity will affect the environment. I do not expect people to buy into the green agenda in its entirety, but I would appreciate people spending less time adamantly denying claims that human activity is possibly damaging our planet and its climate than considering the possibility that we have some cause for serious concern. Greenhouse gases and aerosols have indeed changed the composition of our atmosphere. While there may not currently be conclusive evidence that this is changing our climate (although this can certainly be argued), is it reasonable to be sure that it couldn't?
That being said, it is not surprising that the findings regarding sea level changes are not consistent...or even necessarily conclusive. However, if a 2 degree temperature change can affect the climate through an increase in storms and violent weather (whether this be the result of human activity or not), is it not reasonable that even a 17" rise in sea levels may have a significant impact as well? (Think of 17" across global coatlines!)
Again, I am no expert on global warming, but it only seems common sense to at least consider the possibility that we are indeed impacting our planet in potentially destructive ways. Given that environmental changes and their causes are measurable (and that we will eventually be able to prove or disprove the theories of global warming), I suppose I have far more patience for environmental doomsayers than, say, those of a religious nature. (I am thinking of other politicians with agendas aside from the environment.) In the end, I suppose that we have many things in our world to fear...
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