Thanks, Global Warming?

Here's a very cogent lecture from Dan Britt:


In it, he points out a few interesting things (actually, the whole lecture is interesting), including:

• There's nothing "normal" about today's global climate. The Earth is usually much warmer than it is today. Today we occupy a relatively warm period in an Ice Age. Glaciation is a relatively rare event on geological timescales.
• The big climate factors on a geological scale are the eccentricity of the Earth's orbit, the Earth's axial tilt, and the precession (wobble) of the poles. (the Milankovitch Cycles). Simplistically put, the major climate drivers are whether the pole is pointed at or away from the Sun when the Earth is closest to or farthest from the Sun. Other factors are basically "noise" within these trends.
• Anthropogenic warming is certainly a real thing. Were it not for anthropogenic warming over the last 8,000 years, we would be well on our way to the next Ice Age.

I recommend you watch. However, Britt does ask a question that doesn't pop into my mind at all. He asks, "Do you like the coastlines where they are?" He asks it after having recently explained that where they are is highly unusual in Earth's history. That being the case, I would never expect them to stay there.

Given the Milankovitch cycles, we would be well on our way to another glacial Ice Age were not for anthropogenic global warming. We've experienced a cooling trend over 6,000 years, and we could expect it to continue for another 23,000 years. This begs the question of whether this major factor (orbital cycles) would not level off the carbon cycle (previously characterized as "noise"). And some models do predict that we would avoid an Ice Age entirely thanks to anthropogenic global warming.

On the scales we're talking about, whether human or geological, the coastlines have never been stable. It may be quixotic hubris to try to make something stable that has never been so in the history of History. So the question that does pop into my mind is, "Would I rather see Chicago buried under a half mile of glacial ice?" Because, frankly, it might be a clearly better long-term strategy for those on the coast to rent some U-Hauls knowing that they've got someplace warm to move to.

It's never as simplistic as "OMG! Things are going to change!" Things are going to change. But if you're pushing for zero-carbon emissions, they might not be likely to change in a way that makes you comfortable in the long term. Obviously, some more thought is called for.

Revisiting Atlantis

I've recently stumbled across a video called "Visiting Atlantis", by George S. Alexander and Natalis Rosen ("A&R"). The pair advance the hypothesis that the Richat structure (aka "the Eye of Africa", alternately referred to herein as "RS") is the original site of the fabled city of Atlantis.

Actually, this has a lot of merit. And the video does ask the single best question a historian can tackle: "What does this mean for our understanding of ancient civilizations?" That's really the question that I'd like to explore today. In doing so, I'm going to approach this as if  Solon's account of Atlantis given to us via Plato is an accurate retelling. That doesn't mean it definitively is; but we're going to assume it is.

There are two reasons for doing so. First; unless you do, the conversation's over. Second; we don't really have any reason not to. In other places, where Plato uses a parable he simply tells you that. Here, he's claiming to pass on reputable information. He names his source (Solon). He tells you where Solon got that information (Sais, in Egypt). And though Sais is destroyed, at the time of Plato's writing it wasn't. So Plato, at the very least, believed what he wrote.

But, aside from some technical difficulties, there is a methodological problem with Plato's account, and it's a problem that's repeated in modern times by most researchers, including A&R in this documentary. Before I explore that, let's look at the "good stuff". I will neither be complete nor comprehensive here, as I don't have that kind of space or time. But I think I'll hit the important points.

Geography:

Mauritania, showing the location of the Richat Structure.
From Google Maps

The Richat Structure in satellite imagery

The best explanation for the Richat Structure is that it is a collapsed, eroded dome of rock, caused by volcanism. In any event, it is a natural phenomenon. This shouldn't deter anyone from considering it as a site, as almost all cities are built on natural features. This one is singularly striking.

Plato describes Atlantis in two books: Critias and Timaeus. He claims to have gotten the information from Solon, a distinguished ancestor of his, by means of writings left by Solon. He further claims that Solon got his information from a temple in Sais, where there was a model of Atlantis. The wonderful thing about models and physical artifacts is that they pretty much provide their own description. 

Atlantis as described by Plato in Critias

The RS resembles the description of Atlantis in some very specific ways. Most of the geographic details are spot-on, save one, of which I'll have more to say. The archaeological details... mmmm... we'll have to talk about those.

1. Atlantis was located beyond the Pillars of Hercules (Gibraltar). So is the RS.
2. Atlantis is sheltered by mountains to the north, and is open to the south in the direction of the sea. So is the RS.
3. Atlantis is about 23 kilometers across. So is the RS.
4. Atlantis is arranged as a central island and concentric rings; two of land, three of water. So would the RS, if there were water.
5. Black, white, and red stones were prevalent in Atlantis. So too at the RS. Well, red and black. The 'white' ones are a judgement call. Let's call grey 'white' and give credit.
6. There were two springs or wells on the center island, one warm, one cool, which provided fresh water. There is a fresh water well near the center of the RS that provides fresh water, though shallow wells in the surrounding area yield salt water. Other than at the center of the RS you have to dig very deeply to reach fresh water.
7. The Atlanteans mined copper, tin, and gold. These are still mined in Mauritania today... but they're also mined in a lot of other places.
8. The date given for Atlantis (10,000 years before Plato's time) coincides with the last African Humid Period. The RS preserves clear evidence of ancient rivers and extensive water erosion.

These are all discussed in the video.

The last geological feature is the elephant in the room: proximity to the sea. Of course, there isn't. In the video, A&R postulate that the ocean levels were some 300 feet higher than at the present, but that's quite a stretch. While there are shells found inland, the age of those shells aren't clear. Shells are basically calcium carbonate: a kind of rock. As such, they don't really need to be fossilized to be preserved. And in my own experience, while digging in the neighborhood of my parent's house in Columbia, South Carolina, I routinely dug up a multitude of seashells, though the ocean hadn't been anywhere near that area since the Mesozoic era. Dinosaurs used the beach formerly located at my parents' house. It's somewhat frustrating that A&R didn't provide the location of some of the features (the shells; a beached ship) that they depicted in the video.

Before I say another word, I'm going to take A&R to task on a point. In the video, they display the following image as they're describing how they encountered "boats beached miles from the water":

Dunedin Star, in Namibia

If they encountered this ship, they took the long way 'round.  The ship is the MV Dunedin Star, which ran aground on Namibia's Skeleton Coast, in the south of Africa, thousands of miles away, but certainly not "miles from the water". Here's CNN's image:

CNN published this image, with proper attestation

This video is full of stuff like that. Images just grabbed from wherever and stuffed into the narrative, as if they were illustrative. In a documentary this is unconscionable. If you were there with cameras and you encountered boats, then you show the boats you saw. You don't grab a stock image from the Web and use that instead. It undermines your credibility and becomes evidence against your position.

In any event, a beached modern ship on one coast does not count as evidence of a shoreline miles inland and 300 feet higher 12,000 years ago on a completely different coast. That shoreline may have been there then, but it may have been a million years ago, or 65 million years ago. It's up to you to put the event at the right time.

Vertical movement of Earth's landmasses
via Wikipedia

Estimating coastlines becomes a tricky scenario when we remember that ocean levels aren't necessarily reflected in the coastlines. Focusing on "sea levels" doesn't always cut it. For example, when a glacier melts, you might expect far more coastal flooding than you could actually get in the local area. Isostatic rebound occurs when the weight of all that water is removed from a landmass. It's due to the plasticity of the Earth, having a molten core and mantle. Water levels rise, but so does the continent itself.  So it's possible for the coastal effects to be felt much more greatly in areas that are nowhere near the site of the glacier. While isostatic rebound is commonly called "post-glacial rebound", let's remember that glaciers are water. We might ask whether the same thing could have occured in north Africa as the Sahara dried out; and if not, why not? In any event, the A&R hypothesis would require that the portion of the north African landmass on which Mauritania sits was far lower 12,000 years ago than it is today. That alone probably wouldn't be enough, unless it were also affected by other events associated with the Younger Dryas. For this hypothesis to hold, the coastline of Mauritania would have had to reach nearly to the town of Atar at the foot of the Adrar Plateau. 

But there's another possibility. Perhaps Plato, Solon, or the Egyptians just got it wrong, and "direction of the sea", didn't necessarily indicate "proximity to the sea".

Archaeology:

Here's where things start to fall down. There are other features which do not match Plato's description at all. These descriptions, given in Critias, are not mentioned in the video.

1. "First of all they bridged over the zones of sea which surrounded the ancient metropolis, making a road to and from the royal palace." There are no indications of any bridgework whatsoever at the RS.
2. "And beginning from the sea they bored a canal of three hundred feet in width and one hundred feet in depth and fifty stadia in length, which they carried through to the outermost zone, making a passage from the sea up to this, which became a harbour, and leaving an opening sufficient to enable the largest vessels to find ingress.". There is no indication of boring on this or any other scale at the RS.
3. "Moreover, they divided at the bridges the zones of land which parted the zones of sea, leaving room for a single trireme to pass out of one zone into another, and they covered over the channels so as to leave a way underneath for the ships; for the banks were raised considerably above the water." Again, there are no indications of any of this at the RS.
4. "All this including the zones and the bridge, which was the sixth part of a stadium in width, they surrounded by a stone wall on every side, placing towers and gates on the bridges where the sea passed in. The stone which was used in the work they quarried from underneath the centre island, and from underneath the zones, on the outer as well as the inner side." There is no indication of any of this at the RS.
5. "Some of their buildings were simple, but in others they put together different stones, varying the colour to please the eye, and to be a natural source of delight." -- there are a very few indications of buildings (UPDATE: here, here, and here (thanks Bright Insight)) but no indication of age, and nothing matching Plato's description. 
6.  "The entire circuit of the wall, which went round the outermost zone, they covered with a coating of brass, and the circuit of the next wall they coated with tin, and the third, which encompassed the citadel, flashed with the red light of orichalcum". There is no indication of this at the RS. 
7. Plato goes on to describe numerous temples, often clad or surrounded in gold, of which not the slightest sign is indicated at the RS.

A&R describe more recent buildings of a primitive nature, built of stone, but chinked with mud rather than mortar, and hypothesize that the cataclysm would have destroyed all traces. I find this less than compelling. Archaeologists find foundations on the weakest of evidence. And here we're not talking about "a house", but "a city". Presumably we should find streets, earthworks, etc. Any long civic habitation should have signs of refuse. But we really have nothing permanent here that we can date to the period in question.

The region is littered with stone tools of a sort that we would expect to find from a stone age culture. We actually find many tools of many different epochs mixed together, and they weren't washed away. Rather, what we see is consistent with what is called "deflation" in archaeology. This is when sand and dust is blown away by persistent winds, leaving the heavier artifacts co-mingled on a harder surface. Rather than seeing the sort of stratification, or layers, that we normally use to date artifacts, the strata have been "deflated", leaving everything jumbled together. That's what happens in north Africa, where many tons of dust are blown into the Atlantic every year. You can see evidence of the scale of this in the satellite photos. But at the RS, we don't see evidence of middens (kitchen waste dumps), building foundations (on the required scale), or any of the mega-engineering projects described by Plato. They just don't exist. And of the many artifacts that have been found, none of them attest to a highly advanced civilization.

In short, I would say that the geography is compelling, but the archaeology is not.


A Crisis of Expectations:

So what does this mean for our understanding of ancient civilizations?

Every avid researcher of Atlantis is looking for an "advanced civilization", however it is they choose to define that term. A&R do the same. They mention alleged Dogon ancient knowledge of the star Sirius (something I take to have been debunked). They depict Atlantis as Plato described it, covered in gleaming metals with bridges and geometrically perfect water channels plied by trireme ships. They depict marble columned temples and colossal statuary dedicated to Poseidon. They show bridges supported by Roman arches.

None of that could be remotely correct.

Remember, Plato relates that Egypt began as a colony of Atlantis. And quite frankly, this might actually be true. The Sahara, as it moistened and dried over the millenia, acted as a sort of "pump" that drove the migrations of humankind, as well as our hominid ancestors. It's not at all incredible that Egyptians were the last migrants out of the Sahara at the end of the last African humid period. It's not at all incredible that they brought stories of a place that geographically resembles Atlantis; after all, such a place exists, and in a place where legend tells us Atlas reigned as its first king.

But we do know something about ancient Egyptians. We know of their building styles, for example. We know about the kinds of boats they built of papyrus reed. We know that the same kinds of boats are found halfway across Africa, in Lake Chad. So we need not look for Hellenistic architecture and Roman arches as today's artists fancifully depict. Such visualization are in no way credible. Nor need we look for any evidence of "Poseidon" as such. As Plato himself began his story,

"Yet, before proceeding further in the narrative, I ought to warn you, that you must not be surprised if you should perhaps hear Hellenic names given to foreigners. I will tell you the reason of this: Solon, who was intending to use the tale for his poem, enquired into the meaning of the names, and found that the early Egyptians in writing them down had translated them into their own language, and he recovered the meaning of the several names and when copying them out again translated them into our language. My great-grandfather, Dropides, had the original writing, which is still in my possession, and was carefully studied by me when I was a child. Therefore if you hear names such as are used in this country, you must not be surprised, for I have told how they came to be introduced."

-- Plato, Critias.

We can reasonably suppose that not only names were translations of translations. So were cultural descriptions. Each recipient of this story has translated the idea of "advanced civilization" into his own concept of what it means to be "advanced". Some people today fantasize that it must surely have included exotic lost technologies that we ourselves are only now beginning to envision. However...

About 12,000 years ago, at the alleged time of Atlantis, agriculture was just beginning to take root (pun intended) in Mesopotamia. At that time, a non-nomadic, sedentary colony was enough to count as being "advanced". If you built a structure at all, even if it be of unshaped stone chinked with mud, having no foundation, it was enough to count as a "palace". If you piled rocks into an altar, even if it be roofless under the stars, that was enough to count as a "temple". If you built a boat that could get you across the water, even if it be made of lashed reeds or animal hide, you had constructed a "ship". If you built a fortification of dirt and timber, you had built a "castle".

But if you wait a time and then tell someone these stories, they will imagine palaces, temples, castles, ships, and harbors in the shape of their own experience. They will add in details of the life not very different from their own. Innovation moved slowly in the ancient world, and the inhabitants didn't really imagine how greatly things could change. When they themselves pass on the inflated stories, they're not lying per se, and they're not including anything of their own invention. Rather, it's their lack of imagination that causes them to include only those descriptions of which they themselves are familiar. They depict "great" in terms they recognize as "greatness". Surely a "great civilization" couldn't be a village, or a tribe! But yes, it could, just as a "king" in ancient but historical times might rule over a single city.

A visualization filled with anachronisms.

A&R fall into this trap as well. They not only mix Egyptian and Roman culture into their visuals, but Babylonian and even modern as well. From their video:

Not. Even. Close. This is Greek, top to bottom.

According to the video, "Folk art depictions of the Nommos show creatures
with humanoid torsos and fishlike tails". This is shown during that narration.
The problem is, this is the Babylonian deity Dagon.
Nommo were not 'a' god like Poseidon, but is a collective noun for a
group of beings,  perhaps inspired by West African manatees.

Let me state though, that visuals aside, this isn't one of my usual debunkings. Alexander & Rosen are by all indications reasonable people who follow the evidence as it is presented to them (even though the evidence they present is suspect). I am probably more skeptical of some evidence than they are, but they do take time to at the very least mention where controversies exist, or where some evidence is problematic. Taking more time on the archaeology would have been nice, but it's their video, not mine.

Conclusion: 

Have we found Atlantis? Honestly, I think we probably have. But there are no secrets here. No advanced technologies, no lost knowledge. Unless, that is, you count the knowledge that a "golden age" is golden in hindsight, and that an ancient people might be rightly proud of what they accomplished, even if to our eyes it's not terribly noteworthy once the embellishments have been stripped away. But it's not really our eyes that matter, is it? It's theirs.

The story of Atlantis has been continually embellished over the centuries. But embellishments serve a distinct and valuable purpose. They tell us what these meager accomplishments meant to those who actually performed them. Think of what "advanced" means to you. Whatever it is, that's what stone tools and a few stone and mud houses meant to inhabitants of West Africa 12,000 years ago. Their vision was greater than their power, but so too was that of the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and ourselves. This is likely to be true of all civilizations for the remainder of history, no matter how powerful they become. So show some respect.

Pin marks the spot.

UPDATE

Another commentator, on the Bright Insight channel on YouTube, sets great store on the fact that the Richat Structure is thought to be a volcanic dome, noting that volcanism can cause landmasses to rise. However, this completely ignores the timeframe. The RS was formed in the neighborhood of 100 million years ago, ± a few million years. This is far too long ago to account for any uplifting of the northwestern coast of Africa. Bright Insight seems to have been led astray by mention of the multiple intrusions and collapses that formed the structure, concluding that this explains the sinking of Atlantis. Sadly, no. This explains the geology of the structure, which existed prior to the alleged sinking. The mantle of the Earth is significant not because it just generally causes land to rise, but because its plasticity means the Earth can in fact regain shape after deformation, as we saw when discussing isostatic rebound.

Bright Insight also brings up the subject of non-fossilized whale skeletons found in "the deserts of Mauritania, and shows a website. Well, I visited that site. The page author was kind enough to have listed the exact latitude and longitude of the photo. (Latitude: 19°56'40.66", Longitude: -16°15'42.57"). Punching these numbers into Google Maps shows us exactly where the find was: Here.

Site of "ancient whale skeletons" "in the desert"

Yes. It's within a stone's throw of the beach, just as is the MV Dunedin Star on a Namibian beach, pictured earlier. What you don't get told is that African deserts go right up to the coastline. 

A reconstruction of Herodotus' map of the world

One other piece of evidence is the Herodotus map of the known (to him) world. I thought it was pretty common knowledge. Only four of Bright Insight's commenters mentioned it, but I think that sample's both weak and self-selecting. Looking outside of that channel there are gobs of references. And no: I don't think that the Nile ever ran east-west across the Sahara. The map attributed to Herodotus is a reconstruction. We have no evidence that he ever actually created a map, though he did discuss them. In that discussion, he reveals the limits of his understanding, which you can read about in this PDF. Also note that in these reconstructions, the map doesn't actually say "Atlantis". Rather, it is "Atlantes"; that is, "Atlanteans". It's not exactly a nit-picky point. Here's what Herodotus actually wrote (emphasis mine):

"...Near this salt hill is a mountain named Atlas, which is small in circuit and rounded on every side; and so exceedingly lofty is it said to be, that it is not possible to see its summits, for clouds never leave them either in the summer or in the winter. This the natives say is the pillar of the heaven. After this mountain these men got their name, for they are called Atlantians; and it is said that they neither eat anything that has life nor have any dreams." -- The History Of Herodotus Volume 1 (of 2) Translator: G. C. Macaulay

In other words, Herodotus' description has precious little to do with the lost city of Atlantis. It's an accident of linguistics, and getting too excited about it is analogous to wondering whether "martial law" is imposed by Martians.

Bright Insight is a personable enough fellow, and he has a lot of enthusiasm. I think he's letting that enthusiasm run away with him a bit. It's necessary to follow the evidence. All of it, not just confirmational evidence. Especially when it comes to subjects like this, you have to consider the source of the evidence; not just taking it at face value, but actually going to the source and seeing for yourself, to the extent possible. As I state above, I too think that the Richat Structure may have been the site described as 'Atlantis'. However, I think that a lot of our ancient sources are simply wrong on some important details, the reasons for which I give. At the earliest, our sources are 10,000 years more recent than Atlantis, after all. Then again, I'm of that age where the more excited someone is when making a 'find', the more motivated I am to invite them to ponder what exactly it is they found.

No they didn't (part 1)

As today's unfortunate headline, I present, from Phys.org,

Study finds scientific reproducibility does not equate to scientific truth

I call this an unfortunate headline because it's usual with such statements that they don't accurately represent what was actually found.

The referenced study consisted of modeling various scientific communities with a variety of research strategies to discover a modeled "scientific truth"... in this case, the shape of a target polygon. Keep in mind that these were not actual scientific communities, but computer models. As with all such models, certain assumptions are made and biases can be introduced by the programmers. Such models may, but do not necessarily, accurately reflect reality. As is the way with models, the model is extremely simplified. Reality is more variable, and this can muddy the water.

For my part, a statement to be closely considered is the following:

"We found that, within the model, some research strategies that lead to reproducible results could actually slow down the scientific process, meaning reproducibility may not always be the best—or at least the only—indicator of good science," said Erkan Buzbas, U of I assistant professor in the College of Science, Department of Statistical Science and a co-author on the paper. "Insisting on reproducibility as the only criterion might have undesirable consequences for scientific progress."

Notice that what Buzbas says here does not support the headline... not by a long shot.  Buzbas isn't complaining about the insistence on reproducibility: rather, he's opining on the insistence on reproducibility alone... which in practice, nobody does.

We all know from numerous historical examples that scientific discoveries can be made by accident. The discoveries of X-rays and penicillin are two such examples. A careful reading of the above statement reveals nothing more or less.  If you are not rigorous in your method, then you might discover something new more quickly than otherwise. And indeed, the application of rigorous method may slow progress.

However, this says nothing about the value of reproducibility. "Innovative" (let's face it: sloppy) method might get you the correct answer by accident, but it doesn't prove a damned thing. The problem is that with irreproducible experiments, you can't show a definitive cause for the observation you witnessed. Any number of uncontrolled environmental or experimental factors might be the cause. This can skew the researchers' hypotheses and lead to the wrong explanations for observed effects. So long as the research is irreproducible, it has dubious explanatory value and no practical applications. Obviously, you can't reliably use a principle that you can't reliably reproduce. That part of science... the part that leads to engineering... is just common sense.

On the other hand, if you can control and reliably bring into existence an effect based on manipulation of predictable and consistent factors, then you are far more likely to have discovered the truth than if you were to have stumbled across an effect that no one else can observe or make happen.

Far from the implied message of this Phys.org article, "innovative experiments" do not supplant the value of rigorous, controlled experiments. Every accidental discovery must be followed by rigor if you want to claim that what you discovered is most likely the Truth. And if you cannot reproduce your results, you don't get to shelter under the Umbrella of Laziness and whine that your progress is being impeded.  Oh yes, Mr. Innovator, your discovery of Cold Fusion (or whatever) could change the world... but if and only if you can make it happen on demand.

The history of serendipitous discoveries alone tells us that it is not, nor has it ever been, innovation that is criticized when scientists talk about the replication crisis. Rather, it's the hyping and premature conclusions that are drawn when innovative experiments are not followed up with sound method.

If you truly "fucking love science", avoid

Spirituality in Science

The chances are, if you're a human being, when you say the word spirituality you mean something completely different from what I mean when I say it... even after we've consulted a dictionary.

Though I consider myself to be religious, when I use words like spirit or soul or consciousness in a metaphysical sense (collectively, mind-body duality), I do so with full acknowledgement that I have no idea whatsoever what those words really mean. And the more I talk with people who think they know what these words mean, the more I'm convinced that they have no idea either. And yet they're all over the place.

When the words are used, they typically describe some incorporeal, non-physical beingness. We suppose that this beingness exists apart from the body, and is yet tied to the body. And though we have perfectly good meat-computers in our heads, it is this beingness that we imagine controls our actions and thoughts, through some undefined manipulation of these meat-computers (brains).

None of this explains what a soul is, or how it interacts with a brain, or why we suppose it to be indestructible. It doesn't explain why we imagine it to be something we can give away -- or that some devil can collect -- while continuing to go about our lives. And given the fact that our thoughts and memories can be affected by chemicals, or physical trauma, or surgery, or genetics or disease; it doesn't explain why we suppose it to live on after our deaths to face punishment or reward or recycling or merging with some grander consciousness, depending on your religion. It doesn't explain why the concept of mind-body duality is accepted without question by people who believe themselves to be atheists, yet write fiction involving body-swapping and possession and mind-reading at a distance and astral projection and transcendental evolution. I don't think even the Pope could adequately explain it without saying it's a matter of faith. And honestly, I think that's a pretty good answer.

It's generally agreed that this is not a scientific concept. That doesn't mean it can't be true; but it means that we've agreed (most of us, anyway) that there's no way of testing it scientifically. And for the following discussion, I'm going to put my scientist hat on.

Basically, if you took all of the verified scientific evidence of the existence of mind-body duality, wrote it all out on 20# paper stock, and put it on a scale, it would weigh nothing whatsoever. Empty scale. On the other hand, you could fill a library with the "factual" statements of conviction that have been written on the subject. (Don't get excited. The same thing's true of much of theoretical physics.)

Here's an example: Supernatural Magazine. I've linked you to an article on consciousness and parallel universes. Notice all of the declarative statements. Nary a doubt. Notice all the scientific jargon, like "vibrational rates", which mean absolutely nothing outside of this word salad. Notice phrases like "Science says," when Science does no such thing. Some scientists may say something to the effect, but you have to be very careful to understand the context of any theoretical discussion among scientists. That is, the scientists all know and understand the discussion to be theoretical. In other words, every word of every discussion is understood to be descriptive of models built from hypotheses and suppositions accepted for the purpose of discourse to then ask the question, "What if? If all of these things we're talking about were true, then what would we expect to see?" And then they go off to experiment and measure and observe and tell you whether they see those expected things. And if they don't, then they dream up something new. And though for the sake of their human egos and funding and pride, most theoreticians like us to assign a little more gravitas to their gravity; at it's core, that's what science is. The folks at Supernatural Magazine don't seem to understand that. Instead, they take these models as solid fact and present them as such. The end result is a meaningless, garbled mess. They confuse parallel universes with multiple dimensions and get basically everything wrong.

Sometimes scientists themselves get tied up in knots in a similar fashion over this subject as well as similar nebulous terms such as free will. I don't think it's a spoiler to reveal that we really have no idea what free will is, or how we would recognize it if we saw it. I think it's fair to say that as far as we know, the Universe is deterministic, even if it is unpredictable at the scales of the very small. (I think probability more accurately describes the state of our knowledge than the state of the event. Thought experiment: flip a coin and call it in the air. What is the chance that it lands heads-up? 50%? Now flip the same coin, catch it in the air and cover it. What is the chance now? Now flip it, catch it, cover it, and peek. Then ask someone else to tell you the odds. Do the two of you agree?) How is it possible to have free will in a deterministic universe? For that we need to know what free will is, and that's tied in with consciousness, and we don't even know what consciousness is. That's just being honest.

I think it's highly unlikely that we could ever actually solve problems like this about the physical universe. We cannot prove the self-consistency of a system from within the system itself (Gödel's incompleteness theorems). And sadly, we are intrinsically part of the Universe we're trying to explain, and we're using the brains that we're trying to explain. So I think that "we don't know" is a very rational response to our questions about the most fundamental nature of reality and of ourselves.

--==//oOo\\==--

That doesn't stop people from trying, of course. I recently came across a 2014 article in ScienceDirect by Stuart Hameroff and Roger Penrose entitled, "Consciousness in the universe: A review of the ‘Orch OR’ theory". "Orch OR" stands for "orchestrated objective reduction". I'm not going into a detailed summary, as the article is exactly that, and you can read the article and commentary yourself. And as you do, note the inherent differences between this article and the previously-linked one from Supernatural Magazine. In ScienceDirect, phrases like "we may speculate" and "we believe" abound. In criticizing the article, I make no comment on the discussion of neurochemistry. I'll take their word for it as I don't study that. But I do have some issues with their logic.

Of course, Orch OR invokes quantum events as an outside causal agency for the action of free will. Hameroff and Penrose conclude that "consciousness plays an intrinsic role in the universe." The problem I have with it is that with all of the mental gymnastics employed in the article, there's no way that the premises or the arguments definitively support the conclusion.

Let's strip it down. At the start of the article they declare: "what consciousness actually is remains unknown". Well, that much is true. And in their conclusion they state, "Such OR events would have to be ‘orchestrated’ in an appropriate way (Orch OR), for genuine consciousness to arise." See the problem? They don't know what "genuine consciousness" is. They therefore have no basis for stating its required conditions.

Yes, they do lay out some conditions that they may believe are descriptive of consciousness. But these are self-admittedly subjective. That we feel as if we have free will does not mean that free will is a property of "genuine consciousness". Should we encounter a provably deterministic consciousness that reports that it feels as if it has free will, it would meet the conditions at least as well as we do. Typically, some form of randomization is usually invoked in discussions of free will, but it doesn't follow that a randomized system is non-deterministic; merely that the trigger for the action is unknown. And once triggered, the system itself is still deterministic. "Free will" of itself does not even imply randomization... quite the opposite. "Free will" implies deliberation and volition, not random action. And if a wave-function requires consciousness to collapse, and consciousness has free will, why can't Schrödinger simply will his cat to live?

Such difficulties are why I now like to avoid the term "free will" entirely, and instead focus on "self-determination". It doesn't matter whether I have free will or not. As your brain is equipped no differently, you have no inherent authority regarding my decisions. It works for me on every level, including the religious, the philosophical and the political.

To be fair, Penrose is quite explicit that when he's talking about non-computability, he doesn't mean randomness. But I'm not sure he makes his case. Randomness is pretty much how the transition from quantum to classical physics expresses itself in our present understanding. Penrose proposes that some new model of physics is required. Unfortunately, this would appear to require processes that take place below the threshold of possible experimentation.

But this does nothing to define or explain what is meant (if anything) by employed terms such as proto-consciousness. Really... what the hell is that? I intuitively think that OR -- objective reduction -- as a "real thing" must exist in some form, otherwise we have a very hard time explaining the reality of events, the effects of which we observe long after their occurrence in the far reaches of the Universe. I think it's pretty nonsensical to seriously posit whether things exist that we haven't experienced. But is it necessary to invoke consciousness to explain the reduction of those events? Is it not enough to allow that interactions count as observations? Is it not enough to allow that quantum events, although they may provide random input, thus influencing our computation, do not necessarily imply a consciousness separate from ourselves? Is it necessary to discard the notion that our brains are sufficiently complex to perceive themselves as "conscious" without first disproving it?

Now, all of that is said with my scientist hat on. When I take that hat off, there's something extremely familiar about the notion of some pervasive objective consciousness collapsing the wave-functions of the Universe, resulting in a deterministic world which we inhabit while exhibiting free will made possible by partaking of the essence of that proto-consciousness. It certainly seems to be a restatement of things I accept on faith, dressed up with a bit of math. It's called Religion. And yet, Penrose describes himself as an atheist. Maybe that's a wave-function he should concentrate on reducing.

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UPDATE: One other thing that I'd like to address is that the article mentions the following:

Measurable brain activity correlated with a conscious perception of a stimulus generally occurs several hundred milliseconds after that stimulus. Yet in activities ranging from rapid conversation to competitive athletics, we respond to a stimulus (seemingly consciously) before the above activity that would be correlated with that stimulus occurs in the brain. This is interpreted in conventional neuroscience and philosophy [1–3] to imply that in such cases we respond non-consciously, on auto-pilot, and subsequently have only an illusion of conscious response. The mainstream view is that consciousness is epiphenomenal illusion, occurring after-the-fact as a false impression of conscious control of behavior. Accordingly, we are merely ‘helpless spectators’

Hameroff and Penrose offer quantum processes in the brain as "loopholes" for such implementations. I wonder if that's even necessary, as I have doubts as to whether the mainstream view is even correct.

Here's an analogy from my own field of computer programming. Granted, programs are automata (even as we might be) so I'm going to anthropomorphize a bit and use a simple example, but it's for the purpose of illustration.

Let's take a program like Chess. There are basically three things going on here: You have a user interface (UI). That's what communicates with the outside world in some meaningful way, by taking input from the keyboard and mouse and drawing graphics. The UI may have other functions, such as being 'aware' of the rules of the game and checking the legality of the player's moves. It may remember previous positions. Then there's the chess engine, which has very limited UI, mainly intended to communicate with the UI. And then there's a library of set responses to known chess positions. Together, they comprise the chess program.

Now, you might think of the library as 'instinct' or 'reflex' or 'muscle memory'. It's not very interesting here, in that no 'thought' is involved in the responses. So long as it receives input that's 'in the book', it responds automatically.

Positions that are not 'in the book' are evaluated by the chess engine. Once that's done it distills all of that analysis into a single response (the move) and sends it back to the UI.

The library is much faster than the computations performed by the engine. And to improve performance, we need not wait for the library to report failure before working on the problem. The engine 'thinks' about the problem even as the library is being searched. But the library responds first, even though we know we 'consciously' set to work evaluating the position. And if the library responds negatively, then we've constructively used the time. In any event, it takes some finite amount of time to integrate the results and report them to the UI.

Keep in mind that the UI is fairly superficial. And if we look at what's going on in the internals of the machine, the program has generated a response and taken action to update its internal 'board' before the UI is 'aware' of the decision and can communicate it to the user. Other programs do similar things with procedural calls to back-end processes that perform actions before they can be reported. For instance, I've designed a system for mortgage insurance that submits applications to multiple decision engines and returns "first response" underwriting decisions.

If our understanding of the 'program' were limited to the superficial layers that communicate with us, then we might conclude that the program were acting 'unconsciously'.

I think the same is likely to be true of biological consciousness. It's not that any part of this happens 'unconsciously'. Rather, it's that consciousness is more complicated than is thought of in the mainstream view. I think it doesn't all happen at once, monolithically, and it's not a step-by-step linear process as it might be in a very simple program. Rather, I surmise that we frame a choice and set the various parts of our mind to work on it, integrating the results and reporting them. To say that something is 'unconscious' when it is part of the conscious process is to mis-label it. And this goes back to the earlier assertion that we don't really know what consciousness is... so we run the risk of excluding necessary functions from that definition and erroneously saying that it's not conscious at all...  we are merely ‘helpless spectators’ experiencing an 'illusion'. We look at functional design and conclude that it's a paradox. Such an interpretation is not necessarily warranted.

On TV: Useful Engineering

Quite a while back, in 2011, I wrote a post called "More Junk Science on TV". Since then it's been the most viewed post on this blog, attracting tens of thousands of views, and sparking many comments right to the present day. Today I'm not writing about junk science; I'm writing about an alternative to it.

There's a popular tendency in the reactions to speak of "science" in relation to things that are not properly scientific problems; rather, they are matters of Engineering and/or Mathematics. The difference between these disciplines is not trivial, as I've had to reiterate time and again.

Rather than explain the difference at length here, let's let an engineer do it: this article on Engineering.com is called (conveniently enough), "The Difference Between Science and Engineering".

The difference is well described in this short quote by Henry Petroski:

“Science is about knowing, engineering is about doing.”

You do not need to know why or, often, even how something works to leverage the fact that it does work in order to successfully complete an engineering endeavour.

Likewise, Mathematics is not Science, not in the slightest. And let's let a mathematician explain that, as in this Mathforum.org post entitled (equally conveniently): "The Difference between Science and Mathematics". Note that these are different differences. Mathematics is not Engineering either.

Some practical definitions:

• Science is the process of gaining empirical knowledge by means of the Scientific Method: observation, hypothesis, refinement through further observation and experimentation, acceptance as a tentative law ("theory"), and repeat forever. Scientific statements cannot be proven. Rather, they can be supported or refuted by evidence.
• Mathematics is process of manipulating values (whether they be spaces, as in Geometry, or abstract numbers) according to a set of axiomatic rules. The Scientific Method is not employed. All that's necessary is that the mathematical rules are rigorously self-consistent. Mathematical statements can be proven. That is, they can be shown to be incontrovertibly true within the applicable mathematical ruleset.
• Engineering is the process of solving real-world problems. Engineers may employ Science and Mathematics as tools, but Engineering itself can be accomplished without explicit knowledge of these disciplines. The 'proof' of an engineering project is that it works.

Please remember this if you're ever tempted to use a phrase beginning with "Science cannot explain..." to object to what is clearly an engineering problem. While the Scientific Method can be employed to suss out the principles used to solve engineering problems, scientists are often not the best people to make the attempt precisely because their expertise is not in the area of practical application.

Also remember it if you're ever tempted to argue that knowledge of complex mathematics must have been available to an engineer without first demonstrating that the mathematical relationships found in an engineering work are not explained as a by-product of the process by which the work was accomplished. For instance, in any engineering work where a wheel (such as a hodometer) was used in measurement, a ratio of pi is not merely unsurprising... it is to be expected . In fact, such relationships are often good clues as to how something was built or how the work was planned. The engineer may readily recognize this even when a mathematician may get bogged down in analyses of the abstract relationships themselves.

Finally,

• Technology refers to the ways in which these disciplines, as well as skills, are combined and employed as a means of empowerment. Thus, a new technology may evolved from pre-existing scientific or engineering principles. For instance, the technology of baking bricks requires nothing that you did not previously develop for the making of sun-dried bricks and baking of bread. Technology is all about utilization. So it's inaccurate to say that the Ancients "lacked the technology" to accomplish certain feats using the 'primitive' tools available to them. Obviously they had the technology, because they accomplished the task. It's more accurate to say that we lack the technology to do so. Even though our knowledge of science, math, and engineering, taken separately, is vastly more developed and refined, we lack the skills... the knowledge of what specific combination of science, math, and engineering techniques were employed. 

The difference between these disciplines is profound. It's why we use the acronym 'STEM', and not 'S'.

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With this in mind, I was very pleased to watch the History Channel series Ancient Impossible. Now, this originally aired in 2014, but I didn't see it then, possibly because I don't watch that much television. I found it on the History Channel website, and decided to try it out despite the title looking suspiciously like that of Ancient Aliens. I've rarely been so pleased to have been 'dissapointed'

Season 1, Episode 2, "Moving Mountains", touched on a few of the tasks deemed 'impossible' by my readers/commenters. This particular episode touched on the problems of breaking the defenses of Masada; moving water by means of aqueducts; and moving megalithic stones such as Egyptian obelisks and the stones of the retaining wall at the temple of Baalbek. In only one place does the presentation falter; and that's in depicting some dramatic tension as to whether a specific technique used in aqueduct construction would work. In practice, an engineer would only doubt the quality of his model. He would never entertain serious doubts as to whether an inverted siphon would work. Not only does Physics require it, but these things are commonplace. Several of these devices are present in every modern home. You probably call it a 'trap', and there's one under your sink. For that matter, the water pressure in your home is probably accomplished by means of a water tower, in which case, your whole water supply is delivered by means of inverted siphon.

But I was especially pleased that the episode reminded me of something that I should have passed on to my readers long ago... that being De Architectura, the engineering text written well over 2,000 years ago by the Roman engineer, Marcus Vitruvius Pollio ("Vitruvius").

Of particular interest is Book Ten, which deals with the constructions of machines. Vitruvius focused his effort to describing those things that are useful to engineers, as he deemed it unnecessary to describe those things (wheels, bellows, etc.) that were  that were common in a Roman's everyday life. His text isn't just descriptive; it's explanatory. That's a great thing for us, because it gives us a window into the mind of a Roman engineer, revealing how engineers looked at the world before Newton and the formal establishment of the Scientific Method. Here's what Vetruvius writes regarding the laws of mechanics (as translated by Joseph Gwilt, and available online):

The laws of mechanics are founded on those of nature, and are illustrated by studying the master-movements of the universe itself. For if we consider the sun, the moon and the five planets, we shall perceive, that if they were not duly poised in their orbits, we should neither have light on the earth, nor heat to mature its fruits. Our ancestors reasoned so on these motions, that they adopted nature as their model; and, led to an imitation of the divine institutions, invented machines necessary for the purposes of life. That these might be suitable to their different purposes, some were constructed with wheels, and were called machines; others were denominated organs [Dave's note: sometimes this is translated 'engines']. Those which were found most useful were gradually improved, by repeated experiments, by art, and by the laws which they instituted.

This should be largely familiar to us. Engineering is based on physical laws and is refined through practical application. Vitruvius differs from us mainly in mindset: whereas we think of a distinct separation between nature and artifice, the ancient engineer more explicitly thinks of machines as being the employment of those principles he has observed in nature.

That may sound like a subtle distinction, so let's phrase it a bit more crudely for effect: The modern engineer conquers Nature; the ancient engineer uses it. While this isn't completely accurate (technically speaking, all of physics is natural), the modern engineer often brute-forces solutions, and (lacking manpower) builds machines to apply that brute force. The ancient engineer employs manpower to assist nature in accomplishing the task for him. The further back in time you go, the more this must hold true, as there were fewer machines. The Romans themselves represent an intermediate step between mechanization and earlier techniques.

We use brute-force mechanization for its advantages, one of which is the reduction of manpower. However, it also eliminates the need for the intermediate steps that had previously been employed, and replaced, by mechanization. Eventually, the intermediate steps aren't even considered. After all, who would build giant ramps by hand only to tear them all down again? The answer: someone who wants to get the job done.

If we follow that principle backward, we can more readily see its application to megalithic works. Vitruvius himself (and it's in the referenced episode) describes enclosing a block in a wooden frame that effectively transforms it into a wheel and axle (Vetruvius, book 10, chap. 2, para. 12). allowing it to be easily rolled. Moving a huge block alone would be difficult, but the the Roman engineers did not do that; they moved a device of which the multi-ton block was a component. This is not secret, esoteric knowledge. Vetruvius' book was well-known. But it was forgotten and "re-discovered" several times.

(image source)

Such is the case with all such techniques, whether it's been re-discovered in the present or not.  For instance, obelisks were raised by using gravity, not working against it. A ramp would be constructed and the obelisk pulled up the ramp, base-first. Tipped over the edge, the obelisk descends upon its base by means of gravity. 'Magical' tech is simply not required. Then again, neither is advanced math or science. Just common sense: rolling is easier than carrying; dropping is easier than lifting. A wheel isn't just a mode of transportation; it's a wickedly accurate measuring device. Counterweights assist and levers multiply force.

Even when it pushes the dramatic tension (and let's not forget the sensationalist dross it must compete with), the Ancient Impossible series is a breath of fresh air.  It can help you to re-think the plausibility of ancient engineering feats so you don't resort to dismissing the accomplishments that deserve a healthy dose of respect.

And I highly recommend you read Vetruvius' work, as it will help you get into the mindset of an ancient engineer. Through it you can take a step toward understanding the past, and perhaps open up a mind that may have been clenched tight around baseless fantasies.

Since the online version has no illustrations, try this one [PDF].