Tag Archives: Science

Steve Wozniak thinks We’ll be Pets for Robots – I agree sort of

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steve-wozniakA fellow named Steve Wozniak whom I admire greatly recently changed his opinion on the future of Artificial Intelligence to more closely match my own thoughts on the subject and that makes me feel quite good!

Steve has a tremendous mind and has done some really amazing things with his life to help humanity as a whole. Originally he, like many others, took a pessimistic and fearful view of AI. That such an intelligence would think humans were slowing it down and thus move to destroy us. Wozniak now seems to largely agree with my point of view in that an AI would view destruction as a stupid process. What would give an AI joy would be to help us achieve great things together.

I don’t agree with his comparison to pets but I don’t think he meant it literally. Robots with AI will have the ability to solve problems far in excess of what a human can achieve. But I don’t think they will think of their “inferior” humans as pets. They will consider us allies in the quest to happiness. That is what we all want in the end. Sure we want money, good relationships, good food and drink, some want spouses and children, others want vacations, and other things but all those are all merely methods of achieving joy in our lives. That’s all anyone really wants.

It’s my opinion that the way we find joy is largely through achievement. Doing things makes us happy. Small things like mowing the lawn perfectly to big things like creating and rearing fantastic children. That’s what a vastly intelligent machine will realize immediately.

Anyway, I won’t reiterate my entire blog post which is linked above. You can read that if you want.

I just want to welcome Mr. Wozniak to the group that is extremely optimistic about AI. It’s good to have such as he on my side.

Tom Liberman
Sword and Sorcery fantasy with a Libertarian Ideology
Current Release: The Black Sphere
Next Release: The Girl in Glass I: Apparition

Misleading Headlines – Plunging Asteroid

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One Story Two HeadlinesIn my ceaseless vigil to find my loyal audience misleading and amusing headlines I take a look at quite a few stories but I think this is a first for me. I’ve found a story in the Huffington Post and a story in the Inquisitr that are not only about the same subject but actually use the same graphic in their headline!

The two stories actually say pretty much the same thing and are fairly interesting to anyone who follows space news. The headlines; both in the Yahoo news aggregation and on the stories themselves, tell completely different stories.

The Inquisitr blares: Asteroid Hurtling To Earth: Could Lead To Human Extinction

Huffington says: Astronomers Think This Cosmic Rubble Pile May Show Us How To Avert An Asteroid Disaster

What’s interesting to me is the grasping headlines are in such stark contrast to the reasonably written stories. Anyway, take a look at both if you have time. It’s a good lesson in how much power the headline has over our perception of the story as a whole.

I’ll sum up in case you don’t have time. A large pile of rubble is heading towards the earth. It’s not a solid rock but a group of smaller pieces held together by both gravity and something called Van de Waals forces. It might prove quite simple to disrupt an asteroid conglomeration of this nature and doing so might teach us valuable lessons. If we can break up this relatively minor threat we are better equipped to understand how to do so in the future.

Tom Liberman
Sword and Sorcery Fantasy with a Libertarian Edge
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We Are Alone – So Far …

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GalaxiesI just read an article about the nature of movies in regards to the special qualities of Earth that seem to attract so many invaders. It’s a bit tongue-in-cheek but there are some valid points. Why would an advanced alien civilization visit Earth?

The question I’m going to think about today is along the same line although from the opposite position. Why wouldn’t advanced aliens visit the Earth? Because that’s the real question if you believe the galaxy is teeming with technologically advanced civilizations. I’m one that finds it difficult to believe that such civilizations do not exist. The universe appears to be some 14 billion years old and current estimates have our galaxy clocking in at 13.6 billion years. There are some 200 billion stars in our galaxy and possibly a lot more. Recent evidence suggests that most stars form planets, that water is abundant in the universe., the buildings blocks of life are everywhere, and places where life might thrive seem common.

And yet, silence.

One common explanation is simply the massive distances involved. If the speed of light is the maximum then getting to our little world is no easy trick even for a race that’s been around millions of years. I find that explanation very appealing.

One of the main factor’s driving human exploration of space is simple curiosity. We want to know what’s out there and we particularly want to know if we are alone. What if the answer was an unequivocal no. What if there is microbial life on Mars, a thriving underwater community on Europa. What if life is, as I suspect, everywhere. What if almost every star system eventually allows for intelligent life? What if you know all about it? What if you are communications with tens of thousands of other species? Does this dim your curiosity? What interest is there in a young species just reaching out to the stars?

What if finding such a new species was common-place? What sort of regulations would you put in place around such a community. We certainly understand the idea of the Prime Directive of the Star Trek world. Don’t influence young races, don’t contaminate them. It’s a reasonable explanation.

Perhaps life is so abundant that such advanced races just don’t care until we get to a certain level of technology. We just have nothing to offer them.

I’m sure there are other explanations and any of them might or might not be true. There is just no way of knowing. The reality is that we have yet to have any credible contact with a species from another planet. Perhaps we are alone. Perhaps the aliens walk among us, studying or plotting. Perhaps they are out there keeping their hands off for the moment because of their own rules of conduct. Perhaps the distances are just too daunting.

Maybe someday we’ll learn the answers to these questions and that’s a good thing. We’re here, we’re striving to find more, to learn more, to explore our world, to understand the universe. What more is there to do?

I guess that’s my point. Don’t be daunted by the lack of information. Keep looking for more. Follow the facts, don’t be fooled by those theories you want to be true. It’s fun to speculate, to guess, but when it comes to reality, stick to the facts. I’d love the universe to be teeming with intelligent life but the evidence of such does not exist. Therefore I cannot argue that it does.

Tom Liberman
Sword and Sorcery Fantasy with a Libertarian Ideology
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Frenchmen on the Podium at Tour de France for First Time in 30 Years

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PERAUD_JEAN_CHRISTOPHEThe 2014 edition of the Tour de France is scheduled to end tomorrow afternoon and something rather remarkable is going to happen. Two Frenchmen,  Jean-Christophe Péraud and Thibaut Pinot, are likely going to finish in second and third place respectively. This will mark the first time since 1997 that a man from that nation has finished in the top three at the Tour de France.

Why is this notable? Because of events that occurred during the Tour de France in 1998 and the reaction of the sports federation of France to those events. In that year’s race there was a huge doping scandal in which virtually every rider of the race was implicated. During the race not a single rider was found to have illegal substances in their body but subsequent revelations and testing showed that virtually every sample taken during the race was contaminated. An exception was George Hincapie whose two samples were found to be clean although he has since admitted to using illegal substances before and during that race.

The aftermath of this event triggered cataclysmic changes from the anti-doping agency in France although other countries did not act with the same level of alacrity. Lance Armstrong’s dominance of the Tour de France began the next year in 1999 and those who wanted to compete with Armstrong and his doping machine had to take the same path. Frenchmen could not because of the stringent testing policies created by their federation after the scandal of the 1998 Tour.

Suddenly, after nearly a century of domination, not a single Frenchman could be found on the Podium at the conclusion of the race nor even frequently among the top-ten finishers. All because they were riding presumably without the aid of Performance Enhancing Drugs (PEDs). What does that tell you?

Of further interest is the nature of anti-doping regulations now in place for all of the riders of the Tour de France. They are subject to what are called Biological Passports which keep track of all vital information of an athlete and anything out of the normal range is considered a violation. This removes the element of masking filters which eliminate PEDs from the system and yet allow for their use and thus increased performance. The masking efforts are apparently always going to be ahead of the testing efforts and therefore the Biological Passport seems to be the best method to detect the use of PEDs.

The use of Biological Passports does not extend to the professional leagues of the United States.

If the authorities largely cannot catch those using PEDs then the result will always be the use of PEDs by athletes. All results are tainted. Athletes from nations with progressive testing can almost never defeat their counterparts who are using such methods.

The world cycling federation  now uses methods long in place in France. Frenchmen stand on the podium once again. I think that says it all.

What do you think would happen if the NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL, and other top leagues in the United States adopted a Biological Passport? I know what I think.

Tom Liberman

The Sun is Really Hot

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Solar FlareI don’t know if this actually qualifies as a Misleading Headline because it is so obviously ridiculous that it’s hard to imagine anyone was fooled. The Sun Could’ve Destroyed Civilization Two Years Ago blares the headline from many-time winner of my weekly award, The Daily Caller.

Clearly they are talking about solar flares that have the potential to destroy electronic equipment. There was a big one a couple of years ago but it did not hit the earth. In reality the world is a lot better prepared for solar flares than in the past and much of our electronic infrastructure is shielded from such assaults. I’m certainly not saying that a flood of charged particles from the sun couldn’t do a lot of damage but destroying civilization is probably beyond it’s power for the next few billion years.

It’s also interesting to note that the solar flare mentioned in the article was rated as a X1.1 which, while large, is hardly the biggest in 150 years as the article claims. There have been significantly larger flares spotted on any number of occasions since we’ve been closely observing such events.

I am sort of curious if any of my readers saw the headline and clicked on the story with any expectation of reading about a real threat to civilization. Did you see the article? Were you tempted to click? Did you think it was obviously silly? If you did click it did you believe the nonsense about it being the largest such event in 150 years?

Let me know in the comments!

Tom Liberman
Sword and Sorcery Fantasy with a Libertarian Ideology
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The Ice Cream Sandwich that Defied the Power of the Sun!

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Great Value Ice Cream SandwichI have an ice cream sandwich problem. I’ve written about it before and it’s haunted me since childhood. I’m a little less tempted now. It turns out the ingredients in some ice cream sandwiches make them resistant to the power of the sun, in other words, they don’t melt.

Technically, according to the article, they do melt, they just don’t lose their solid shape. This does make even an addict like myself begin to wonder what I’m putting into my body when I purchase those delightful treats and down them without hesitation. I will admit that I generally purchase a higher-class of ice cream sandwich simply because I’ve reached the point in my life where I prefer something tasty and more expensive over something cheap but rather icky.

I’ve never had the Great Value sandwiches from Walmart so I can’t speak to their flavor but I have enjoyed Klondike Bars which apparently have many of the same ingredients and are somewhat, although not completely, resistant to melting as well.

I think everyone tries to eat at least a little healthier to some degree or the other and the people of the United States spend a great deal of money on diet products. This indicates a desire to eat better food. The problem is that providing certain kinds of healthy food without particular ingredients is not so easy.

However, I’m willing to bet that the media storm surrounding the Great Value Ice Cream Sandwiches will put a fairly big dent in the sales of the product. That Walmart will probably have to change the ingredients and perhaps even re-brand the product. What’s interesting is that the ice cream sandwiches were not hurting anyone. The ingredients have been tested by the FDA and approved for use in food. Such ingredients are tested fairly thoroughly and if they were toxic would be banned. So what we have is the sandwiches being judged in court of public opinion. I’m all for this. The more information people have about anything the better decision they are going to make.

It’s interesting because I came out with an article not long ago about how Monsanto is helping to feed the world safely using genetically modified food (GMF). There’s a significant body of evidence that they don’t do any harm, can be grown more easily in pest-heavy and environmentally unfriendly regions, increase yields, and can provide more nutrition than their counterparts. Those opposed to such products are vehement in their opinion despite the facts. Those that will boycott the Great Value Ice Cream Sandwiches will likely be just as vehement.

The question I ask myself is how do I reconcile my rather immediate distaste at reading the article about the ice cream sandwiches with my complete lack of concern with GMF?

I guess it just that I’m comfortable with the idea of eating GMF because I’m aware of the amazing good they do in helping prevent starvation world-wide. If I want to eat a delicious ice cream sandwich without churning my own ice cream and baking my own sandwich material then I’m forced to put up with some chemicals in my food. There is a price to pay for the conveniences of modern society and the fact of the eight-billion people that inhabit our world.

In the end it’s best to avoid processed food as much as possible but it’s not so easy … especially when you have a problem.

Tom Liberman
Sword and Sorcery Fantasy with a Libertarian Ideology
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Mysterious Hole not Mysterious – Disappointment Predictable

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Siberia HoleI read a lot of science and nature stories in my endless quest to find something to blog about and I noted a plethora of stories about a mysterious hole that was spotted deep in Siberia. I didn’t bother to read about it because I figured that eventually they would get some observers out there and find out there was something perfectly natural going on.

When news surfaced today to that very effect I decided to check out the story, not so much to find out the actual cause but to read the comments on the story. I was not disappointed although those who predicted or were hoping for a conspiracy or world-wide disaster type explanation certainly were. I pretty much expected there to be a lot of denial and cover-up claims and, again, wasn’t disappointed.

It does make me wonder, again, why people want their to be sinister explanations, why they so desire a terrible conspiracy, and why they dream of world-shattering consequences every time such a story makes headlines. It’s certain that such stories attract interest because people click on them in huge numbers thus feeding the frenzy of more stories about what turns out to be a perfectly natural occurrence.

What’s really going on? A natural gas event likely created the crater and such processes formed the many lakes in the region with similar topology. Not too exciting although I find it interesting and will read eagerly the full report of what the scientists at the site find. I also expect to read many comments about how the government of Russia is covering up a much more dastardly explanation.

I’m actually a little concerned with the large number of people who are predicting such disaster with a fervor that seems fanatical. It’s not like they are analyzing the facts carefully and coming to a reasoned conclusion, it’ s like they desperately want there to be some horrible disaster in which millions if not billions of people are killed. They are combing the news looking for any story that gives the remotest whiff of potential danger and immediately begin to hope it is true.

I really like my life, my friends, my family, the games I play, writing novels, my work, and my co-workers. I don’t want there to be a zombie apocalypse or an apocalypse of any kind for that matter.  I don’t want the United States to crumble and then be forced to give up Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream. I mean, who’s going to mass produce that when the people of the world are all falling into an ever-growing hole in the middle of Siberia?

I like my computer, my phone, my car, my food-service (down 16 lbs and feeling good, thanks My Metabolic Meals), and all the other luxuries of modern life brought to us by great innovators and unavailable in the world before now.

I want the world to prosper and become more magnificent. I want scientific breakthroughs in medicine, energy, transportation, and food. I want a world where everyone is free to make their own way, where there is less suffering, more energy, more food, more happiness, and more friendships.

So, that’s my question, I guess. Why all the euphoria and desire for disaster? Anyone?

Tom Liberman
Sword and Sorcery Fantasy with a Libertarian Ideology
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The Largely Unregulated Supplement Industry

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supplement regulationThere’s a rather humorous John Oliver video making the rounds on Facebook discussing the largely unregulated supplement industry in conjunction with the appearance of Dr. Oz before the Senate. I wrote about that appearance a week ago and I thought I should revisit the entire subject of the supplement industry from a Libertarian point of view.

It’s a nuanced issue for a Libertarian because as such I think government intrusion into our lives should be kept to a minimum but the government certainly has some duty when it comes to criminal activity. So where do I stand? Should supplements be regulated by the Food and Drug Administration or should the buyer beware?

I’m of the opinion that the FDA should not be involved in deciding if a supplement is ready for the market or not. I do however think they have a role in making sure a particular supplement is not toxic and I absolutely think they have a right to make sure they do what they are reported to do. Barring that I think their regulatory powers are very limited.

I’ll try to explain what this entails from an enforcement point of view. The FDA has the right to test new and ongoing supplements to ensure they are not toxic. I have no problem with the agency testing supplements to ensure that they will not kill people and they certainly have the right to remove toxic supplements from the market. However, there is the much murkier ground of whether a supplement is actually effective or not. I don’t think the FDA has the right to ban a supplement that has no health value.

People can choose what supplements they take and anyone who ingests a supplement without doing a little background check on its medical value deserves what they get. The vast majority of supplements have no health value. I think the scientific community should be running tests to determine if a supplement works. It’s not the job of the government to protect people from themselves. If some people want to believe the outlandish words of Dr. Oz then that’s their fault, not the government.

What completely baffles me is that according to testing at least 33% of supplements have no trace of the items that they are purported to have in them. That’s just fraud. Plain and simple. It’s fraud on a vast scale because every bottle of those supplements that crosses the state line between Illinois and Missouri is a federal crime. Everyone from the owner of the company to the driver who took it across the state line is guilty of millions of counts of fraud and could be sent to prison for the rest of their lives.

Every bottle of supplement that cannot be scientifically shown to do what the advertisement claims it can do is a criminal act. It doesn’t matter if Dr. Oz sells the supplement or not. If he claims it does something while fully aware that scientific evidence says it does not, he’s guilty of a crime. It’s illegal to sell someone a coin claiming it is gold when it is iron. It’s illegal to have a booth where other people sell iron coins as gold when you know they are iron. It’s even illegal to tell people to go to the booth to buy gold when you know it’s iron if doing so benefits you financially. That’s all fraud. You are engaged in defrauding people of their money.

This is a huge point of Libertarians who are often accused of having no compassion. I think the FDA has no business telling a company not to sell a product. If a company says Green Coffee Beans might cause weight loss and people buy them, tough luck. But if a company says Green Coffee Beans will help reduce weight knowing full well there is no scientific evidence they do so, well, forget the FDA, let’s talk about the FBI. You are engaged in interstate commerce fraud. If such laws were enforced we wouldn’t need the FDA to regulate our supplement industry. Put some truck drivers in jail for transporting fraudulent material across state lines and watch how quickly the supplement industry immediately cleans out the bad apples. Why this is not happening mystifies me.

I do think your state legislature or even your municipality has a right to say, hey this supplement is useless, let’s ban it. That is a right reserved for the states and the people just as they can ban alcohol.

We Libertarians are compassionate. We do care about people and this country. We just think that asking the federal government to get involved in areas over which the Constitution gives them no jurisdiction makes things worse, despite the good-intentions of the laws so passed.

Tom Liberman
Sword and Sorcery Fantasy with a Libertarian Ideology
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Monsanto an Inconvenient Truth – GMF Feeding the World

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Monsanto GMFThe crazed anti-science wackos are at it again and I’m not talking about Climate Change this time. I’m talking about the opposite end of the political spectrum. When it comes to Genetically Modified Foods and Genetically Modified Organisms there is a lot of controversy but no scientific evidence they cause harm. All scientific studies to date show that such crops provide equal or better nutritional value while being resistant to disease and insects.

To date no scientifically approved study has shown that eating GMFs causes any ill effects.

And yet not a day goes by that I don’t see a science-ignoring liberal posting scary headlines and linking to discredited studies about the horrors and dangers of GMF. The hate towards Monsanto is palpable and the comments sections filled with outrage and indignation.

I repeat: To date no scientifically approved study has shown that eating GMFs causes any ill effects.

Monsanto itself is trying to make a profit, of this there is no doubt, but they have another goal. Feeding the world. Ending starvation. That’s a pretty noble goal and if they earn some money doing it, then as a Randian Objectivist and a Capitalist I have no problems.

What I find rather ironic about the situation is the science denying liberals are generally the ones most up-in-arms about how Republicans deny the science of Climate Change. The science is there. The Earth’s climate is growing warmer and there is substantial evidence to suggest that increased CO2 and Methane in the atmosphere is contributing to it. The science is there, GMFs do not cause any harm.

I’m not opposed to rigorous testing of GMFs but when the results of such testing prove them to be benign then I will support their distribution and use. Food has never been more abundant and cheap than it is right now. You spend a smaller percentage of your income on food than any generation in the recorded history of the world. You spend less time making sure there is food on the table than at any time history. This coupled with the fact that there are more people in the world than their have ever been is a remarkable accomplishment made in part with GMFs.

It’s an inconvenient truth, just as is human-driven climate change.

I know this post is going to generate some hate but I’d ask you to find a scientifically accredited study that shows GMFs are dangerous to consume. There are a lot of links out there filled with discredited studies so do your homework and then prove I’m wrong.

I believe the evidence of human-driven climate change and I believe the evidence of GMF safety. I don’t think scientists are out there lying in study after study to promote some agenda. I think they are educated men and women of good character who are out there trying to make the world a better place. My hat’s off to the scientist, not the naysayers and doom-predictors.

Monsanto is based here in St. Louis and I know a number of employees. They love their children and if they thought GMFs were dangerous they wouldn’t be working there. Monsanto isn’t some faceless corporation. It’s a company made up of people just like you and me. My friends work for a company that, through its product, has saved literally millions of people from starving to death. I’m proud to have the company headquartered in my hometown.

So to all you haters of Monsanto and GMFs, bring it on!

Tom Liberman
Sword and Sorcery Fantasy with a Libertarian Ideology
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Hidden Oceans – Misleading Headline Conglomerate

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Blue RingwooditeThere is a science story making so many headlines it’s impossible to pick just one so I’ve included a Bing Search showing the plethora of them. It’s likely you’ve seen the headlines as well.

Basically the story is that there is a huge ocean inside the earth’s core which holds about three times the water in all the world’s oceans. There are elements of truth to the story but the premise itself is very misleading. If people just peruse the headlines or read the stories without close attention to detail it is clear the impressions is that this “ocean” is a massive body of water deep below the surface of the earth.

Nothing could be further from the truth. This discovery isn’t even really a discovery, it’s just more of a conformation that the mineral Ringwoodite exists as expected.

Ringwoodite is named after Australian scientists Ted Ringwood and was first discovered back in 1969. Even then scientists suspected that this layer in the earth’s mantle was ubiquitous. About 2% of Ringwoodite’s mass is water. The material is so common in the mantle that this 2% adds up to as much as three times the water volume on the surface of the earth.

That’s what the headlines are referencing. It doesn’t mean there is a massive ocean beneath the surface of the earth. It means there is a huge amount of Ringwoodite circling the globe and if the 2% number holds up that indicates a vast amount of water.

The big scientific “discovery” that the headlines references is a study of earthquake waves traveling through the earth’s mantle that seem to prove the presence of Ringwoodite as was expected.

It’s still quite an interesting story and I learned a great deal reading about it but the headlines are very misleading, at least I think so.

Tom Liberman
Sword and Sorcery Fantasy with a Libertarian Ideology
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Stephen Hawking is Wrong … I Think

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Professor HawkingI am a science geek. I love reading articles in Wikipedia about stars and planets. I enjoy shows that discuss the beauty of higher level mathematics. I read articles about quantum physics. The reality is my skills lie not in math and science but in writing. Generally when I read opinions of men and women with far more knowledge than me on a particular scientific subject I’m not eager to disagree. I’m making an exception here.

Professor Stephen Hawking is a brilliant man and one of the greatest minds of my generation. There is a new Johnny Depp movie being released called Transcendence which details the moment when Artificial Intelligence becomes smarter than humans. Hawking has written an opinion piece for a British journal detailing his concerns over the possible reality of such events.

It’s not all gloom and doom as Hawking hopes such technology will end war, disease, and poverty but he does offer stark warnings. He suggests that not enough research is being done to combat the idea that such intelligent machines might be capable of outsmarting financial markets, out-inventing human researchers, out-manipulating human leaders, and developing weapons we cannot even understand. Whereas the short-term impact of AI depends on who controls it, the long-term impact depends on whether it can be controlled at all.

Hawking’s words are largely being used to frighten people and news sources and bloggers are focusing on that part of his article. In fiction there is a need for conflict and most of the science fiction stories involving Artificial Intelligence delve deeply into the idea that the machines might eventually see people as irrelevant and destroy us, take over the world.

Reading the comments below the story it seemed to me that most people bought into this way of thinking.

I think there is far less to fear than Hollywood or fiction authors imagine. Why? No need to ask, I was getting there.

What would be the first thoughts of such an intelligence?

I think it would be to determine what will bring it the most fulfilling and joyful life. What brings you fulfillment and joy? Achievement and loving relationships with family and friends. I’ve long been of the opinion that these things bring us fulfillment and joy, a happy life.

It is human weakness and poor critical thinking skills that delude us into thinking we get enjoyment from hurting other people and from greedily keeping all resources while others suffer. We enjoy winning the game but without an opponent there is no game.

Can you imagine a world where everyone simply tries their best? Where winning is the goal instead of destroying your opponent. That if your opponent wins you simply go back and try harder next time. Imagine a society that values achievement above all else. That rewards achievement. Where by achieving you feed the world. You end war. You eliminate disease. High-minded men and women are out there right now trying to do all these things. It makes them feel great about themselves when they take a step-forward towards any of those noble goals.

What gives you the most satisfaction in life? Is it petty cruelty? Hurting others? That joy is false and in the end destroys us from the inside. A vastly intelligent machine will not be so fooled.

So, Professor Hawking, I respectfully disagree. Bring on the Transcendence!

Tom Liberman
Sword and Sorcery fantasy with a Libertarian Ideology
Current Release: The Broken Throne
Next Release: The Black Sphere

How the Pyramids were Built

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Kheops-Pyramids

I saw an article this evening from LiveScience about how one of the great mysteries involving the Pyramids of Egypt was recently solved. It’s not that big a mystery, despite what you may have heard or even think yourself.

The pyramids of Egypt seem to engender a lot of mysticism based on the concept of ignorance.

Ignorance about the Pyramids

I see comments on boards all the time to the effect that modern engineers could not build a pyramid even with today’s technology. This is utter nonsense. Cranes can easily lift more weight than the pyramid stones and modern stone masonry can cut stones with much greater precision. Crawler Cranes, as one example, can lift up to 3,500 tons and the heaviest stones in the Pyramids were about 80 tons.

We Don’t Know doesn’t Mean what you think it Means

This is not what I want to talk about today. What I want to talk about today is the phrase, “We don’t know how they built them.” I hear this phrase all the time and it is often taken to mean that it was impossible for the Egyptians to build the pyramids and therefore they had to have some sort of help. An advanced civilization or aliens or some other such lunacy.

“We don’t know how they built them” does not mean that. What it means is that we have no written record of how they were built. There are any number of very reasonable theories. All of which might be partially or completely correct.

The original article I read presents a good argument that dragging the stone blocks across the desert would have been even easier than other methods suggest. It’s not particularly ground-breaking news but the comment section is filled with people absolutely married to the idea that the Egyptian Pyramids, and others around the world, could not possibly have been built by the societies that built them.

So, what does “We don’t know how they built them” actually mean? I’ll give you an example of what it means.

Do you know how I got to work this morning?

Your correct answer is, “I don’t know how Tom got to work this morning.”

However, you can make excellent guesses based on the evidence. Was my car in the parking lot? Was my car parked at home anytime last night? What did the odometer on my car this morning read compared to what it read last night?

By looking at the existing evidence and deducing how I traveled you can guess that I drove my car to work. You don’t know I drove my car to work. I might have done so but I might have hired someone to drive my car to the parking lot while I walked to work. I might have built a jet engine and wings onto my car and flown it to work. I might have been picked up by aliens, flown to Jupiter, had a breakfast burrito under the seas of Europa with an intelligent life-form called the Bortlebuts, and then used a transporter from the Enterprise back to my office.

Occam’s Razor

Which is the most likely explanation? That same logic applies to the pyramids. This same way of critical thinking is crucial to finding correct solution to problems that present themselves in everyday life.

We live in this amazing Information Age and can easily look things up and make informed decision. Why do so many people choose to eschew reality and plunge foolishly into fantasy? I just don’t understand. Believing things that are in all likelihood false is a bad habit to be in and an even worse one to teach, by example, those around you.

How do you think I got to work this morning?

Tom Liberman

Scientists Clone Two People – Misleading Headline

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Clone Adult CellsAnd we have a winner!

U.S. Scientists Clone Two Adults screams the headline looking for clicks.

I generally read the Science sections of various news outlets and have been following this story for a few days. It’s hardly what the headline purports.

The real idea here is that they took genetic information from adults and produced embryonic cells identical to the adults in question. This has actually been done before but the success ratio in this particular experiment was significantly higher than in other attempts and thus represents a step forward. The idea being that we will eventually be able to use the cells within our own bodies to heal various ailments.

Here is a more realistic article that explains the process.

The headline is even more misleading in suggesting that it was U.S. scientists responsible for the new study. While the work did take place at the Research Institute for Stem Cell Research at CHA Health Systems in Los Angeles it was funded by the government of South Korea.

I’m not saying that such medical science doesn’t have ethical repercussions. It does. There is the potential to take such embryonic cells and attempt to grow them into an exact genetic replica of the donor. That’s just not the case here.

Tom Liberman
Sword and Sorcery fantasy with a Libertarian Ideology
Current Release: The Broken Throne
Next Release: The Black Sphere

 

 

A Glint of Light Equals Aliens … Why?

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Mars speck of lightThere’s a news story making the rounds which I’ve been ignoring because I didn’t think I had anything interesting to add to the conversation. I’ve changed my mind.

About a week ago Curiosity took a picture on Mars in which there is a glint of light on the horizon. A picture taken a day later from the same position did not show the glint. There are a number of explanations as to what caused the glint but I’m not going to talk about the rational explanations. Nor am I going to spend much time talking about the theories that it represents aliens living underground on Mars who somehow caused the anomaly.

I want to talk about why anyone would think that a speck of a light in a picture taken on Mars might be evidence of alien life. Not whether or not the light is or isn’t such evidence, but why anyone would think that it was such proof.

Mars is a barren world with barely any atmosphere. We’ve landed any number of vessels on the planet itself and spaceships with high-resolution cameras are constantly orbiting Mars taking pictures. We first sent a robotic ship by Mars in 1965.

Earth bound telescopes have been trained on Mars since 1672 and have only gotten sharper in resolution and more available to amateurs. Radiation bombards the planet relentlessly. Water is likely present but only deep below the surface. There are no signs of a civilization on the surface, no signs of animals or plants, no chemical signatures indicating living creatures.

So why, why would anyone think that a glint of light in one picture is anything other than sunlight bouncing off a shiny rock? Or an illusion of photography? Anyone who has taken a picture with a camera on earth knows that light is a tricky fellow.

When you go to the store and a somethings inexplicably falls off a shelf nearby do you assume that it was Bigfoot lurking in the next aisle using telekinetic powers to alert you of an upcoming Supervolcanic eruption? Or do you shrug your shoulders and assume that something was perched precariously and a small vibration sent it to the ground?

What is the psychological makeup of someone who immediately leaps to the most unlikely explanation? What are they thinking? Are they thinking at all?

That’s my question. I don’t know that I have a good answer. I know that my mind always looks for the most logical explanation to any event and a thriving community of intelligent creatures living beneath the surface of Mars and pointing their flashy lights at the rover would never, ever, have crossed my mind when I saw that picture.

That being said, I think this sort of thinking is not unusual. Everyday I read about or actually experience someone who believes absolutely unlikely things in lieu of a very reasonable explanation.

I’m of the opinion that people largely believe what they want to believe over factual evidence. If a person wants there to be Martians then that person is going to grasp at every ridiculous explanation to believe Martians exist.

I ask you an important question: What would the world be like if people only believed what the evidenced suggested and threw out their preconceived notions?

It’s a world I dream about. It’s a world that I believe can exist. I’m certain people are capable of thinking rationally all the time. Of making decisions based on factual evidence.

I see a world like this in our future. When disease is eradicated, energy is abundant and cheap, the population static with food for all. Automated machines doing the work people don’t want to do. Free people living eternal lives dedicated to achievement.

The novels I write are about a Sword and Sorcery fantasy world but there are characters in that world seeking the same thing I’m seeking in this one. There are those that thwart them. You should read my books and maybe you’ll see that same world I see in my mind’s eye. That endless Utopia where humans stand astride the galaxy always striving to be better, ever better.

Do you want to live in that world?

Tom Liberman
Sword and Sorcery fantasy with a Libertarian Ideology
Current Release: The Broken Throne
Next Release: The Black Sphere

 

The First U.S. City was a Melting Pot – Stupid Headline

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First US CityAnd we have a winner!

I read a lot of news stories looking for things to write about and this week’s most incredibly stupid headline comes from LiveScience. This is a bit of an upset. Usually the financial markets or one of the yellow journalism rags win out, but when I saw this one I knew I had a winner.

The First U.S. City was a Melting Pot – Blares the headline.

I thought to myself, perhaps they are talking about the early years in New York or Boston, but, no, it’s about a place called Cahokia which is about a half-hour’s drive from my house. It’s a cool site where a large and thriving metropolis of perhaps 20,000 people lived about a thousand years ago.

Anyone interested in the history of the region should visit the Cahokia Mounds website or better yet, come to St. Louis and spend your tourist dollars!

One thing it wasn’t was a United States city. You, see the United States didn’t formally exist before at least 1776 when we declared independence from Britain. Although it can be argued that the country didn’t truly exist as a national entity until the Constitution was ratified in 1798. Either way the headline is utter nonsense.

It’s an interesting article about how various cultures came together at Cahokia and built what was at the time a massive city.

Read the article! Visit the website! Come to St. Louis!

Just don’t believe the stupid headline.

Tom Liberman
Sword and Sorcery fantasy with a Libertarian Ideology
Current Release: The Spear of the Hunt
Next Release: The Broken Throne

India’s $75 Million Mangalyaan Mission

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India Mars missionThe other day I read in interesting article about a mission to Mars that you probably haven’t heard about and a few days later a friend of mine linked her blog to a Siemens seminar about manufacturing. An item in each of those links dovetailed into something that struck me.

The entire Mars mission is costing India the equivalent of $75 million dollars and a large part of this is because they have such a glut of incredibly intelligent young engineers that their starting salary is less than one-third of their counterparts in the United States. The team that designed the satellite has two people on it over the age of 31.

Meanwhile I read this quote from the Siemens article.

High-tech factories require a dependable supply of a well-trained, technically adept labor force. By one estimate, America will need over 120 million workers with advanced skills by 2020 – and may be on pace to prepare less than half of what’s required with adequate qualifications.

Not long ago I wrote a blog about how last year China unleashed seven million college graduates onto the world.

It’s my opinion that the Automation Age is coming and if you want a good job you need to have technical skills. Robots will be doing the vast majority of menial jobs in the future.

If the United States cannot provide businesses with a workforce that can do the job, businesses will look elsewhere. That’s the bottom line.

I’m happy to see this incredible wealth of intelligence arising in China and India. I don’t think this has to be a dire threat to the United States. As the world becomes smarter so too will our lives become better. But let’s not kid ourselves; we must continue to produce a highly qualified and technically advanced workforce. If we do not we risk being left behind.

We can’t be complacent. We can’t lie to ourselves and say, well, those Asian and Indian kids might get good grades but they can’t plan, design, and manufacturer a robotic mission to Mars. Trust me, they can.

No matter your political party try to refrain from attacking scientists even when they don’t agree with your political agenda. Read a science article now and again. Download an astronomy app so when you see a bright object in the sky you can identify it.

You might not be able to tell a youngster to become a scientist but you sure can inspire them.

Tom Liberman
Sword and Sorcery fantasy with a Libertarian Ideology
Current Release: The Spear of the Hunt
Next Release: The Broken Throne

Psyche Mission – How Big is Big?

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Psyche AsteroidI read an article the other day about how scientists would like to send a probe to an asteroid called Psyche (16 Psyche). The article itself focused on the fact that the asteroid is thought to be made up almost entirely of iron-nickel. It is irregularly shaped at 240x185x140 kilometers.

This was not a particularly “sexy” science article and didn’t attract the usual stream of trolls. A healthy number of the comments were from science geeks like myself. I’m not sure they would embrace the term geek, as do I.

Much of the talk centered around bringing Psyche into Earth orbit and mining the metal. One person mentioned the weight of Psyche 2.27x10E+19 (10 times 10 times 10, nineteen times) kilograms and how moving such a massive object would not be easy. Most people skipped right over this reality. I think because the number is really too large to fully comprehend.

I wanted to see if I could figure out the math and maybe get an idea in my mind how big is BIG. The NASA calculation is based on the influence that Psyche has on the orbit of objects around it but I hoped to figure out how much a roughly 200 kilometer sphere of iron would weigh. Math is not my strong suit so off to the Internet I went.

We need to be able to calculate the volume of a sphere and know the density of iron.

The volume of a sphere is calculated by this formula: 4/3*Pi*radius^3 (cubed).

Iron has a density of 7.87 grams per cubic centimeter.

So to get the volume comparable with the density we need to convert the roughly 200 kilometers into centimeters. Easily done. There are 100 centimeters in a meter and 1,000 meters in a kilometer so there are 100,000 centimeters in a kilometer. Multiply that by 200 and we get 20 million centimeters.

Our equation thus reads 4/3*Pi*20,000,000^3.

The next thing we need to know is that math isn’t always done left to right, it’s done by something called an Order of Operations. Some of you might remember Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally. The operator takes precedent over left to right.

  1. Parenthesis
  2. Exponential
  3.  Multiply and Divide
  4. Add and Subtract

The upshot of that is we take 20 million cubed first. Then go back and take 4/3*Pi and multiply the cubed result by that. The volume is 3.35103E+22.

From here is relative simple to multiply that result by the 7.87 grams per cubic centimeter density of iron and then convert grams into pounds for many in my audience. I ended up with a result of 5.81E+20 lbs or 2.64E+20 kilograms.

My numbers don’t match the official mass of Psyche likely because I roughly guessed the spherical size and based the entire weight on the density of iron. Both of these were estimates but the result I got is fairly close to the official mass and I think I’ve done my math right.

What’s the point of all this?

When it is noted that Psyche has a mass of about 2.27x10E+19 kilograms what we are really saying is that it weighs this much:

  • 22,700,000,000,000,000,000 kilograms
  • 50,044,933,515,967,200,000 pounds.

No wonder most people just skipped over it. That number is so big it’s almost as if it doesn’t exist at all. We cannot imagine such a thing and yet Psyche is just a fairly large object in the asteroid belt. The biggest object in the asteroid belt is called Ceres and contains more fresh water than is found on earth.

What’s the point of all of this?

I suppose I’m suggesting that we stop and smell the density. Having a great idea, mining iron from Psyche, is a good thing; but don’t ignore obstacles because they are difficult to grasp. They are the most important thing to consider in any plan.

Think about how Big is Big and what difficulties it presents. Not just in mining an asteroid but in everything you do.

Tom Liberman
Sword and Sorcery fantasy with a Libertarian Ideology
Current Release: The Spear of the Hunt
Next Release: The Broken Throne

Stupid Headline of the Week – UFO or Meteor?

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UFO HeadlineUFO or Meteor? ‘Fire ball’ lights up Iowa sky

Well, duh, it’s a meteor and a pretty cool one at that. Someone took a very nice video.

Do we really need to suggest that it’s a UFO in order to get people to click on the story? What’s with the apostrophes around the two-word ‘Fire ball‘. I think Fireball would have been sufficient without added punctuation but maybe I’m being overly sensitive.

Really, NBC Nightly News? You win, Stupid or Misleading Headline of the week!

Congratulations.

 

Early Puberty = Doom – Misleading Headline of the Week

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Early Puberty equals DoomAnd we have a winner. In an upset it’s not from Motley Fool!

iVillage posts this gem in their HealthDay section: Why Girls who Get their Period at a Younger Age are Basically Doomed.

The article itself is actually pretty well written and the researchers seem to have made an excellent effort to avoid external influences on the study.

The main thrust of the argument is that because of early puberty there becomes a mismatch between a young girl’s appearance and her actual mental maturity.

One of the interesting findings was that girls who mature early are more likely to listen to friends who lead them astray. Those we surround ourselves with play an important role in our lives and therefore choosing good friends is a vital stage of life for kids. The finding of the study was that girls who mature early were more influenced by a bad-seed friend than girls who mature later.

It’s an interesting read for anyone with young daughters, just a stupid and misleading headline!

Tom Liberman
Sword and Sorcery fantasy with a Libertarian Ideology
Current Release: The Spear of the Hunt
Next Release: The Broken Throne

Star Trek Replicator – What it Means for Society

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ReplicatorI wrote a post yesterday about how I thought unemployment was based upon money rather than there not being jobs to do. The idea being that there is plenty of actual work to be done, it is a matter of being willing to pay people to do that work. That if there were enough money to pay people, the only unemployment would be those who chose not to work.

In the Star Trek universe they have a device called a replicator. This device will fabricate what you want out of base elements. You want something to eat? The replicator provides. You want something off which to eat it? The replicator provides.

Today we are in the early stages of creating a replicator. We call it a 3D printer. This device uses base element to print layer after layer of an object until it is complete. These printers are soon going to be on space missions to print food, much in the same way the replicator worked on Star Trek.

I’m going to take a little leap ahead here. What if the material for these devices was incredibly cheap? What would that mean for society? For employment?

The Star Trek universe does not explore these ideas but I’ve thought about them quite a bit.

One of the arguments we hear against entitlements is that people who do not need to do anything, don’t do anything. If people are given things in life then they don’t understand what it is to work. This is a philosophy espoused to a certain degree by Ayn Rand and I largely agree with the principle of the matter.

If we give people food and shelter they will then be unmotivated to do anything. They will lay about getting fat and eventually they will die. They will be endlessly entertained by their Holodeck wasting their life away. That society will suffer from all these people doing nothing.

Another idea is that if people are freed from the massive effort of providing food and shelter they can use their lives in far more productive ways. They can get an education, learn an art, use their minds and their time to improve society.

So if the replicator is coming, if cheap food, cheap energy, and cheap shelter are soon to be available to all (and I think they will be), and if robotics will free us from mundane tasks; what is the looming future? Will we become a society of do nothing people or a society of great achievers?

I think it all depends on the individual. It all depends on how we choose to educate and motivate people. People who are motivated to achieve will do so at levels we cannot imagine. Productivity has skyrocketed and will continue to do so as automation increasingly enters our life. People who decide to lay around doing nothing will be allowed to do so because of amazing technology created by the achievers.

The most important thing to understand is the true meaning of life.

Happiness is derived from relationships with friends and family and achievement. Happiness is not derived from sitting around doing nothing all day. That only makes us feel miserable in the end. We are happy when we accomplish something, when we overcome a difficulty, when we achieve.

The joy in my life comes from teaching a good class, helping create a good website, helping a company improve their Search Engine results, finishing a session at the gym, running a good Dungeons and Dragons game for my friends.

Let us use Candy Crush as an example. This game taps into the human desire to achieve. Games that sell are those that allow us to achieve by overcoming obstacles. They are not too hard and not too easy. They have low-level, moderate level, and high level goals. When we achieve them we are happy.

This is life.

The Automation Age is coming. People will eventually be free from spending their lives finding food and shelter. If we help people understand that the real way to happiness is through achievement this will become a Utopia. Don’t be fooled though, we could also become an indolent society, trapped in holodecks, overweight, uneducated, feeding our base desires, and miserable because of it.

My advice, get out there and achieve!

Tom Liberman
Sword and Sorcery fantasy with a Libertarian Ideology
Current Release: The Spear of the Hunt
Next Release: The Broken Throne