Thomas J. Webb’s Ecology Blog

これは日本のアイヌのことの番組である。アナウンサーは英語で調べてるけど、会見はだいたい日本語である。

日本人さん、アイヌのことどう思っていますか？

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYEhubSOtcI

…isn’t ecocentrism. It’s just that the ecosphere is too damn strong.

Yes, anthropocentric “stewardship” type thinking can learn from ecocentrism. For example, between two species that are facing undue (anthropogenic…but why isn’t it undue if it’s aviogenic? hmmm) early extinction, we find that environmental movements go for the more charismatic species, rather than the one that is more important in its ecosystem or that can be saved with fewer resources (though it may be easier to drum up support, getting funds for more charismatic species).

This is why I’m ecocentric (at least up to a point), but believe the primary reasons for environmentalism are anthropocentric. There are very few things we could do that would severely put life as a whole on serious jeopardy. Countless terrestrial natural disasters have failed to wipe the slate completely clean and, if anything, created the opportunities needed for our species to come into existence. But it would be terrible if our population growth decreased each individual’s quality of life and robbed humanity of untouched natural habitats to heal individuals who wish to partake. It would be terrible if all the cute animals went extinct.

But more than just “it being terrible if life quality dropped and there were no more hiking trails,” call me a homo sapiens chauvinist, but I don’t want us to go extinct. We’re exactly the kind of animal that is at risk here… and that is why “we are stewards” is absolutely wrong thinking. If we’re in control, then a better analogy is we’re steering a ship and even a sense of self-preservation shall make us want to make sure we don’t hit a rock (one good thing about this analogy.. we can do better than nature! the ecosphere has failed repeatedly to prevent asteroids, but our missiles and nukes might fill in).

Open Source » Blog Archive » Dan Ariely: Confronting Irrationality

Here’s a good talk on radio open source (an island of interestingness in a vast sea of trying to make a routine election sound like an earth-shaking event - it’s not, people!!!) Ariely talks about how we should take into account limits of human rationality when deciding public policy and dealing with disputes. This is a pretty obvious idea, yet no one seems to be willing to accept it. Why? Is it creepy to think of our brains as somehow flawed? His analogy of how we make mittens for hands prone to cold to how we should adjust policy to how brains really work (not outmoded models about how they work) is quite apt.

This science of studying human irrationality (psychology, heh), combined with recent advances in game theory, represent a new frontier in bringing about positive social change. Social philosophies are no longer bounded to primitive psychology and sociology that is just-almost-right-but-not-quite. Marx’s logic was quite sound, but he missed important points about human nature. Now that we are understanding more and more where people make solid decisions and where they don’t, and we have models for how games are played rationally with competing interests, we can develop theories of history that are for once accurate! We can harness the same forces that make Americans obese and put them to positive use (like making Americans thin).

The flip side is that these sciences also represent new frontiers in controlling people. It’s no secret that businesses use consumer irrationality to derive profit (supersize for 50 cents.. you don’t really want all that extra food and yet…) and missionaries utilize the fact that a vast distance between carrot and stick convinces absolutely, even without a shred of evidence for the carrot nor the stick (there I go knocking on missionaries again. I’m on a roll!) and so on… People are pretty immune to these things once the trick is discovered, but I can’t help but fear for what will happen when the tyrannical entities of the world (like the “People’s” Republic of China) become all the more sophisticated…

(If you know all the arguments about why biodiversity is awesome, or think you do, go ahead and skip down to Cultural Diversity)

Biodiversity

This is an ecology blog! Or at least that’s what the title claims. So, we’re going to talk a little bit about biodiversity. We all know that over the course of life on this planet, there have been many mass extinctions and life rebounded each time. Not only that, life rebounded more quickly. The universe didn’t change its hostile, no, indifferent stance towards us. It is life itself that grew stronger.

After a catastrophe, there will always be at least a few species that miraculously thrive in the new environment, turning a greater tragedy into personal gain. You know, like those assholes who short-sell stock during recessions (a shady practice that only became legal again last year) or Apu in the Simpsons Movie (”please, please, can’t you all just be happy for me?”)

With more diversity of species, more such species will exist. Biodiversity protects biodiversity. Biodiversity means possibilities, and this vast pool of possibilities gave birth to our own species! So, we should respect this vast pool and realize it holds even more potential than we could even imagine. Maybe a rogue earthling bacterium transported by an asteroid is already colonizing another planet right now, slowly fermenting a possible sequel to man.

Too spiritual for you? Too ecocentric? Okay, let’s look at a more pragmatic argument that is just as strong to make sure you’re on the same page as me (even though this doesn’t pertain directly to this post’s point). Let’s start with medicine/biotechnology.

The human body is a vast, complex thing. We understand it more and more all the time, yet some things still allude us. We would like to believe we could build a human body from scratch and therefore reengineer it to fix any problem. The fact is, we still are to biology what a teenage hacker is to code. He knows not how to write a working program, but he can splice code with mixed success and even edit code. One time, he fixed a bug in a perl script, but doesn’t remember how he did it. So we are with our own bodies. We could not, for example, engineer regenerating tissue from scratch, but seeing that sharks have this ability, we just might be able to copy what we see. In fact, many technologies are copied directly from nature.

I just mentioned sharks, right? Here’s one good example of this. A few years back, noting that shark skin seems engineered to repel parasites of all sorts, the guy who discovered this looked at the molecular structure of the skin and made synthetic shark skin to use on navy ships. I just about guarantee that we would not have created such unless we discovered it.

I’ll end the pragmatic side of this argument by pointing out that our species (just like any other) relies heavily on a healthy ecosystem of ecological services, like filtering pollutants and recycling waste. Biodiversity decreases disruption in ecosystems from external factors. For example, if an area becomes warmer due to shifting currents or whatever, trees won’t disappear from the forest but instead a different tree will dominate. The soil will remain fertile, the area will remain not too hot, etc.

Even if you don’t buy all my arguments above, as long as you believe that biodiversity, i.e., the diversity of life, is good for life as a whole, we are good to go… (you needn’t accept that life as a whole is inherently valuable to accept that humanity as a whole is!)

Cultural Diversity

Now, you can basically replace “biodiversity” with “cultural diversity” and “life as a whole” with “humanity” above and you will still be making good sense. There are a variety of ways any cultural dimension can be, and the society or culture in question still function well and the people be happy. Given biological constants, there are amazing variations in thought patterns, taboos, norms, folkways, etc. Most cultures have their own strong points and weak points with regard to human happiness. So what could the advantage of diversity be? Many!!

We can see from histories of ideas that certain kinds of ideas came from certain kinds of cultures. If we had all the same people, but all thinking more similarly, then some ideas are less likely to have arisen or will have much more slowly, since different cultures are focused on different things. Zen Buddhist techniques of teaching intuition will some day revolutionize the West (computer science is just the start), while human rights are enjoyed in nations such as Japan where it is unlikely for such concepts to have arisen (since these peoples don’t buy into erroneous notions of the self we enjoy in the West, such as that of free will). The wonderful thing about ideas is they can be shared! So, when we talk about diversity, the best biological analog is to that of bacteria, where genes can jump from one species to another in a way that it doesn’t with more complex life forms. So, diversity of cultures means a vast marketplace of ideas with which to better society.

We also must be honest with ourselves and recognize that all cultures have advantages and disadvantages. Sometimes, a culture has a fatal flaw in it (and it may even be our culture that has such a flaw in it) that may lead to its own destruction, need for a painful transition or otherwise to great unhappiness for its people. If a culture copies itself, rudely edging out others like cancerous cells, then it may spread said flaw, causing vast unnecessary happiness. Whoever you are, please don’t delude yourself into thinking your culture must be better in every way. After all, you have an intimate knowledge of your own culture and at best a thorough knowledge of others (”at best” meaning if you’ve spent 30+ years in another country).

So, we must preserve cultures’ ability to copy good from other cultures if necessary and also to preserve (and even create!) diversity. This means that cultural imperialism or cultural genocide are no-nos.

The one negative of diversity that cannot be overcome is that no two peoples will always have the same understanding of a situation or even of what reality is. This is why the idea of getting two people to agree fixing a war doesn’t work (miraculous failure of Israeli-Palestinian dialogs demonstrate this, though there may be other ways to end the struggle without both sides agreeing…). Of course, attempts to fix this problem have caused just as many violent clashes as the problem itself. Meaning, even if we really tried to kill cultural diversity, we couldn’t destroy it completely. Look at the religious conflicts through the history of Europe that created no consensus (paraphrasing Thomas Jefferson). So, it’s better to let this thing flourish and be healthy and enjoy its fruits while being mindful of its thorns.

Against Missionaries, be their religion Christianity or Capitalism (or Communism)

Now, I mentioned yesterday my opposition to missionaries. Heh, no secret. I think in an early blog post, I jokingly suggested retaliation by cannibalism to such an offense. Absolute belief that your own culture is correct while others are sadly mistaken is not only bigoted, it’s highly illogical. As proselytizing reduces cultural diversity, I’m of course opposed to it. If everyone were religiously similar, their cultures would be since religion and culture are inseparable. To think otherwise is to not understand how very different modes of thinking can be. It’s important also to be humble and recognize that you may be wrong. Your own culture might be preparing to disappear up its own asshole.

So, you clever people might say to me, “well, you aren’t a Christian, so of course you are going to be against Christian missionaries!” Well, I am at least 90% certain that even if I were a Christian, I’d still be against Christian missionaries. How do I know? Because of my opposition to the violent proselytism on the part of a cult I do belong to - “freedom and democracy”. You see, our nation believes that attacking countries that don’t have basically our political system and installing said will result in world prosperity. It worked for Japan right? Well, ever since adding democracy, freedoms have decreased in Iraq, with the installation of Sharia law. When we hung Saddam, “the international community” (which means all the powerful nations) thought “justice” while Iraqis thought “revenge”. Even if it is beneficial for these people to “become free” (based on our culture’s limited definition), the fact is we failed to help them achieve that goal and we must respect their culture’s right to evolve on their own, at their own pace towards their own valid version of a happy society.
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カリフォルニア州最高裁、同性結婚認める判決

カリフォルニアにはホモとレズが結婚出来るようになりました。よかったね。
僕は白人なのに、黒人も票出来るのがよかった。
ストレートなのに、ホモでも結婚出来て、よかったよかった。アホなアメリカ人はだいたい同性結婚が好きじゃないけど。法律だけじゃなくて、人々の心が変わってほしいです。

日本には、いつか同性結婚が法律になりますか？

I was talking to a Japanese friend of mine, and she gave some good advice to me, using this idiom:

遠くの親族より近くの他人
tooku no shinzoku yori, chikaku no tanin

It renders awkwardly into English. The best translation I can come up with is “hold more important the stranger who is near than your relatives who are far away.” I destroyed the delicious succinctness of the original, but at least it sounds all proverb-y, right?

I won’t reveal the context of the conversation, lest I reveal awkward personal details, but it got me thinking. It is a good saying. You should give more heed to those close to you, since they are your new family in a sense. But why is it? The answer leads to my main point of disagreement with Peter Singer…

I owe it to myself to help myself, of course. And I owe it to other people to do what is in their best interests or at least not harm them (I extend this to anything that feels, but let’s not go there right now). The easiest people to help will generally be those the closest to me. Meaning, I can enhance their lives greatly with less effort than it takes to only slightly help those far away.

This is the problem with Singer’s utilitarian scheme: I don’t know enough about the situation to know when
what I’m doing is equivalent to pulling a lever and letting the train hit a Bangladeshi child instead of my 2nd home in Vancouver (note: I don’t have a 2nd home in VC, but that would be awesome!) And yes, I should do what I can to learn and understand more often and help more than those close to me. HOWEVER, my intuition, granted by millions of years (at least) of social evolution, that it’s more efficient to help those near me, those whose problems I am made most aware and understand most intricately, will tend to be correct on more often than not. I’m not wrong for wanting to help my neighbor, and placing more energy into that than to donating to Bill & Melinda Gates (not that I shouldn’t donate anything whatsoever).

The second main thing is this: emphasize connections that do exist over those you think should. Don’t forget those you spend the most time with, those who you’ve formed real bonds with and influence (and be influenced by) every day. This is a good point to raise to any left-wing racialist (i.e., the type found in Black communities, as well as Eurocentrist neo-pagan circles) - you may deem some man you truly have nothing to do with in Zimbabwe your “brudda”, but just maybe whity me is much more truly your brudda.

</rant>

Oh yes, enjoy…

With infinite possibilities, seemingly bothersome restrictions may not make any difference.. it may even demoralize to loosen restrictions or “burn family pictures to keep the house warm” when one could deem them absolutely inflammable and magically manage to find other fuel.

In episode 7, season 12 of South Park “Super Fun Time”, we see Butters adamantly refusing to let go of Cartman’s hand (it violates his very nature to break rules!) and the cast of the historic reenactment village adamantly refusing to break character. Despite refusing to budge on these seemingly petty issues, they triumphed anyway. Is the notion that restrictions could make the otherwise possible impossible may be very unlikely.

Here’s the real world scenario - torture

Forgetting for a second the heinousness of using torture, is adding it as an alternative likely to make impossible things possible? Will some disaster occur that could have been averted if only we allowed torture? Unlikely, though the uncreative mind would disagree. Notice that Cartman and Butters don’t even mention the possibility of letting go to get on the truck but go with the more elaborate swinging around. Cartman plays along with Butters’ more, just as Stan reluctantly does with that of the reenactors.

Imagine the hollow victory that would have been won if the cast broke their years-long (hey, they had a reputation that even the 911 operator knew of!) vow of in-character in this circumstance. It would then be excusable in any number of circumstances to break character. How sad that would be.

(some disorganized thoughts)

Humans as a species are more altruistic for their in-group, and more warlike and distrusting towards the out-group, generally speaking. Altruism of the out-group sort of course exists and for obvious reasons should be embraced and encouraged as much as possible. But the fact is cooperation is stronger for the in-group.

Humanity will increasingly meet challenges that require world-wide cooperation. Sometimes that’s “their” problem will cease to merely be “their” problem and become an “ours” as in Humanity’s. The likes of global climate change and spreading disease create this unique type of problem our species hasn’t truly met with before. Meaning, people who think they have the answer are generally wrong if their answer is simple.

So, why not expand the in-group as much as possible? Why can’t humanity see those of the same species as brothers and sisters? There are various obvious reasons why not, including an upper limit to how many people can be truly believed to be in one’s in-group, and the likely need for a common enemy (so, the thing that unites humanity could be the most disastrous for it - an alien invasion!)

The other reason why expansion of in-groups or “extended families” is bad is a sort of in-group viciousness that also exists. Taboos, mores, and folkways (that is, the same thing but decreasing levels of intensity) are enforced by people in a culture upon others. The culture is a functioning machine, and when people defy boundaries the culture relies on, it is like running the machine in reverse, or without caster oil - very bad.

So people naturally try to squash out behavior they do not like in their own culture, meaning that an expanding in-group can create intolerance where none existed before! An American may respect the culture of Afro-Cubans from a distance, but may be horrified to have chickens beheaded to catchy music in his own neighborhood. He just might not put up with it.

Observe where fundamentalists (and I don’t mean just religious fundamentalists, but including religious fundamentalists) direct their shoulds. They don’t seem to mind that the ideals they spew were rejected by Europeans generations ago, and never adopted by countless world cultures in the first place. They feel a sense of ownership over their own culture (and related cultures, American cultures). Would their frustration become violent if they felt such an ownership over more cultures? This question might become less hypothetical with time.

So, I don’t believe we can tap directly into the human tendency to be altruistic with in-groups directly. We can, however, indirectly. Last century saw two world wars. But, it saw 28 seasons of the Olympic games. Koreans wished to exact revenge on the Japanese for the occupation. They have yet to fire a single missile that way, but South Korea is kicking Japan’s ass in semiconducters (though they have a long ways to go to catch up in other areas of course).

A strategy something like this might work: reduce need for destructive wars (they will never go completely away; human nature), such as by limiting overuse of resources (we are already having water wars! look at Darfur closely…) and create more and more situations in which the natural need for out-group wars creates a mutually-beneficial situation through innovation. In other words, the out-group hostility is so strong, I think it would be wrong to not harvest it like coal!

Parting words from one of the great masters of hard Sci-Fi, a futurist and a believer in humanity.

Hello! This is Arthur Clarke, speaking to you from my home in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

As I approach my 90th birthday, my friends are asking how it feels like, to have completed 90 orbits around the Sun.

Well, I actually don’t feel a day older than 89!

Of course, some things remind me that I have indeed qualified as a senior citizen. As Bob Hope once said: “You know you’re getting old, when the candles cost more than the cake!”

I’m now perfectly happy to step aside and watch how things evolve. But there’s also a sad side to living so long: most of my contemporaries and old friends have already departed. However, they have left behind many fond memories, for me to recall.

I now spend a good part of my day dreaming of times past, present and future. As I try to survive on 15 hours’ sleep a day, I have plenty of time to enjoy vivid dreams. Being completely wheel-chaired doesn’t stop my mind from roaming the universe – on the contrary!

In my time I’ve been very fortunate to see many of my dreams come true! Growing up in the 1920s and 1930s, I never expected to see so much happen in the span of a few decades. We ’space cadets’ of the British Interplanetary Society spent all our spare time discussing space travel – but we didn’t imagine that it lay in our own near future…

I still can’t quite believe that we’ve just marked the 50th anniversary of the Space Age! We’ve accomplished a great deal in that time, but the ‘Golden Age of Space’ is only just beginning. After half a century of government-sponsored efforts, we are now witnessing the emergence of commercial space flight.

Over the next 50 years, thousands of people will travel to Earth orbit – and then, to the Moon and beyond. Space travel – and space tourism – will one day become almost as commonplace as flying to exotic destinations on our own planet.

Things are also changing rapidly in many other areas of science and technology. To give just one example, the world’s mobile phone coverage recently passed 50 per cent — or 3.3 billion subscriptions. This was achieved in just a little over a quarter century since the first cellular network was set up. The mobile phone has revolutionized human communications, and is turning humanity into an endlessly chattering global family!

What does this mean for us as a species?

Communication technologies are necessary, but not sufficient, for us humans to get along with each other. This is why we still have many disputes and conflicts in the world. Technology tools help us to gather and disseminate information, but we also need qualities like tolerance and compassion to achieve greater understanding between peoples and nations.

I have great faith in optimism as a guiding principle, if only because it offers us the opportunity of creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. So I hope we’ve learnt something from the most barbaric century in history – the 20th. I would like to see us overcome our tribal divisions and begin to think and act as if we were one family. That would be real globalisation…

As I complete 90 orbits, I have no regrets and no more personal ambitions. But if I may be allowed just three wishes, they would be these.

Firstly, I would like to see some evidence of extra-terrestrial life. I have always believed that we are not alone in the universe. But we are still waiting for ETs to call us – or give us some kind of a sign. We have no way of guessing when this might happen – I hope sooner rather than later!

Secondly, I would like to see us kick our current addiction to oil, and adopt clean energy sources. For over a decade, I’ve been monitoring various new energy experiments, but they have yet to produce commercial scale results. Climate change has now added a new sense of urgency. Our civilisation depends on energy, but we can’t allow oil and coal to slowly bake our planet…

The third wish is one closer to home. I’ve been living in Sri Lanka for 50 years – and half that time, I’ve been a sad witness to the bitter conflict that divides my adopted country.

I dearly wish to see lasting peace established in Sri Lanka as soon as possible. But I’m aware that peace cannot just be wished — it requires a great deal of hard work, courage and persistence.

* * * * *

I’m sometimes asked how I would like to be remembered. I’ve had a diverse career as a writer, underwater explorer, space promoter and science populariser. Of all these, I want to be remembered most as a writer – one who entertained readers, and, hopefully, stretched their imagination as well.

I find that another English writer — who, coincidentally, also spent most of his life in the East — has expressed it very well. So let me end with these words of Rudyard Kipling:
If I have given you delight
by aught that I have done.
Let me lie quiet in that night
which shall be yours anon;

And for the little, little span
the dead are borne in mind,
seek not to question other than,
the books I leave behind.

This is Arthur Clarke, saying Thank You and Goodbye from Colombo!

Here are some of the more obvious things that could help combat global environmental crises like global warming in a way that doesn’t crush individual economic liberties or doesn’t increase state control of the economy. This is all leading up to something. You’ll notice that for many of these, it’s simply a case of the cost of something not reflecting the environmental cost, due to marketing controls.

Of course, the ones of these that are both obvious and easy do get implemented - slowly. Green Scissors has their influence, but that only gets the really low-hanging fruits. I’d like to see leadership in the executive branch have the gonads to implement the obvious, but politically suicidal (particularly #2!).

I’m naturally more interested in the not-so-low-hanging fruits, but that’s the subject of past (and future!) blog posts.

1. End farm subsidies. They are the reason alfalfa is grown in the desert and meat is cheap. They only help the richest farmers, anyway.
2. Stop making gas cheap. End subsidies for gas, oil. The government fights the creeping “problem” of gas being expensive. There are many, many creative folks working on alternatives to hydrocarbons, yet here we are artificially reducing the demand for their work.
3. Make national parks, state recreation areas, etc. pay for themselves. Wild nature is a scarce resource. Charge for it. There is an opportunity cost in keeping these lands, and it costs money to clean up after the homo sapiens. For this matter, private corporations can do the same thing! It is unlikely a nature-enjoyment use of a land will win out against more exploitative uses in the free market often enough to preserve biodiversity, but stranger things happen (like churches being rich!) and rigging the game slightly in favor of such entities would be much less statist than so many other proposed measures…
4. Big business, trade unions are forces to be reckoned with. Though they may temporarily work to protect the environment, they are more often foes. The government needn’t (and shouldn’t) oppress these entities, but it can stop giving them unchecked political power that isn’t afforded any individual human. If asked to donate to a club the whales fund, I think you’re answer would be “pshaw!”, yet that corporation you own stock in, or that union you’re in, may lobby time and again against your wishes - without asking you once! Businesses and trade unions’ lobbying limbs exist to maintain status quo - but status quo is precisely the cause of our troubles, no?
5. Lower taxes. More money to donate to the Nature Conservancy. When people pay less in taxes, they donate to charitable causes, and some are bound to be environmental. Land-grabbing orgs large and small do much more using less, than the federal government.
6. Let the private sector feed the poor. Poorige is good for you and lower on the food chain. And, it’s cheaper (unless the government artificially makes foods higher in the food chain cheaper, which they do). Food stamps give you the power to buy the laziest foods, which also require the most industrial processing. Poor people have time on their hands, not money. Let them have potatoes, not potato chips. Oh, yes, and population growth is a doozy and when you must choose between feeding yourself or having a child who will stave, just maybe you might choose the former.
7. Enforce property rights. An industry doesn’t have any special rights to pollute my property.
8. and much more…