Life blog

Commentary on Synthetic Biology: Either. Or.

Either "Scientists should NOT be allowed to create artificial life"

Or "Scientists SHOULD be allowed to create artificial life"

Is this really the distinction? So black and white? And when is life artificial?

I guess the Economist is starting this discussion to answer those questions.

Images from James King (who I suspect might have been invovled)

Culture as Augmented Reality?

I was listening to Wade Davis' Long Now talk about the wisdom of ancient cultures. Like all Long Now talks, it got me thinking. One thing that Wade said that stuck out was that other cultures are not failed attempts at being us, but other interpretations of what it means to be human.

He did mention one thing that rubbed me a bit the wrong way. When mentioning Amazonian indians who have a hallucinogen that is made from two parts from two plants, he cited the usual disbelief from our culture of how this came about. He did mention that the indians reply that the plants speak to them. But I feel he failed to say that these indians are as scientific and explorative and systematic about their world as we are and that what was figured out generations ago is now part of how they interact with nature - the plants indeed do speak to them.

He also mentioned Songlines, the songs indigenous Australians sing when traversing the outback. The songlines are an interesting mix of information and culture used to navigate the world.

That got me thinking: Are songlines a form of augmented reality? Indeed, thinking about how the plants "talk" to Amazonian indians, might culture, our encoding of information and norms and etiquette and stories, just be an augmentation over the world, and augmented reality?

By the way, the rest of the talk was mind-blowingly awesome. Listen to it.

Image from StormyDog

Does paying off the creditors undermine social trust?

Via a few people I went and read Margaret Atwood's Op-Ed in the NYT (link below) about debt and its role in society. Nice read. For me the most interesting thing is the word for 'debt' and 'sin' are the same in Aramaic (see quote below). That turns 'sin', something to be ashamed of and a violation of something beyond society, to 'debt', something you owe the people around you - much more accountable.

Leads me to thoughts about different shame and guilt mechanisms some societies have, say Catholic vs Lutheran.

Hm.

In a related topic, did you know that even monkeys understand fairness (the basis for debt and credit)?

There was an experiment where they gave two (rhesus?) monkeys cucumber slices. No problem. But, then they started giving one of them a grape (much tastier). The one with the cucumber slice threw it back in apparent anger for being treated unfairly.

In another story, this guy got mauled by some chimps who were jealous of the attention (and cake) he had been giving another chimp (the guy was the chimps previously adoptive human parent). The angry chimps just thought it was plainly unfair not to share the cake.

Yeah. I think so much of our massive brain is geared to keeping (up to 150?) various combinations of relationships and debt-credit arrangements. Indeed, the whole human social system is based on tit for tat and retribution for those who violate this necessary social flow.

What do you think?

Link: Op-Ed Contributor - A Matter of Life and Debt - NYTimes.com

Once you start looking at life through these spectacles, debtor-creditor relationships play out in fascinating ways. In many religions, for instance. The version of the Lord’s Prayer I memorized as a child included the line, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” In Aramaic, the language that Jesus himself spoke, the word for “debt” and the word for “sin” are the same. And although many people assume that “debts” in these contexts refer to spiritual debts or trespasses, debts are also considered sins. If you don’t pay back what’s owed, you cause harm to others.

Image from Chrys Omori

Are Kosovars Albanians or Serbians?

I grew up thinking that nations should be the scale at which people are governed. I could not understand why Israel didn't just make all the Palestinians Israeli, why the Irish and British couldn't just let Northern Ireland be part of the Republic of Ireland. And, as the Balkans, well, balkanized, and the Soviet Union collapsed, why was everyone moving towards smaller units of government centered around cultural lines?

Well, I'm past that. I am beginning to see that the end of the last 10 years has been more about the end of nations, much like the end of the 19th century was the end of empires.

Taking this logic to a further level, I really think current national governments will lose their power as cities and regions (city-states, anyone?) rise in political and economic strength.

For example, many states in the US are clashing with the federal government, making stricter environmental laws. Cities like London and New York are no longer really part of their nation, becoming true city-states, their mayors meeting heads of state for political and economic reasons.

And, empires fell apart as a sort of national identity arose. But, now, there are regional identities that are stronger still, and cut along cultural lines.

So, are the Kosovars Albanian or Serbian? Neither. They are Kosovar, much like the Austrians are not German, but Austrian, or the French Swiss are Swiss, not French.

It'll be interesting to watch Kosovo form a real government and economy now that the question of their identity is resolved (at least for them). There's a lot a work ahead for them and the global economy was not set up for tiny states to prosper in.

Link: Frenzy greets the new Kosovo - The Boston Globe:

In a move that inflamed tensions in this volatile region, the ethnic Albanian government of Kosovo yesterday proclaimed the province independent from Serbia, forming a new and very troubled country in Europe.

A WiFi mesh network for the Haj

There is something absolutely exotic about this set-up.

Maybe it's the medieval setting, maybe it's the history of the Hajj, or maybe it's because the Saudis can be so hip and so anachronistic at the same time.

In any case, it's cool.

Link: Wi-Fi mesh lights up Mecca for Hajj | InfoWorld | News | 2007-12-19 | By Stephen Lawson, IDG News Service:

Hajjis, as the pilgrims are called, come to the city in Saudi Arabia from around the world for several days of religious rituals. More than 2 million gather each year. A network of about 70 meshed routers from Tropos Networks has been set up to provide free Internet connectivity, according to Denise Barton, director of marketing at Tropos. Users only have to register before using it. Barton believes it is the first public Wi-Fi network set up for the Hajj.

From the Boston Globe comes a great essay on colleges ignoring life's bigger questions

The Boston Globe has this great essay, by Yale Professor Anthony Kronman, about the teaching of the meaning of life in US colleges and universities. It's long, but an excellent read.

Link: Why are we here? Colleges ignore life's biggest questions, and we all pay the price (registration may be required)

The essay was prompted in part by the start of the school season in the US. The author ponders the history of the teaching of the meaning of life, tracing the history of upper education in the US in the process.

"In a shift of historic importance, America's colleges and universities have largely abandoned the idea that life's most important question is an appropriate subject for the classroom."

The author goes on to describe how the focus on research, while bringing great benefits, also seemed to give the humanities short shrift. I was once part of this focused research world. But, as one may be able to guess after being with me for a bit, or reading my stuff, it wasn't enough for me - there was always a part of me that had questions outside my domain. In college, I tried hard to get as much exposure to things like philosophy, art, history, often with more interest than my major subject (of which I took the minimum requirements).

The author makes a great comment:

"In the humanities, however, the legacy of the research ideal has been mixed. We know vastly more today than we did even 50 years ago about the order of Plato's dialogues, the accuracy of Gibbon's citations, and how Benjamin Franklin spent his time in Paris. But the research ideal has excluded the question of life's meaning from serious academic concern as a question too large, too unformed, too personal, to be a subject of specialized research. A tenure-minded junior professor studying Shakespeare or Freud or Spinoza might re-inspect every scrap of his subject's work with the hope of making some small but novel discovery - but would be either very brave or very foolish to write a book about Spinoza's suggestion that a free man thinks only of life, never of death; or about Freud's appealing, if enigmatic, statement that the meaning of life is to be found in work and love."

Heh, that's something I can sink my teeth into.

It was interesting to learn that in the 20s, the president of Amherst College, Alexander Meiklejohn, "defended the idea of spiritual seriousness in a nonreligious age, and thought it could be studied without dogmatic commitments". I agree with the author that we need more programs that do this, and the author lists a few. Indeed, my freshman year (the one year I was at Allegheny College), I was fortunate to take a humanities course that I can say significantly shaped the way I think, learn, and interpret the world.

And the author makes no bones about the complexity of the question. But it is the complexity that enriches the student:

"The first is that there is more than one good answer to the question of what living is for. A second is that the number of such answers is limited, making it possible to study them in an organized way. A third is that the answers are irreconcilably different, necessitating a choice among them. A fourth is that the best way to explore these answers is to study the great works of philosophy, literature, and art in which they are presented with lasting beauty and strength. And a fifth is that their study should introduce students to the great conversation in which these works are engaged - Augustine warily admiring Plato, Hobbes reworking Aristotle, Paine condemning Burke, Eliot recalling Dante, recalling Virgil, recalling Homer - and help students find their own authentic voice as participants in the conversation."

The author points out that in many ways, education has split long dogmatic lines, such as race and gender, and all that comes with political correctness. But my feeling is summed up as in the essay:

"There is an increasing demand among undergraduates for courses that address the big questions of life, in all their sprawling grandeur, without reticence or embarrassment."

Complexity and honesty are critical here. And this is about spiritual direction, a spiritual direction that the simplification of religion and belief have usurped.

"What it needs is an alternative to religion, for colleges and universities to become again the places they once were - spiritually serious but nondogmatic, concerned with the soul but agnostic about God."

And my thoughts echo what the author thinks, that this kind of education could go far in fixing the dogmatic thinking that now pervades the US.

"A richer and more open debate about ultimate values; an electorate less likely to be cowed into thinking that only the faithful have the right to invoke them; a humbler regard for the mystery of life in a world increasingly dominated by technocratic reason."

It's long, but a good read.

Incidentally, the author has also written a book (drink!) on the subject: "Education's End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life."