The State of US Science

 

From this piece in Nature news.

Cheers, 

Colin

Writing During a Busy Semester

 

Cheers, 

Colin

Reading Group Meeting #3 (Second Look)

This is the third and final meeting of the autumn 2024 reading group (see first post, and second post).

Part IV:  Society

Chapter 10

The chapter begins with the story of a young boy named Jorge who loved elephants and, when visiting a circus, was puzzled by how a large elephant could be restrained by a chain fastened to only a small stake in the ground. Surely the elephant was strong enough to pull that stake out of the ground, but why did it not do so?  This question stayed with Jorge for many decades, as no one seemed to have a good answer to this question.  One day Jorge met a man who had the answer.  When the elephant was only a baby it was first chained to the stake, and it quickly learned that its struggles to free itself were pointless.  So it accepted this fate.  When it grew larger and stronger, it continued to habituate to this limitation, despite the reality that it could free itself. This parable has significance for human societies and how oppressed groups and persons habituate to their situation rather than striving for emancipation.

The authors contend that unhappiness arises when there is a gap between what you expect (e.g. equality) and what you get (e.g. discrimination).  This is known as the negative prediction error.  If all that mattered was happiness, one might conclude that it is better for an individual to simply habituate to their circumstances, molding their “expectations” to match their circumstances.  But the authors argue that this perspective misses the long-term benefits of the progress discontents can bring about. 

I felt the authors were somewhat sweeping and cavalier in their conclusions in this chapter.  The themes of the chapter brought my mind back to the issues the reading group explored in Man’s Search for Meaning. In that book Frankel emphasized how habituation to his captivity, and his finding meaning and purpose in those dire circumstances, were crucial to both his survival and his wellbeing.  He underwent “adaptative preference formation”.  The prisoners that despaired and died could not bring themselves to align their “expectations” to their “circumstances”.  Rather than retreating into an internal world of meaning and purpose, shouldn’t Frankel and the other prisoner’s have plotted their escape (resistance)?  In other words, when is resistance vs adaptation the wiser/better strategy to pursue?  I don’t think this is can be answered in the abstract.  A lot hinges on the nature of the oppression/injustice in question, and the prospects for real success (and what one takes to constitute “success”).  And there is often significant uncertainty about the latter. 

In hindsight, after making substantive progress against various types of societal inequality and oppression, it is easy to assume that abating such injustice was always feasible, but for every successful example of a “moral entrepreneur” we might point to, how many people lived less satisfactory lives than they might have otherwise lived that did not make a meaningful change to the circumstances they faced?

Consider the following, complex, contemporary example.  Climate anxiety and distress, especially among younger persons (ages 16-25), is correlated with a perception of inadequate government response and feelings of betrayal. (see this).  One could construct two, diametrically opposing, stances to take on this. One stance would be to prioritizes the happiness (including mental health) of younger persons, and the other stance is to prioritize action to combat climate change.  Applying the reasoning of the authors of the book to this example, one might be inclined to say that the additional sadness, anger, powerlessness, and guilt younger persons feel about the situation is an acceptable cost for the future societal progress their anguish (presumably when coupled with social activism) will generate.  This stance would re-frame the diminished wellbeing of the young as a necessary cost of them being “moral entrepreneurs”. 

But another frame would be one which emphasizes instead the happiness and mental health of the young, something that may impact their long-term physical and mental health for decades to come (perhaps more than climate change will).  Rather than living their daily lives worried about the future of a warmer planet, and seeing themselves as the self-legislated moral agents charged with swaying global governments to alter their energy policies, they should instead prioritize actions, habits, etc. that will help them find personal happiness and meaning “in the here and now”.  Fixating their attention and aspirations on changing public policy in countries they do not even live in, let alone know much about or have any influence over, is not a healthy mindset to adopt. 

I think both sides of this polarized characterization of the issues makes some good points, but both sides are too extreme.  What is the judicious middle ground?  I think we should have some concern for the long-term prospects of both planetary and human health, but I also think people should be able to live their own individual lives (with personal hobbies, goals and ambitions) free from the guilt and despair fuelled by burdensome moralized ideals.  I would have liked the authors to have devoted some attention to these types of real-world complexities.

Group discussion:  one thing I would like to explore is what the insights from the book have for more mundane habituation examples, such as relationships and work.  Is it desirable to have “low expectations” in one’s relationships and career?  Or is it better to strife for more rewarding romantic connections and employment?  What is the healthy balance between adaptation/appreciation and striving for better?  Any thoughts you want to contribute on these topics? 

Chapter 11:  Discrimination

This chapter addresses why victims of discrimination are less likely to habituate to discrimination than the perpetrators:  because this discrimination violates the image of the self they have internalized. 

The civil rights activist Rose Parks is an example of a moral entrepreneur who, in 1955, refused to give up her seat on a segregated bus.  She was willing to face a fine rather than simply accept the discrimination and inequality of the culture norms of the Southern states at the time. 

Group exercise:  Which discriminatory attitudes and biases have you noticed you have been dishabituated to over your lifetime?  And what do you think helped changed your perspective (e.g. the media, education, greater diversity in the workplace and society, etc.)?  A lot of my own work research focuses on ageism and the stereotypes people have about older persons.  It is still a serious problem that persists to this day. 

I was too pressed for time to offer details on the last few chapters, but feel free to bring up any points from those chapters in our discussion on the weekend.

Cheers,

Colin

Optimus Bot and the Future

Throughout human history, civilizations have adopted relations of production that have enabled them to harness the full development of whatever technologies (productive forces) were available at the time -- from slave labour through to industrialization-- to produce things to meet material needs/preferences.  

I believe this historical trend will also (/already does) apply to robotics and the AI revolution.  Autonomous bot would, in effect, be the next "indentured servant" class for populations that have abated/ transcended the historical reliance on patriarchy and child labour. 

Cheers, 

Colin

Study on the “Illusion of Information Adequacy”

Interesting PLOS One study finds that, "because individuals rarely pause to consider what information they may be missing, they assume that the cross-section of relevant information to which they are privy is sufficient to adequately understand the situation".  Helps to explain why the echo chamber of social media is dominated by so many overconfident pundits armchair theorizing about complex policy topics. The abstract:

How individuals navigate perspectives and attitudes that diverge from their own affects an array of interpersonal outcomes from the health of marriages to the unfolding of international conflicts. The finesse with which people negotiate these differing perceptions depends critically upon their tacit assumptions—e.g., in the bias of naïve realism people assume that their subjective construal of a situation represents objective truth. The present study adds an important assumption to this list of biases: the illusion of information adequacy. Specifically, because individuals rarely pause to consider what information they may be missing, they assume that the cross-section of relevant information to which they are privy is sufficient to adequately understand the situation. Participants in our preregistered study (N = 1261) responded to a hypothetical scenario in which control participants received full information and treatment participants received approximately half of that same information. We found that treatment participants assumed that they possessed comparably adequate information and presumed that they were just as competent to make thoughtful decisions based on that information. Participants’ decisions were heavily influenced by which cross-section of information they received. Finally, participants believed that most other people would make a similar decision to the one they made. We discuss the implications in the context of naïve realism and other biases that implicate how people navigate differences of perspective.

Cheers,

Colin

Nature Aging Analysis on Radical Life Extension

Nature Aging has an excellent analysis piece on the future trends of life expectancy.  A sample:

We found that, since 1990, improvements overall in life expectancy have decelerated. Our analysis also revealed that resistance to improvements in life expectancy increased while lifespan inequality declined and mortality compression occurred. Our analysis suggests that survival to age 100 years is unlikely to exceed 15% for females and 5% for males, altogether suggesting that, unless the processes of biological aging can be markedly slowed, radical human life extension is implausible in this century.

Cheers, 

Colin

Obituary for Hayflick in Nature Aging

Cell aging researcher Leonard Hayflick (1929-2024) has passed and Nature Aging has a nice obituary here.   

While I never met him in person, last year we did share some email exchanges when he messaged me about the terminology of geroscience and biogerontology.  And his research on, and advocacy for, research on the biology of aging has influenced my own research.  This article is one of my favorite papers of his, which I often cite.  

A sample from the obituary:

Len’s most notable discovery was his demonstration of the finite replicative capacity of normal human diploid cell strains. Len remarked that he was unaware at the time of the prediction of August Weismann in the late 19th century that “death takes place because a worn-out tissue cannot forever renew itself, and because a capacity for increase by means of cell division is not everlasting but finite” (personal communication with M.D.W.). But he was, however, quite aware of the then-prevailing consensus that cultured cells — if provided the proper conditions for growth — would proliferate endlessly. This view was supported by research that demonstrated the long-term continuous passage of cells in vitro, including the tumor-derived HeLa cell strain and chick heart-derived cells (which had been shown to continuously proliferate for up to seven years in culture, during which time the authors Carrel and Ebeling calculated that if all cells produced during this expansion had been retained, the total mass of the cells would have exceeded the mass of the sun1).

Cheers,

Colin