Waste not, want not

When my mom was a child, she used soap her grandmother, who was a daughter of Utah pioneers, made from bacon and hamburger drippings for laundry soap. It amazes me that not really all that many decades ago people actually made things. I make bread; I occasionally sew things; I cook my own food instead of buying pre-made or going out. But there is a whole class of stuff I would never consider making, and wouldn't have a clue how to go about making.

I have been reading the Letters of Catharine Cottam Romney, Plural Wife off and on since I had Sylvia. The thing that's struck me most about the life she describes in her letters isn't the polygamy; it's the starkness of her life. She and her family lived at a subsistence level, growing just enough to live and probably not much more. Her most frequent requests from her parents (who lived in St. George) were for papers and for fruit, which apparently didn't grow in Arizona and Mexico. I may be a descendant of pioneers (as are the lovely young women featured on the DUP site) but the more I read about their lives, the more I realize my life is nothing like theirs.

The problem of belief, part 2

It's unfortunate that I didn't discover Radio West until after I moved away from Salt Lake. Fortunately for me, I can listen to Doug Fabrizio on teh interwebs.

Anyway, Doug Fabrizio recently had a couple of interviews that are germane to this discussion of belief. The first concerns the fairness doctrine, which was legislation enacted in an attempt to require radio and television stations to present balanced coverage of controversial issues. Apparently, right-wing talk shows are claiming Obama has designs to bring back the fairness doctrine, supposedly to "shut down conservative radio." Of course, Obama has no such plans, but that doesn't stop conservatives from claiming it's true, or conservative radio listeners from believing it.

The second is an interview with Bill Bishop about The Big Sort, a book he co-wrote about the consequences of the current trend where Americans congregate into like-minded communities. As he describes it,

...the country fractured in the 1960s — around 1965, to be precise. In that one year, trust in major institutions began to decline; membership in mainline churches started to drop; divorce and crime rates began to climb; allegiance to political party dissolved as people lost faith in traditional party labels; membership in long-standing civic organizations (the Elks, bowling leagues) started to drop, as did the percentage of daily newspaper readers. Society seemed to unravel all at once, and when it came back together, the broad-based institutions that had sustained this country were replaced by ones that were more politically homogenous.

For example, as mainline churches — Methodists, Episcopalians, Lutherans — lost members, independent and evangelical churches gained. Preachers coming through seminary in the 1970s and '80s, such as evangelist Rick Warren, were taught to build their congregations by catering to like-minded groups. This technique was literally called the "homogenous unit principle" of church growth and it was wildly successful in this new, post-'65 world. Similarly, just as the broad-based clubs like the Elks lost people, more targeted groups, like Common Cause, formed and found a following. This shift in association — from general to specific — happened across society. For companies, there weren't mass markets any longer, only individual consumers to be targeted and then supplied with just the product they wanted. The country sorted into separate groupings of lifestyle and belief. We left behind a country that was striving to be whole in 1965, with the passage of civil rights laws and universal health care coverage for the elderly, and we began to sequester ourselves into tribes of like beliefs, images, neighborhoods, and markets.

This homogenization of culture and of opinion discourages examination of beliefs. Admittedly, it's far more comfortable to be around people who share similar opinions, but the lack of opposition allows a sort of echo chamber to exist wherein opinions become more and more extreme. Debate, dissension, disagreement are discouraged by homogeneity--nobody wants to be different for fear of being ostracized, so we either modify our opinions to agree with the majority or find a new group with which we agree more. I don't think it's necessarily a good thing. While it's easy and comfortable to be around people with whom we agree, it allows individuals and groups to persist in unexamined, and potentially very wrong, beliefs.

5 months

I'm taking a break from my attempt at deep thought to post cute pictures of Sylvia. They're probably more entertaining anyway :) She's 5 months old today, and quite happy about her progress so far.









This is a picture Derrick's dad took at the shower Derrick's family held for Sylvia while we were in Alabama. What you don't see are the claws I'm extending into Derrick's knees. Those aren't bunny ears behind my head--they're horns!

The problem of belief, part 1

As a scientist, ones beliefs are supposed to be based on evidence and arrived at through logic (this is not to imply other people and other professions are not the same, just to say that this is the ideal for a scientist). Ideally, individual beliefs are constantly subject to revision, or even to complete overturning as more information is gathered. We are supposed to be rational and skeptical of all claims, requiring data and distrusting claims that can not be verified independently.

But scientists are humans, and just like other humans, it feels good to be right and bad to be wrong, and, even though we're supposed to take all relevant data into account, it's easy to ignore anything that contradicts what we believe. Scientists do a decent job of ferreting out the truth, at least on average, but it's also safe to assume any individual scientist is going to claim some things that are not true, or at least aren't supported by the facts, just like any other human on the planet.

A scientist spends a lot of time (and I mean A LOT of time) thinking about some question, in the process becoming an expert who is, more than likely, more familiar with their topic and its associated minutia than any other person on the planet. Although experts can be wrong for a variety of reasons, typically they are not, or at least, are not completely wrong. We scientists argue quite a bit in our pursuit of truth, but usually it's over minutia, not over the whole theoretical structure (mantle plumes being a notable exception, but there's no real way to resolve that one without an unobtainium ship capable of drilling to the center of the Earth a la "The Core"). For the most part, though, I am comfortable trusting the interpretations of other scientists, especially when I understand the data and logic that lead to those interpretations.

The thing is, I don't always understand the data. You can show me an fMRI and tell me what it means, but I don't have the training to really independently understand what it means. My trust is, in some sense, blind. There is so much out there to understand it really isn't possible for me as an individual to evaluate the validity of all the science I'm presented with, so I am reduced to simply trusting that the person measuring and interpreting their results is doing so in a way that is consistent with their data and consistent with previous scientific findings. As maligned as the peer review process is by non-scientists in particular, it does allow me as a non-expert to trust that the publications I read are rigorous and, even if they're not totally correct, at least they're not completely ridiculous. Ultimately, my trust of other scientists comes from a trust in the scientific method; trust in the peer review process; and trust in the cantankerousness and stubborn reasoning of men and women who, through time and thought and reason, have become experts in their fields.

Which is a bias that makes me no different from anyone else.

Nobody can go out and verify the reasonableness of all our opinions and beliefs. At some point we are all reduced to listening to expert (and not so expert) opinions to form our own. So, how do we choose who is an expert worth listening to? How do we choose who to trust, and over what topics we should trust them?

Fish and visitors

Derrick and I had a good time in Birmingham, but it was definitely time to go by the time we left. I'm not sure why we all got on one another's nerves so much this time, but we really did. The climax of the annoyance was probably about four days before we left, when Derrick tried to explain to his mother why scientists are convinced global warming is happening and why we think it's man-made. Derrick went slowly and made sure that his mom understood what the data were showing, and to make sure she agreed with the interpretation. As a heat flow person his argument was based on boreholes, which are also probably the most difficult to argue with since you're dealing with temperature rather than a proxy for temperature.

I'm rather impressed with Derrick's teaching, as a side note. He took his mom through all the steps at a pace that was very appropriate. I kept interjecting--I love talking about climate science and have a tendency to get ahead of myself. Derrick was much more controlled in his explanation. Something I'll have to work on in the next semester.

Anyway, we've had heated discussions before with Derrick's family. It's no secret that we're more liberal than them. As similar as we are in many of our values, our political leanings are not similar, and are becoming less and less similar as time goes on. Derrick's parents pretty much parrot back the Rush/Fox news view of the world, while we, NPR-listening, quinoa-munching liberals spout off about our liberal views. Most of the time we avoid talking politics, but this year--perhaps because Obama won--there were a lot more subtle and not so subtle jabs at one another's politics which climaxed in the discussion of climate (and taxes, and health care, and welfare--all the hot-button topics made at least a brief appearance). And let's just say it got a bit heated. We avoided saying mean things about one another, but in the course of the discussion it became clear that Derrick's parents completely distrust the government and the scientific community and are pretty much convinced that both are out to take their hard-earned money away from them. Which, of course, we as scientists dispute (at least when it comes to science), but we are incapable of convincing them. They are certain our chosen professions are basically out to hoodwink them. It's more than a little tough to take.

So, it was time to go home sooner than I think would otherwise have been necessary. It's too bad, too--Derrick's mom loved, LOVED having Sylvia around. In the future I'm sure my handling of Sylvia will be what causes the inter-familial friction. But, the experience really got me thinking about belief and the problems unquestioning belief creates, both interpersonally and in the wider world. Over the next few days (yeah, right!) I'm going to try to explore some thoughts on the problem of belief--how do we choose who to believe and how much trust to give self-proclaimed experts. Why are we so willing to believe people who don't necessarily know what they're talking about, and so slow to evaluate the veracity of their claims, and even slower to change our beliefs when something is dis-proven?

Wahoo!

Not that I care all that much, but Utah just beat Alabama. Pretty dang cool. Sad for my Mother-in-law and Derrick's Uncle (who are both Alabama fans). Neither Derrick or I expected Utah to win; certainly not to dominate so decisively. Good for them.

Aud Lang Sang

A year ago I was miserable and puking, I having stayed up 'till midnight even though I knew it was a very bad idea for me to not go to bed when I was tired. This year, I have a beautiful baby girl, who laughs and smiles when I give her zerberts on her belly, who loves the color red and the gentle tinkling of bells; and who hums as she suckles at my breast. Unfortunately, she's welcoming the new year with frustrated crying because I'm not laying next to her, providing her comfort simply with my presence. Sigh.