Consciousness (and bonobos)

Why am I me and not someone else?  Or why am I the me now and not a younger or older me?  If subjective experience is an illusion, could I just as well be anyone else so much as I am myself?  Am I any different from anyone who at any time ever experienced the shared illusion of consciousness?  Is subjective experience of selfhood a sustained self-deception?

Due to the interconnected nature of physical reality we are all linked.  This is an evolutionary fact.  Vast domains of life on Earth are the progeny of a a single ancestral lifeform, and it may in fact be possible to trace all life back to a single organism.  The illusion, valid so far as it goes, is that we are separate.  Lines can be traced backward in time that connect us all together.  The same lines extend again forward in time.  The individuals that compose a species are extremely similar to one another.  The species of a family, such as Hominidae for example, are very much alike.  (Looking at the photo of a bonobo from a book by Frans de Waal, I see such striking similarities to humans.  For more on these animals, read Bonobo Handshake, by Vanessa Woods, or Our Inner Ape, by Frans De Waal.  PZ Myers weighs in.)

Wise, Ruskin, Veblen

I watched Tim Wise: On White Privilege and was reminded of a book I read five years ago: Unto This Last, by John Ruskin.  Then I encountered some interesting references to Veblen goods when I saw an interview on the Newshour with Robert Frank about his new book The Darwin Economy.  As anyone familiar with Veblen goods knows, it has similarities to sexual selection. 

Why did Tim Wise catch my attention?  Anything that dehumanizes people, via prejudice or objectification, bothers me.  Emily Nagoski gave a good definition of objectification:  decreased perceived agency.  Anything that is contrived, coerced, uncomfortable, artificial, inconvenienced, unwilling, non-consensual, non-participatory, or in any way unnatural is probably, at least in part, the result of objectification.  Not always bad, but worth the introspection to discern. 

The mortal illusion?

Is there free will?  Morality?  Or even hope (in an Absurdist sense)?  Is the mind anything more than a machine?  Several prominent writers have suggested no to each of these questions.  If it hasn't already occurred, there may be some notions of "emergence" and "irreducible complexity" that will probably also be found empty and illusory.  Daniel Dennett is one writer who would agree, since he takes a deflationary approach to the hard problem of consciousness.  Opposed to this is John Searle, who is "anti-deflationary".  (Searle famously illustrated his perspective with the "Chinese Room" argument.)

Life is often characterized as having emergent properties, but if the same physical laws can be used to describe life and death equally well, where lies any fundamental distinction?  Before anyone cries foul, I am aware that there are relative truths and there are absolute truths (a Buddhist notion) and each should carry equal weight.  But wouldn't the distinction between life and death lie in the former category?  It is a notion that has served humans well throughout evolution as we struggled to survive in the forests and savannas, and now the concrete jungles.  But we know that living organisms can be reduced to "non-living" components and scaled back up again to living organisms.  Each state seamlessly emerges from and returns to the other.  Omnia mutantur, nihil interit.

If the difference between life and death is an illusion, it would be the greatest illusion of mankind.  It is certainly already the source of our greatest fears.  But Lucretius first made the point: when an organism dissolves with its body, nothing is essentially lost in any permanent sense.  To which I would add: love recognizes a common origin and destiny. 

See also: emergentism, supervenience

Witricity assisted cycling?

About a year ago I heard that Ecospeed was a great product for converting an EZ-3 recumbent trike to electric power assist.  Now Lightfoot, a recumbent cycle maker, has partnered with Ecospeed and is offering their models with Ecospeed options.  I would love to try one of these out.  Better yet, I would love to combine an Ecospeed equipped cycle with the technology developed by Witricity for unlimited electric power assist!  Why not charge electric bikes as they run along bike paths?  Although possible, for a variety of other reasons that day is probably a long way off.  Until then, this is the coolest thing I could do for my BikeE AT.

Hot Sheets Episode III: Look at the scienciness!

Great new books to read:
The Folly of Fools by Robert Trivers
Better Angels of our Nature by Steven Pinker
Lying by Sam Harris
Passing Pains: Revenge, Retaliation, and Redirected Aggression in a New Light by Barash and Lipton
Also anything by Tomas Tranströmer, and perhaps a few more Nobel laureates in Literature. 

Cool TED talks:
Jae Rhim Lee: My mushroom burial suit
Marcel Dicke: Why not eat insects? (like this one maybe)
Rachel Sussman: The world's oldest living things
Viktor Frankl: Why to believe in others
Graham Hill: Why I'm a weekday vegetarian
Craig Venter unveils "synthetic life"
Charles Anderson discovers dragonflies that cross oceans
Mary Roach: 10 things you didn't know about orgasm
Robert Lang folds way-new origami
Tierney Thys swims with the giant sunfish

Media fun:
Victor Stenger mused on the implications if effects can precede causes.

What I saw on TV:
Nova: Surviving the Tsunami – an excellent account given by survivors of the tsunami
Japanland – interesting series on Japan (made me want to buy sake)

Organism fun:
Tigriopus californicus "tigger pods"
Euphorbia lactea var. Cristata "coral cactus"

New photo blog

Stop by at Symbiosphere, a new photo blog I created to give my friends on Facebook something to look at, since I don't post anything much on Facebook as it is, but that may change since blogger's social networking abilities seem pretty limited. 

The Sauna Book, by Tom Johnsona and Tim Miller

This book, published in 1977, is large for a book about saunas.  Its length (partially due to including material on general construction methods that is better found elsewhere) and dated material could make this book tedious reading for impatient people such as myself.  This is the second book (see also Hollander's) that goes into length about having a plunge pool with a sauna, which the authors consider nearly indispensable.  The text could use editing for length and flow of subjects – it gives the impression of being hastily slapped together, despite being well researched.  Some of the illustrations are very good, while others are poor.  If you have access to other more recent books, such as Konya's (which is one of the best on the subject), then look around.  That said, there was a lot of good advice that is sauna specific.  The author repeats several times the importance of having the sauna door always open outward. (72, 113)  And recommends the window area in the stove room not exceed five percent of the stove room floor area. (78)  On the sauna floor, “cover the joists with exterior grade plywood... smooth side up.” (94)  He cited possible health risks of using plastic products such as “cellular or foamed polyurethane and polystyrene and its copolymers” for sauna insulation due to the high temperatures they would be exposed to on the walls or ceiling. (105)  This is a topic I have yet to confirm.  Regarding interior paneling, he recommends looking for vertical grain boards as opposed to flat grain, nicely illustrated. (108)  Galvanized or hot dipped nails go without saying as the only rational choice for interior construction. (109)  A 2x6 door is large enough (112) and an excellent illustration of how to adapt a hollow core door to the sauna and build your own window into it is shown. (117)  The author recommends using insulated electric wiring for any fixtures in the sauna. (121)  A sidebar to the text (annoyingly common in this book) describes how to cure a sauna once it is built. (122)  Platforms 30 inches wide for lying down seem over generous, but are recommended. (124)  A stove guard rail is nicely illustrated. (135)  And how to keep a tight chimney flue is described. (138) 

On the first page of this book I read “[sauna] is a cathartic experience”, an idea I had supposed was original to me, but now I see it must be more obvious than I thought.  The part of the text I paid closest attention to was that on drains.  “We have built saunas with flat concrete and wooden floors without drains and experienced no problems.  A small trap door in the floor of an elevated sauna and a driveway broom is enough to sweep most of the water out of the stoveroom, but if you have the opportunity and money to put in a drain, do so.  If your sauna is to be built of sloping ground and you are using a post foundation, your drainage problems will be minimal.  Simply build the floor with a slight pitch, drill a few 1-inch holes through it, and let the water run out onto a bed of gravel beneath the stoveroom.” (91)