August 2005 Archives

So, why is such a thing as calculus taught when they could just teach analysis, and it would be so much more interesting?

Weren't we just in a recession? In fact, I thought we still were. Not so according to some statistics I read this evening in this week's edition of The Economist. They published a ranking of the output gap--the difference between actual and potential GDP--of some of the world's major economies. Optimally, an economy should have an output gap of zero. This would mean that the economy would be producing at full employment with optimal levels of inflation. A positive inflation gap would be indicative of accelerating inflation and economic "overheating", while a negative gap would be caused by high unemployment and recessionary characteristics. According to the statistics (obtained from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) the output gap of the United States is "nil" (I love the British). Maybe the recession isn't so bad anymore, after all...

I've lapsed into a somewhat depressive state recently. Jonathan decided to bail out on the computer modeling project. I think this physics class that I'm going to be taking is going to repeat a lot of stuff from the AP physics C E&M. I checked out the textbooks from the library today, and it turns out that even though it's a sophomore class, it's not really an intermediate or mature development of electromagnetic field theory, but more of an introduction to electromagnetism. And there are virtually no upper division math or physics courses at Reed or Lewis and Clark after 12:30, when I get out of Wilson, either this semester or the next (with the exception of the two I'm taking). PSU would have more options, but it would cost somewhere between $600 and $800 per quarter. I think I'm just going to give up college next term and spend my afternoons alone studying analysis and differential equations. It's more efficient that way, anyway.

In some locales in the United States, there is a rather remarkable movement to teach in public schools an idea known as "intelligent design" (ID) as a competing "theory" to evolution. While a few individuals, such as the entire scientific community, have strong reservations about injecting ID into the curriculum of US public schools, the proponents of ID have amassed a truly astounding amount of publicity for their efforts that is energizing state school boards like that in Kansas to consider adding this highly controversial component to biology classes. Only fanning the flames of this debate, when asked about the matter by one intrepid reporter President Bush recently stated, "Both sides ought to be properly taught . . . so people can understand what the debate is about." Bush added: "Part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought. . . . You're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, and the answer is yes." Considering Bush's level of expertise on evolutionary biology, one should not necessarily take his opinions with much weight, especially when quoted as offhand as this. For the record Bush did say that the decision about whether to teach the subject matter should be decided by individual states. Certainly it is a wonderful idea to expose people to new ideas and schools of thought, but that brings up the crux of the dispute: should ID be considered a true, scientific school of thought appropriate to be taught in public science classes, simply because a group of activists has managed to elevate it to the level of a national issue? Addressing this issue properly requires a brief synopsis of intelligent design itself, before the barbs of argumentation can be hurled around.

According to the website of the Intelligent Design Network, "The theory of intelligent design (ID) holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause rather than an undirected process such as natural selection." Evidence for the theory can best be encapsulated by a statement from the same site, "Positive evidence of design in living systems consists of the semantic, meaningful or functional nature of biological information, the lack of any known law that can explain the sequence of symbols that carry the 'messages', and statistical and experimental evidence that tends to rule out chance as a plausible explanation." In essence, our understanding of the fundamental mechanisms for the development of life are not entirely and perfectly defined and explained without some dispute by current evolutionary theory. Intelligent design posits that because there are imperfections in evolutionary theory, and because there are certain structures that statistically were unlikely to arise by pure random selection, then there must be an "intelligent designer" that in some manner influenced the development of life on earth.

In debate I have often found that the most effective argumentation follows in the spirit of mathematical proofs. Whenever possible, persuasion should start from a series of universally agreed upon axioms, and continue logically in reasonable steps with minimal assumption and empirical evidence whenever possible. Assuming there are no major logical flaws in the case, the debater has boxed his/her opponent into debating the fundamental axioms (usually impossible), presenting a countercase under a different set of axioms (an uphill battle), or challenging the empirical evidence (only good when you have empirical evidence). Especially in the position of the opposition, this method can be used as a mechanism for reducto ad absurdum. Analyzing ID with this lens of discourse yields particularly interesting results.

So, let's start from the axioms. It seems very reasonable that science should be taught in all types of science classes in a public school. One of dictionary.com's definitions of science is: "knowledge or a system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws especially as obtained and tested through the scientific method and concerned with the physical world and its phenomena". The key in this definition is that science uses the "scientific method", which is to say that science is testable and based on a posteriori reasoning. It is the study of what we observe, and what we can infer based on what we observe. Scientific inferences also procede logically and exclusively. There must always be a reason for what we believe to be true, and those reasons must (at least partially) exclude some set of other explanations of the same phenomenon. If this were not the case, then one theory would be no more valid than another theory, there would be an infinite number of potential explanations, and the one explanation we selected would not actually explain anything since there would be no reason for us to think it more valid than something else. There certainly are limits to this method of inquiry, but that is where the realm of science ends. Science does not attempt to explain things that are unprovable by definition. For instance, while science can demonstrate and record no physical evidence of things like demons and fairies, many people would argue that they still exist. They are simply "choosing" to be undetected. Whether fairies and demons actually truly exist or not is in the domain of science but in that of metaphysics. All it can say is that the existance of such things is very, very unlikely.

These "axioms" are sufficient for our purposes. Now, consider the case of intelligent design. In order for it to be legitimately taught as a valid, alternate theory for evolution, it must obviously be science itself. As we noted before, one of the key characteristics of any science, theory and experiment alike, is that it must be based on a posteriori reasoning. In other words, we must be able to deductively show why currently accepted evidence exclusively suggests intelligent design as a valid theory of biological origins. As cited above, virtually all evidence for intelligent design is based on the observation that some structures in nature may arguably be statistically unlikely to occur by the most accepted mechanisms of evolutionary theory; thus, an intelligent designer is required. But this evidence fails to do what real science must. It fails to make any sort of case for why the "intelligent design" solution is more valid than any other crackpot, a priori assertation of the origin and design of life. Why should "intelligent design" be any more valid than the hypothesis that meteorites containing some pre-evolved life collided with the earth and led to the development of all terrestrial biology? Intelligent design is not science because its sole evidence is the incompleteness of one theory, and it does not make any connection from this incompleteness to directly substantiate its conclusions. It is a whimsical and nonscientific conjecture. Furthermore, intelligent design is, by definition, untestable, which defies another major criterion of science. There are no experiments that can be performed to verify the validity of intelligent design. If the notion of science being taught in science class is reasonable, then it is also reasonable that intelligent design not be taught at all. Bear in mind that this argument makes no attack on the validity of intelligent design. In my personal opinion, it is one of the largest, most disgusting loads de la chingada--perdon--I have heard in quite awhile. But people are free to disagree because intelligent design is not science and therefore cannot be proven or disproven in the convincing, scientific way... that is, until real science refines the theory of evolution to the point at which intelligent design is deservedly reduced to absurdity.

Today I discovered that one of the many ships I'm aboard has a hole and is sinking very quickly. My gamble on Merck stock took a turn for the worse when the verdict from the first trial in the Vioxx litigation came in favor of the plaintiff, awarding her over $250 million in damages for the death of her husband. And they say you can't put a pricetag on life... Texas law caps the potential damages at $1.65 million, however. Bear in mind that the husband was not officially reported to have died from a heartattack--he died from a fatal arrhythmia--and he was only using Vioxx for 8 months when he died--significant increases in the incidence of heart attack have only been observed after 18 months in scientific studies. Accordingly, the stock price fell 7% in the last hour of trading. But don't forget that there are 4,200 more Vioxx-related cases that are pending. Sigh... Maybe it's time to buy more... for the long haul.

"Heavier than air flying machines are impossible."

--Lord Kelvin, President, Royal Society, c. 1895

As if scheduling my classes for the upcoming schoolyear wasn't problematic and disastrous enough, I hit yet another snag this afternoon in a correspondence with my counselor. It turns out that the english class I was supposed to be in was overbooked. So my schedule (below) is now a nearly exact replica of Leeor's. Let me know if we share any classes.

0: Leadership
1: Spanish 9-10
2: Music Theory
3: AP English 7-8
4: Advanced Chemistry

In other news, the school only pays $200/year for college classes, meaning the cost of the classes and books could wind up being quite considerable over the course of a year. Finally, I won a $60 credit for Powell.com yesterday. It will probably get spent on books for class.

My blogging alter ego has been a little speechless and dumbfounded recently. I'm not sure why. Hopefully he'll make up for it today.

SSP has been over for about ten days now, and my reintegration into normal society has been smooth and enjoyable. I'm eating well again, and feeling much better because of my readjustment to a normal sleep cycle and the superior food supply to which I now have access. This past week has been leisurely. I have been enjoying the wonderful and accessable hiking here in SLC. However, a slow realization of my numerous time constraints has motivated me to be once again efficient. Last I checked, school starts in 30 days, and the deadline for the Siemans-Westinghouse competition is October 3.

I recently spent some time thinking about school, and two sentiments came to mind. First, I was overcome with a mild worry by the fact that I am just over 200 pages deep into the Brothers Karamazov--my first book for my summer reading--and I really wanted to read Crime and Punishment as well. I may opt for Dante's Inferno as a backup. The second, and infinitely more interesting feeling was one of immense dread, heading into yet another dolorous year of wasted time. Although I am only taking four classes at a high school, this is far too many. The last year of high school is quite useless if you are even a tad ahead of the intellectual peloton. It represents a barrier of silly requirements, unavailable higher-level/interesting classes, and academic sluggishness between the elementary and the intermediate stages of one's education. In nearly every field, classes at the high school level (regardless of the school) move at 1/2 the pace of college. One year of high school is equivalent to a mere semester at a university. Even the false idol of the academically keen student--the AP system--cannot force this pace to pick up significantly. Introductory high school classes are often prerequisites for the 'advanced' classes, which cumulatively cover little more than a year of standard college curriculum. This pace is slow and painful enough to easily induce boredom in any subject, no matter what the level of interest. Admittedly, I am in one of the best situations possible, having the wonderful opportunity of taking both math and physics classes at Lewis and Clark. But one more year through the slow slog of high school, with all its stupidities and irrelevancies, may cause me to break down. And it may cause you to break down too.

Okay. Enough negativity.

I do a fair amount of reading, both for school and pleasure. Mostly I read only one or two book by an author, but every now and then I will encounter an author that I find to be absolutely outstanding, and I will spend 6 months to a year "binge-reading" books by a single author. This has happened with people like John Steinbeck, Charles Dickens, and Aldous Huxley in the past, and now it has happened with none other than Fyodor Dostoyevsky. I have read The Idiot, I'm currently reading The Brothers Karamazov, and I have the intention of reading every other major novel written by the man. The plots of Karamazov and Idiot are mostly bizarre and cryptic, and they each have a certain female character--similar in both books--who is highly unrealistic but drives most of the conflict. Both books are composed primarily of long-winded arguments about human-nature and various other philosophical topics. Characters regularly speak in uninterrupted tirades that continue for 4-5 pages. Dostoyevsky has this wonderful ability to analyze the intentions of his characters to display the fundamental nature of things like greed, pride, and the role of morality in society. It is great. Absolutely great.

The other object of my energies lately has been the creation of a computer model using STELLA to determine the effectiveness of a number of methods of controlling the Asian rice gall midge, a major pest of rice in Asian lowlands. Jonathan Kadish and I are working together to build and test the model for submission to the Siemans-Westinghouse competition this fall. In addition to the STELLA model, we are hoping to have time to write a numerical simulation in Python that accomplishes the same objectives. We can then compare the effectiveness and predictions of the two models. The main difference between the approaches is that STELLA uses differential equations behind its graphical exterior to produce data, while the Python simulation will create "virtual" midges with certain attributes that are recalculated at each time interval according to certain rules governing the system. The Python simulation allows individuals' characteristics to be tracked along with the characteristics of the population, and could be much easier to use when examining the transmission of genetic resistance to pesticides between generations. It's going to be pretty cool when we finish (I hope). Right now, we have a working (although still not validated) model of an fully functional, isolated midge population with infinite food supply and static environmental pressure, which contains distinctions for gender and each of the four phases of the gall midge's life cycle. The Python model still has a few bugs, but is almost up to the same level of functionality. Right now I'm working on the model of the rice yields. I still have quite a bit to learn about rice, and I have to think some more about the design of the model before I start building it. If you happen to have an immense knowledge of the rice plant, let me know.