Looking for the Differences

I am struck by the otherness of things rather than their sameness.
The way a tiny pile of snow perches in the crook of a branch in the
tall pine, away by itself, high enough not to be noticed by people,
out of reach of stray dogs. It leans against the scaly pine bark, busy
at some existence that does not need me.

From Slate Star Codex:

This project seeks to explore the viability of spiritual or religious experiences as empirical evidence for a component of reality that transcends or is radically different from our ordinary experience. The question at hand is not the existence of God or higher powers, nor the failures, successes, or benefits of religion, but rather the role of spiritual experience in the human understanding of the nature of reality. We formulated the topic in controversy this way:

The empirical study of the content and nature of people’s personal spiritual experiences justifies taking them seriously as evidence of an important component of human life deserving of individual and collective exploration.

Our fellow human beings have always had unusual experiences that they found special and meaningful, but often struggled to interpret or place in the context of their ordinary lives. These experiences and their interpretation have aroused intense controversy, both because people have deployed them as support for their views on contested issues about the nature of reality, and because they may arise in settings where one could easily question whether the brain’s altered perceptions and understandings are enhanced or impaired. Another source of debate is how radically different individuals’ experiences—and their personal interpretations of the origins and meanings of those experiences—can be. Finally, spiritual experiences are often reported through a cultural lens that leads to questions about how accurately and objectively people could perceive and describe the unusual things that they perceived.

More here.

Philip Kitcher in the Los Angeles Review of Books:

During the past eight years, many astute people, inside and outside the scientific community, have worried about the quality of scientific research. They warn of a “replication crisis.” In biomedicine and psychology in particular, it seems that a high proportion of published results cannot be reproduced. The absolute number of retractions for articles in these fields are rising. Whether or not it is right to talk of crisis, it is certainly reasonable to be concerned. What is going on?

Explanations typically fall into three categories. One possibility is that contemporary science, at least in some domains, is full of corrupt and dishonest people who routinely commit fraud, making up data for experiments that were never performed, or misreporting the results they have actually found, or tweaking their graphs and prettifying their images, and so on. In short, these fraudsters intentionally attempt to deceive their colleagues and, ultimately, members of the broader public. A second possibility is that incompetence or sloppiness is at play. As in Nick Carraway’s verdict on Tom and Daisy Buchanan, biomedical and psychological researchers are quite simply careless people who make a mess for others to clear up as best they can. And the third possibility: Neither fraud nor lack of rigor is responsible for the problem.

More here.

David Byrne in Reasons to be Cheerful:

Around the world, the cost of housing is destabilizing cities. In Europe, low interest rates meant to spur growth have caused an affordability crisis. American cities are sprouting the kinds of slums usually associated with the developing world. Some have even argued that Hong Kong’s protests are, in reality, about a real estate market that has gotten so expensive young folks have essentially no chance of getting their own place.

What can be done? How can cities make sure that people other than the wealthy can find a foothold? A few places have shown that affordability is possible. One is Vienna, Austria.

A hundred years ago, in 1919, Vienna decided to do something about its shortage of low-cost housing for blue-collar workers and creative types. It began constructing publicly financed housing under a model that, over the years, has evolved into a system that works incredibly well. Far from being “projects,” “council houses,” or “schemies,” this is housing built by the best architects, where, over time, people of all income levels have come to live. It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty close.

Today, 62 percent of Vienna residents live in this “social housing.” (In New York, where I live, about eight percent of residents call public housing home.) This is a city that has, for many years running, been voted one of the most livable large cities in the world. Clearly they’re doing something right.

More here.

Summer Pretorius in Nautilus:

As a paleoclimatologist, I often find myself wondering why more people aren’t listening to the warnings, the data, the messages of climate woes—it’s not just a storm on the horizon, it’s here, knocking on the front door. In fact, it’s not even the front door anymore. You are on the roof, waiting for a helicopter to rescue you from your submerged house. The data is clear: The rates of current carbon dioxide release are 10 times greater than even the most rapid natural carbon catastrophe¹ in the geological records, which brought about a miserable hothouse world of acidic oceans lacking oxygen, triggering a pulse of extinctions.² Despite the evidence for anthropogenic climate change, views about the severity and impact of global warming diverge like branch points on a gnarly old oak tree (below).

The first split is between deniers and acceptors; only the denial branch doesn’t go anywhere—it’s just a dead stump, no longer sustained by the nutrients of evidence. The next bifurcation is on the root cause of climate change. Naturalists say “the climate has always changed,” which aside from ignoring evidence that the recent increase in carbon dioxide is from burning fossil fuels,³ is a diversion tactic for derailing meaningful conversations by stating the obvious. Of course, the climate is always changing; the relevant variable is the rate at which it does so.

If we follow the branch line that accepts the evidence for human-induced climate change, the next major split is between those who see global warming as a good thing and those who view it as a bad one. The former view an ice-free Arctic as a business boon for oil extraction or sweltering cities as an expanding market for air conditioners, or they are your clueless uncle joking about his property going up in value because it will suddenly be beachfront property.

More here.

Margaret Wardlaw in Guernica:

Madison was never expected to live this long. The doctors had told her parents she would probably die at birth. Surprising everyone but her mother, she seized and trembled, and refused to suckle—but she didn’t die. Madison never learned to walk. Her four limbs were spastic. She remained small for her age, and she never learned to speak, not even to say Mama or milk, or no. But she saw and experienced many things beyond seizures, infections, breathing and feeding tubes; beyond Christmases and Easters and birthdays, and the everyday intimacies of childhood. She was her mother’s joy, and knew a fierce and indelible love, breathed over her in a nightly vigil. It imbued Madison with the quiet beauty of a survivor. Whatever trials she endured, there was a sense that she was lit from inside by something sacred.

Still, there were the hospitals. The familiar scene, where doctors told Madison’s mother that her daughter would not survive, played out over and over as the little girl got older. She would get sick—her pulse quickening, fever rising, skin becoming clammy—and then she would get very sick, convulsing with seizures, rapid breath shaking her thin frame. But then, just when she was so sick that everyone thought it would be the final sickness, she would get just a little better. Each time this happened, Madison’s mother, living in ambiguity since her daughter’s birth, would trust the doctors a little less. By the time she got to the hospital where I was a doctor, Madison was almost eighteen. This time she really was dying. Sent to our regional referral center by her well-meaning rural physicians who thought they had nothing left to offer, Madison was barely responsive. The sliding-glass door of her hospital room framed a scene that was, at first glance, distinctly modern. State-of-the-art monitors spewed data, and machines pumped tube feeds and broad-spectrum antibiotics into her body. But Madison’s mother, keeping watch by the bed, her face bent over the curled body of her daughter, was a timeless image of suffering, like a stoic pieta. Except that she bore no trace of the placid, limpid resignation the Holy Mother always seemed to wear. She was unbelieving, and angry.

Your daughter is dying, the doctors at our hospital told Madison’s mother. Doctors always say that, she responded.

More here.

Massimo Pigliucci in Aeon:

These days it is highly fashionable to label consciousness an ‘illusion’. This in turn fosters the impression, especially among the general public, that the way we normally think of our mental life has been shown by science to be drastically mistaken. While this is true in a very specific and technical sense, consciousness remains arguably the most distinctive evolved feature of humanity, enabling us not only to experience the world, like other animal species do, but to deliberately reflect on our experiences and to change the course of our lives accordingly.

A lot of the confusion, as we shall see, hinges on what exactly we mean by both ‘consciousness’ and ‘illusion’. In order to usefully fix our ideas instead of meandering across a huge literature in philosophy of mind and cognitive science, consider a fascinating essay for Aeon by Keith Frankish. He begins by making a distinction between phenomenal consciousness and access consciousness. Phenomenal consciousness is what produces the subjective quality of experience, what philosophers call ‘qualia’. This is what makes it possible for us (and, presumably, for a number of other animal species) to experience what it is like, for example, to see red, or taste a persimmon, or write essays on philosophy of mind.

More here.

Tim Ventura in Predict:

Dennis, let’s start out by asking about the Vision for Space Exploration and how that relates to human expeditions to Mars. Taking into account all the political & economic uncertainty over the last few years, are human missions to Mars is still a definite yes for NASA?

Mars is a definite yes — it’s not a matter of ‘if’, but ‘when’. We need to do Mars both safely and affordably, but with today’s technologies what’s safe is not affordable and what’s affordable is not safe.

What we’re trying to do right now is to invent new technologies to reduce the cost sufficiently so that we can afford the right safety, and then we can go. The estimates are that it will take 15 years to complete the research and another 15 years for development — that puts us about 30 years out from Mars.

More here.  [Thanks to Huw Price.]

Meg Jacobs in Democracy:

In her latest book, Jill Lepore, a brilliant story teller, offers us the biggest story of all: who we are and how we came to be. She did that superbly in her one-volume history of the nation, These Truths (2018). But here the effort is more pointed; here, Lepore is telling the story of the past in order to fight the battles of today, and she is urging her fellow historians to join her in the campaign. By mapping out the past as a competition between liberal and illiberal nationalisms, the latter most recently reincarnated and promoted by the President of the United States, Lepore is directly entering into the political fray. Unless liberals embrace and reclaim the idea of American nationalism, they will surrender its meaning to Trump and his supporters. What’s needed, and what her history shows is possible, is a full throated defense of civic patriotism, celebrating a “dedication to equality, citizenship, and equal rights, as guaranteed by a nation of laws.” “A new Americanism,” she writes on her final pages, “would mean a devotion to equality and liberty, tolerance and inquiry.”

More here.

Ceri Radford and Chris Harvey in The Independent:

Books, books, books. They will increase your lifespan, lower your stress and boost your intelligence. They will give you fuller, thicker hair.

Whatever the breathless claims about reading, one thing is certain: losing yourself in a great novel is one of life’s most enduring and dependable joys. Job satisfaction comes and goes, partners enrapture and abscond, but you can always fall back on the timeless ability of literature to transport you to a different world. From Jane Austen’s mannered drawing rooms to the airless tower blocks of 1984, novels do something unique. They simultaneously speak to the heart and mind. They teach you about the history of our world, the possibilities of our future and the fabric of our souls.

So where do you start? It’s a fraught question, because the obvious answer – “the literary canon” – means a pantheon of predominantly dead, white dudes. The power structures at play for centuries have meant that a very narrow band of people have been given the opportunity to say something universal about the human condition. It’s impossible to ignore these biases: the least we can do is acknowledge them, include different perspectives, and point to some excellent resources here, here and here to discover more writers we should be reading. As it stands, whittling this list down to 40 novels has been a process that makes Brexit negotiations look simple and amicable. We hope you enjoy the selection – or at least enjoy arguing about who should or should not have made the cut.

More here.

Richard Sima in Scientific American:

Luke Miller, a cognitive neuroscientist, was toying with a curtain rod in his apartment when he was struck by a strange realization. When he hit an object with the rod, even without looking, he could tell where it was making contact like it was a sensory extension of his body. “That’s kind of weird,” Miller recalls thinking to himself. “So I went [to the lab], and we played around with it in the lab.”

Sensing touch through tools is not a new concept, though it has not been extensively investigated. In the 17th century, philosopher René Descartes discussed the ability of blind people to sense their surroundings through their walking cane. While scientists have researched tool use extensively, they typically focused on how people move the tools. “They, for the most part, neglected the sensory aspect of tool use,” Miller says.

In a 2018 Nature study, Miller and his colleagues at Claude Bernard Lyon 1 University in France reported that humans are actually quite good at pinpointing where an object comes into contact with a handheld tool using touch alone, as if the object were touching their own skin. A tool is not innervated like our skin, so how does our brain know when and where it is touched? Results in a follow-up study, published in December in Current Biology, reveal that the brain regions involved with sensing touch on the body similarly processes it on the tool. “The tool is being treated like a sensory extension of your body,” Miller says.

More here.

Rita Ferrone at Commonweal:

The most glorious journey can begin with a mistake.” This is the observation made by Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio in the opening scene of Fernando Meirelles’s The Two Popes, as he preaches to throngs of poor people in a Buenos Aires slum. It signals the central themes of the film: change, reconciliation, and hope for the future. The scene, shot on location in Argentina, surges with the energy of the people and the place. A kaleidoscope of color and activity soon settles into a moment of stillness and focused attention as Bergoglio speaks. He stands in the midst of all these people: not above them, but with them. And they are listening.

But what is the mistake? The first possible answer the film offers is that Bergoglio (played by Jonathan Pryce) has decided to resign from his position at the head of the church of Buenos Aires. He is tired and weary from the direction that the church is taking, and he wants out.

more here.

Katy Lederer at n+1:

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia’s Aramco IPO last month was the biggest in world history. Valued at nearly two trillion dollars, it is worth over 50 percent more than Apple or Microsoft. Even American billionaires like Warren Buffet and Sam Zell have gone long on continuing extraction. According to a recent piece in the Financial Times, they have been quietly buying up fossil fuel assets. “If Mr. Buffet and others are correct . . . that companies have been oversold, and are now trading at prices that imply a calamity that will not come,” the piece explains, “then the energy sector could be one of the big winners in 2020 and in the years to come.” The “calamity” the piece references is the possibility that global demand for oil and gas “falls off.”

On Sunday, December 15, after the Madrid COP finally came to a close, António Guterres, the Secretary General of the U.N., openly expressed his disappointment on Twitter.

more here.

Mairead Small Staid at The Paris Review:

Birkerts’s argument (and mine) isn’t that books alleviate loneliness, either: to claim a goal shared by every last app and website is to lose the fight for literature before it starts. No, the power of art—and many books are, still, art, not entertainment—lies in the way it turns us inward and outward, all at once. The communion we seek, scanning titles or turning pages, is not with others—not even the others, living or long dead, who wrote the words we read—but with ourselves. Our finest capacities, too easily forgotten.

Early in The Gutenberg Elegies, Birkerts summarizes historian Rolf Engelsing’s definition of reading “intensively” as the common practice of most readers before the nineteenth century, when books, which were scarce and expensive, were often read aloud and many times over.

more here.

From Literary Hub:

Happy Holidays, fellow Schadenfreuders.

As longtime devotees will know, for one day and one day only here at Book Marks—a wholesome and benevolent institution dedicated to helping readers find the books they’ll love by spotlighting the best in contemporary literary criticism—we your friendly neighborhood book review aggregators put on our black hats and seek out the most deliciously virulent literary take-downs of the past twelve months. It’s a ritual blood-letting exercise carried out in an effort appease the Literary Gods, thereby guaranteeing a good book review harvest in the year to come, and we take it very seriously.

Among the books lying prone on the sacrificial altar this year: E. L. James’ brain-bleaching Fifty Shades follow-up, Bret Easton Ellis’ needy screed against millennials, David Cameron’s bitter ooze of a memoir, and, of course, another Sean Penn novel.

Let’s get the knives out.

More here.

Sean Carroll in Preposterous Universe:

Welcome to the second annual Mindscape Holiday Message! No substantive content or deep ideas, just me talking a bit about the state of the podcast and what’s on my mind. Since the big event for me in 2019 was the publication of Something Deeply Hidden, I thought it would be fun to talk about the process of writing and selling a popular book. Might be of interest to some of you out there!

More here.

Edward Luttwak, 25 years ago, in the London Review of Books:

That capitalism unobstructed by public regulations, cartels, monopolies, oligopolies, effective trade unions, cultural inhibitions or kinship obligations is the ultimate engine of economic growth is an old-hat truth now disputed only by a few cryogenically-preserved Gosplan enthusiasts and a fair number of poorly-paid Anglo-Saxon academics. That the capitalist engine achieves growth as well as it does because its relentless competition destroys old structures and methods, thus allowing more efficient structures and methods to rise in their place, is the most famous bit of Schumpeteriana, even better-known than the amorous escapades of the former University of Czernowitz professor. And, finally, that structural change can inflict more disruption on working lives, firms, entire industries and their localities than individuals can absorb, or the connective tissue of friendships, families, clans, elective groupings, neighbourhoods, villages, towns, cities or even nations can withstand, is another old-hat truth more easily recognised than Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft can be spelled.

What is new-hat about the present situation is only a matter of degree, a mere acceleration in the pace of the structural changes that accompany economic growth, whatever its rate. But that, as it turns out, is quite enough to make all the difference in the world.

More here.