Filed under: Climate Change, Fermi's Paradox, General Musings, H. G. Wells, Science Fiction, Scientific American, Society, Space, Survival, Writing stuff
OK, this was kicking around in the back of my head when I wrote the post the other day, because I have had a page from the June 6th Economist sitting on my bench for the last several weeks, waiting for me to get around to writing about it.
About what? Us clever monkeys. Well, more accurately, our genes, but for purposes of discussion here I will say the two are functionally the same over the time span I wish to address. (Which, when you think about it, is a rather profound notion. No, this is not my idea.)
The idea discussed in the article is this: that the development of modern human culture was dependent not on intelligence, but on something more basic – survival. Specifically, on population density:
In their model, Dr Thomas and his colleagues divided a simulated world into regions with different densities of human groups. Individuals in these groups had certain “skills”, each with an associated degree of complexity. Such skills could be passed on, more or less faithfully, thus yielding an average level of skills that could vary over time. The groups could also exchange skills.
The model suggested that once more than about 50 groups were in contact with one another, the complexity of skills that could be maintained did not increase as the number of groups increased. Rather, it was population density that turned out to be the key to cultural sophistication. The more people there were, the more exchange there was between groups and the richer the culture of each group became.
Dr Thomas therefore suggests that the reason there is so little sign of culture until 90,000 years ago is that there were not enough people to support it. It is at this point that a couple of places in Africa—one in the southernmost tip of the continent and one in eastern Congo—yield signs of jewellery, art and modern weapons. But then they go away again. That, Dr Thomas suggests, corresponds with a period when human numbers shrank. Climate data provides evidence this shrinkage did happen.
Now, this is a fairly old trope in Science Fiction: that some cataclysm can result in the complete collapse of society, to the extent that most if not all knowledge and technology is lost. Just look at The Time Machine to see how far back this idea goes – and it has been used countless times since. I play off this trope for Communion of Dreams in a couple of ways, of course, using it as both back story for the novel and for the eventual revelation at the end of the book.
It is interesting to see this intuitive idea borne out by some science (though it sounds to me like there’s still a fair amount of work to be done to establish that the theory is correct). And not just because it addresses some curious discontinuities in the archeological record. Rather, it says that intelligence has considerable staying power, at least in our species. Sure, it may not be a sufficient factor in supporting true civilization, but knowing that at least in our case it can last some 100,000 years gives one hope for it lasting for a while elsewhere, even if those civilizations do not.
Jim Downey
Filed under: General Musings, Science, Science Fiction, tech, Travel, Writing stuff, YouTube
I’d sent around a YouTube link to some of my friends, showing what happen when a freight train encounters a tornado – it’s worth watching (stick with it to the end of the 2 minute clip!). But in the discussion about it on MeFi, someone posted the following item with Richard Feynman explaining just how a train stays on its tracks:
As I told a friend this morning: “I did not know that.”
And, thinking about it as I have gone through my morning routine, I keep coming back to just how clever us monkeys can be. The basics of modern railroad technology are over 200 years old. The solutions to the problems that Feynman explains in that clip are classic applications of mechanics & geometry – but they are still really quite clever, being simple & self-correcting (once properly constructed in the first place).
And yet, I did not know this. I’m reasonably smart, well educated, curious about the world around me, and with a high level of mechanical aptitude. Still, I did not know this.
Now, I don’t mean to over-think this. There is no end to the things that I don’t know. There is even a lot about the underpinnings of our current technology that I don’t have a clue about. Coming across something I don’t know about railroads should be no real surprise.
And yet . . .
This is something I explored a bit in Communion of Dreams, in the discussions about *how* intelligence or technological sophistication could manifest itself very differently in an alien race. I used one of the characters, who has studied the matter in different human cultures, as a foil for examining different strategies to achieve a given level of technology. Why? Well, for my own enjoyment, mostly. But also to prompt a reader to consider the matter from perhaps a different perspective. In fact, that is a lot of what the whole books is about. So I spent over 132,000 words trying to do it.
And Richard Feynman accomplished much the same thing with an anecdote a bit more than two minutes long.
Ah, humility.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Art, Bipolar, Book Conservation, Fireworks, General Musings, Health, Predictions, Preparedness, Publishing, Science Fiction
Well, it is for me, since yesterday was my birthday.
And it’s a bit odd, but I do feel as though something is different this time around. Usually, birthdays don’t mean that much to me. And I don’t tend to put a lot of emphasis on just numerical age – mine, or anyone else’s. Besides, 51 isn’t a significant milestone in any way – it’s not a big round number, it isn’t some threshold like 18 or 21, it isn’t even a prime number. It’s just 51.
And yet . . .
. . . something does feel different. Perhaps it is due to the fact that last Thursday I finally got the long-delayed physical exam I initially went to see my doctor for in September and the results were actually pretty good. In spite of all that I have done to myself over the years, I’m in decent physical condition. Surprise, surprise.
So maybe that’s it. Or maybe it’s because I have so much good work waiting for me to do – important work, worth doing well. Not just the conservation work, though there is a *lot* of that. But also work on the care giving book. That’s important, and will be a help to others. I’ve also been recently asked to join the board of a significant arts organization here in the state, as well as to apply for an important local government (volunteer) position – more on that when everything shakes out. There’s even a publisher who has shown some interest in Communion of Dreams, though I’ve been down that path enough times to not expect a pot of gold at the end. All of these things tend to bolster one’s mood.
So last night, as we watched a bit of the City’s fireworks display from our front porch, I felt happy. Productive. Strong. With a certain . . . resolve. I feel as though I have recovered a lot over the last year, found that parts of me have been hammer-hardened and honed properly.
It is a good feeling.
Whether it will last long, or not, time will tell. But I feel more complete, more prepared to move on and do the work before me, than I have in a very long time.
Happy New Year.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Ballistics, Book Conservation, Guns, Marketing, Politics, Predictions, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction, Writing stuff
By the numbers: this is the 700th post for this blog. We’ve had over 42,000 visitors, and almost 1000 comments. I have no idea how many people get a feed of the thing.
In the last 5 weeks, another 1,300 people have downloaded the novel, bringing the total to 15,500. I really need to figure out a way to sell copies of the damned thing, since interest continues to chug along.
Part of the bump up in downloads last month was no doubt due to the BBTI project. That has now had over 935,000 hits since the initial launch last Thanksgiving, and is up 165,000 since the ‘relaunch’ just three weeks ago. Wow – it seems like it has been longer than that. But then, I’ve been busy.
And I am going to be busier still – got started on the next round of books for a big institutional client yesterday. And I figure I have about 160 billable hours to do in the next three weeks or so. So forgive me if posting a bit sporadic for a little while.
Cheers!
Jim Downey
Some weeks ago, I came across a reference to a TV show from my childhood I had almost completely forgotten about: The Invaders. I checked, and NetFlix had it, so I added it to my queue. This weekend the first disk arrived.
It starts with classic 1960s graphics and ‘dramatic’ music, something like a cross between The Avengers and The Fugitive.
Then you get this introduction (taken from Wikipedia):
The Invaders, alien beings from a dying planet. Their destination: the Earth. Their purpose: to make it their world. David Vincent has seen them. For him, it began one lost night on a lonely country road, looking for a shortcut that he never found. It began with a closed deserted diner, and a man too long without sleep to continue his journey. It began with the landing of a craft from another galaxy. Now David Vincent knows that the Invaders are here, that they have taken human form. Somehow he must convince a disbelieving world that the nightmare has already begun.
And you’re off and running.
OK, a couple of things. The special effects are about on a par with the original special effects used in classic Star Trek (not the remastered version), which is to say “not great, but acceptable”. Except that introductory sequence, which makes the Moon look like a giant ball of mashed potatoes that has been lightly toasted. Seriously – it’s bad. And you can’t excuse that, since by the time the series was made, we’d already sent a number of probes around and onto the Moon, and it was well known what even the “dark side” of the Moon looked like.
Anyway, I’m just four episodes into the thing (I do intend to watch it all the way through), and I usually cut most TV shows a little slack at first, to find their footing and allow people to settle into their roles. But already the sense of paranoia is more sophisticated than I expected. It isn’t, as most of the comments I have seen about the show, just a rehash of Cold War paranoia a la Invasion of the Body Snatchers or other classic 1950s SF. Rather, it has elements of the counter-cultural distrust of government itself in it – the sort of thing which would come to play such a crucial role in The X Files almost thirty years later, and was considered ground-breaking then.
Looking for something old? You might want to give The Invaders a try.
Jim Downey
This may be even better than the White Rabbit mashup:
As the friend who sent this to me said: “Teeee-heeee!!!!!”
Jim Downey
Just a follow-up to this post the first of the month. From Richard Wiseman’s blog:
In short, all four trials were misses.
When I analysed believers and sceptics separately, the results were the same, with no difference between the groups. So the study didn’t support the existence of remote viewing, and suggested that those who believe in the paranormal are good at finding illusory correspondences between their thoughts and a target .
* * *
Update: I have just looked at the data from those who claimed some kind of psychic ability, and had a high confidence in their choice of target. This sub-group of participants also scored zero out of four.
Surprise, surprise.
Thanks, Richard –
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to UTI.)
Filed under: Government, Heinlein, Humor, Nuclear weapons, NYT, Publishing, Robert A. Heinlein, Science, Science Fiction, tech, Terrorism
Heh:
U.S. Releases Secret List of Nuclear Sites Accidentally
The federal government mistakenly made public a 266-page report, its pages marked “highly confidential,” that gives detailed information about hundreds of the nation’s civilian nuclear sites and programs, including maps showing the precise locations of stockpiles of fuel for nuclear weapons.
* * *
Several nuclear experts argued that any dangers from the disclosure were minimal, given that the general outlines of the most sensitive information were already known publicly.
“These screw-ups happen,” said John M. Deutch, a former director of central intelligence and deputy secretary of defense who is now a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “It’s going further than I would have gone but doesn’t look like a serious breach.”
Yeah, everyone knows where their local stockpile of enriched uranium is, right? I mean, really. I can’t see the problem here.
Jim Downey
*Sorry, I couldn’t resist the connection to Heinlein’s classic SF story “Blowups Happen” because of the topic and attitude.
Cross posted to UTI.
I’m not quite sure what to make of this:
Twitter’s first scientific study needs you!
Can some people correctly identify a place using mind power alone?
Psychologist Richard Wiseman of the University of Hertfordshire, UK, wants to find out, and New Scientist readers can help.
Over the course of this week, we’ll be carrying out an experiment to find out if there’s any substance to claims that some people are “remote viewers” – able to psychically identify a distant location without being shown or told where it is through conventional means.
I dunno – I’d think that twits and woo make a bad combination. The sort of thing that would have you hunched over a toilet after the party, if you know what I mean. But the way that they are doing it at least seems reasonable on first glance:
So, how is the experiment going to work?
Well, at 3pm (UK time) each day, I will travel to a randomly selected location. Once there, I will send a Tweet, asking everyone to Tweet about their thoughts concerning the nature of the location. Thirty minutes later, I will send another Tweet linking to a website that will allow everyone to view photographs of five locations (the actual location and four decoys), think about the thoughts and images that came to them in the thirty minutes before, and vote on which of the five they believe to be the actual target location.
If the majority of people select the correct target then the trial will count as a hit, otherwise it will count as a miss. There will be trials at 3pm on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday this week. Three or more hits in four trials will be seen as supporting the existence of extrasensory perception.
Not in any way scientific (I can think of many ways the results could be skewed), but could be interesting. And is at least as good a use of Twitter as any that I have heard of so far.
Jim Downey
(Via MeFi. Cross posted to UTI.)
Filed under: 2nd Amendment, Art, Ballistics, Blade Runner, Guns, Philip K. Dick, Ridley Scott, Science Fiction
a.k.a.: Deckard’s gun from Blade Runner, sold at auction earlier this month for $270,000. From The Firearm Blog:
At first glance the gun looks to be some sort of auto-revolver. It is in fact a Steyr Mannlicher .222 Model SL rifle action and trigger group with some revolver parts tacked on. Note the double set trigger and Steyr’s iconic “butter knife” style bolt handle. It even retains the Steyr serial number.
Man, what a piece of movie history. But then, you know I have a weakness for the movie.
Anyway, as mentioned the other day, we launched the revised BBTI late Thursday. Friday and Saturday each day the hits to the site went up by 10x, and we’re now at about 825,000 total. At this rate it should break a million by next Sunday.
Zoom.
It’s good to get this done and off on its own. I still need to do a write up for another firearms site about it this week, but then I’ll mostly be able to leave this project be for a while and devote my attention to other matters, including a not small pile of conservation work awaiting my attention.
But it’s good to be busy.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 