Results tagged “humanity”

I’m a pretty avid reader. I’m a terribly slow reader, but I still manage to read between 5 and 10 pages from a novel each night before going to sleep. I usually read another 5 to 10 pages out loud to Terri before going to sleep. I also read lots of news, blogs, tech articles, articles from various evangelicals, fundamentalists, and reformed writers. According to my Google Reader statistics, I’ve blown through about 2,400 headlines in the past 30 days with 63 of them listed as “Shared” which is a pretty good indication of how many of those entries I’ve read carefully, so about 2 a day. I read at least one chapter out of the Bible to Gabe every night, usually one or two picture books to him before bed, and I’m usually studying or searching scripture for something two or three times a day. And I haven’t even covered the amount of reading I do for work with wiki pages, articles shared by coworkers, documentation needed to solve problems, new policies, important email, etc. Reading is pretty important to me.

I really love reading novels, though. I usually wish I could read way more than 10 or 20 pages a night. However, I have one major problem with novels and fiction in general. Movies and TV shows and plays and poetry and whatever else you might mention in the category of “fiction” all have this problem. The problem with fiction is that it’s fictional. Profound, eh? Let’s just talk about novels, though, knowing that the word “novel” could be replaced with any of these other forms of fiction.

What I mean by “fiction has a problem with being fictional” is this: the world in your fiction doesn’t have to have anything to do with the real world. Given that I’m often reading science fiction, it’s really not supposed to. That said, fiction (and science fiction in particular) is almost always a work of exploration in the realm of morals, values, and human nature. What would the human condition be like if dinosaurs walked the earth? What would happen if aliens destroyed the planet? What would happen if people could perform magic? What would be the implication if we developed a truly thinking artificial intelligence? Many books have tackled these questions in various ways. At some point, for these books to be interesting, they must intersect non-fictional reality.

And therein is the problem. It is easy in fiction to present a version of humanity that does not exist. For example, imagine reading a book where a benevolent corporation rules humanity. The company is driven to generate wealth for the upper management, yet it serves all the people, no one is hungry, or sick, or unhappy. Unless there’s some extra reason I should believe this would happen or something dark and sinister lying underneath it, why would you believe that would possible? Why should you? That scenario might make good satire or a setting for some dark dystopia or horror story, but is not believable as a setting for much else.

Similarly, when Star Trek presents a world where mankind has moved past the sins of history: wars and famines and poverty and greed and all that; one must wonder which humanity Gene Roddenberry was talking about. Homo superior sounds about as believable to me as the last scenario involving the corporate oligarchy. Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land or even Starship Troopers (not the movie, which barely has any similarity with the book) are similarly unbelievable in his rendering of successful communistic and militaristic libertarian societies, respectively.

I’m also a fan of Orson Scott Card, but the idea that humanity would unite so well under a common cause in Ender’s Game or that a human-built computer would really be successful as the conscience that prevents humanity from destroying itself in nuclear holocaust in the Homecoming series stretches credibility with me. Humanity has not, since the fall of the Tower of Babel, ever united in that way. Having built enough computer programs, the idea of making one capable of being a god that wouldn’t be an epic FAIL within in 6 months of being on it’s own is pretty hilarious.

All of these stories have taken a simplistic view of a system that is basically impossible to understand in a few hundred pages of text. If we were to really consider the full complexity of common systems like how all the people within a cultural area interact and how two cultures near each other meld together into a greater culture (folks in Manhattan, versus folks in Lawrence and Manhattan both being in Kansans, for example), you find a system that is fundamentally beyond human comprehension. No brain is big enough to comprehend enough of the facts involved simultaneously to understand why people work together the way they do. We can only generalize in the most vague of terms. Only great hubris allows a person to say he truly understands basic reality in any meaningful way. It’s not so much that there is no objective truth, but that without simplifying things down, we couldn’t understand even a small segment of objective truth.

Going back to the stories: these are stories that I found entertaining, interesting, and even thought-provoking. Yet, each of them failed to hold true to humanity in some important way. I won’t say I could do better because I know I couldn’t or at least I know I couldn’t on my better days. If I ever write a book, I’ll have to be sure to include in the preface, “I’m going to start by saying, I got this wrong. Humans don’t really work together this way, but they do in my head, mostly. I hate all the flaws in this book, but you have to stop editing the story sooner or later and may this be yet another monument demonstrating that human endeavors are imperfect and incomplete.”

Cheers.

There is a popular scientific hypothesis right now that has taken on extreme political and religious overtones in the last few years. I am, of course, speaking of the current obsession with climate change and global warming, particularly humanity's hand in these issues. However, I don't put much stock in the evidence to support the hypothesis that climate change over the past few years has been the direct (or even indirect) result of human interference with the atmosphere. I find that, after examining the evidence, I must side with the unconvinced against the so-called "consensus of scientists" that Al Gore has referred to regarding this hypothesis. Furthermore, I believe the current political and religious fervor that have glommed onto this theory demonstrate three forms of hubris that make it difficult for many of these proponents to think objectively on the subject.

Statement of Hubris #1: Humanity can manipulate climate. If we consider the small weather events that happen every day on earth we find that the amount of energy involved in some of the minor events to be well-beyond what humans are able to produce across the entire planet. In face, we use these forces to capture very small amounts of the power via wind turbines and hydroelectric dams. These human machines capture a minuscule portion of the energy produced by the earth's weather to power entire cities.

The claim is that very small changes in the chemical make-up of the atmosphere can yield huge differences in climate because of the massiveness of the system and that humans are making such changes. However, this doesn't really fly in the face of facts. Many natural disasters actual alter the chemical make-up in greater quantities than humanity does and yet the climate does not change very greatly. The sun has been closely linked to changes in climatic conditions here on Earth and on Mars with greater accuracy than many of the simulations run by the computers.

In short, I find that the hypotheses of climate change being lifted up here appeals to our sense of greatness and achievement in a perverse sort of way. We humans are really powerful, like gods. We are so great, we can destroy the earth just by releasing a few chemicals into the oceans and atmosphere. This is a sick kind of pride.

Statement of Hubris #2: Humanity knows how the climate works. This is a flat lie. I've been very careful to refer to humanity's influence in climate change as a hypothesis because that is all it is. We don't yet have a proper scientific framework for even handling the climate to any certain degree. In order for science to work properly you must first be able to create a testable hypothesis and then run repeatable tests that either help to validate that hypothesis or not. For example, one such hypothesis for climate change is that the massive hurricane Katrina was just a precursor for things to come because climate change would cause greater and greater weather disturbances as more energy was held in the system. Yet, the past two summers have not shown this hypothesis to be accurate.

Even so, this is still far to broad a hypothesis to be truly scientific. Science is about eliminating superfluous variables through precise and systematic procedures. Medical science has found double-blind clinical trials to be very useful in providing accurate tests for finding if a particular drug is useful for treating a particular disease. Chemistry uses controlled lab experiments to repeatedly attempt to provide explanations for how chemicals form and release bonds. Every branch of science develops procedures that when followed create reproducible results that either validate or invalidate a particular hypothesis.

Climatology finds much of its basis in computer models based upon other sciences, but the computer models aren't experiments of the real system. They merely predict what will happen if the climatologists hypothesis is correct. It doesn't prove anything scientific regarding reality. In fact, these models leave out huge amounts of important data because there are certain measurements that are difficult to take. For example, one of the most important greenhouse gases is water vapor, but there's no current way to measure water vapor amounts globally. Until there's a way for climatology to really test hypotheses on a scale that is reproducible and useful, climatology has no real support for the hypothesis for human factors in climate change.

When textbook writers summarize scientific research, they tend to say things like "X goes here and Y goes there." Yet, what the scientist actually said was more complicated, "X usually went here even though a statistically insignificant amount didn't in our experiments and same for Y." We don't know if those statistically insignificant things are truly just caused by extra insignificant variables we couldn't control or actually significant factors that we aren't aware of yet. That's why science is never finished, but textbooks give the false indication of the subject being closed. Yet, how often have standing theories been thrown out to be replaced by new and more accurate ones? It happens all the time.

This is an example of humans thinking that because they have answered some questions that we as humans know everything or at least everything important. Pride. In reality, we should realize that every question answered produces three more questions we don't know. Humility. Those questions might have very important answers that could change everything that came before.

Statement of Hubris #3: Humans are worth saving. This is the one that starts to get me laughing. The same people who get upset that humans are harming the earth are either the same folks or those causing a different group to panic and figure out how to save ourselves from this disaster. Part of the rhetoric is that humans need to take action to solve this problem before it destroys our economy, kills millions of people, or completely wipes humanity from the face of the Earth.

My laughing quickly turns cynical because this is the most significant factor in all of this. Politicians and wealthy men across the globe stand to gain a great deal if we listen to this rhetoric. Scientists are corrupted by a desire for influence as well. By controlling what we can buy or by providing new products that we must buy (e.g., taxes to pay for carbon credits), these powerful men can place themselves in a position to be the money handlers.

I've often heard the proponents of climate change theory attacking opponents by claiming that studies countering their view point were funded by corporations trying to save themselves against the truth. That may be. Yet, I can say the same thing about state funded institutions. Anyone who things that
state money is free from the same kind of corruption is completely fooling themselves. Anyone with half a brain knows governments are corrupt, but these people would like to indicate that only corporate funding is corrupt and that government money is pure. Hah. Politicians who desire more power for themselves control the delivery of this money just like corporate tycoons who desire more power for themselves control the delivery of private grants.

We have to go by the facts as they are found and try and discern which are right despite these corrupting influences on all sides.

Back to the point, humanity thinks very highly of itself when we think that we are really worth saving. Spiritually, I believe that humanity is precious because every man and woman is created in the image of God, but physically humanity is completely worthless because every one of us has rejected God despite the goodness of his plan for our lives. We'd rather have our own way than the best way. As such, Christ came to save everyone that would believe in him and his sacrifice for our sin. We each must pay the price of physical death once because of our sin, but that is the only price left to pay for those that believe in Christ. Therefore, as far as humanity is concerned physically, we can all die and the Earth won't be worse without us.

Of course, I don't believe humanity will die because of global climate change that we caused and I don't believe the evidence exists yet to properly support any hypothesis of the sort. Yet, people, in in their redoubtable pride, will continue pushing this hypothesis up as if it were fact to support our pride in power, knowledge, and self-importance until some other event, activity, or hypothesis takes up our fancy to help us do it again in a different form.