2008年11月5日 星期三
Capitalism’s effect on evolution
My hypothesis: Because in Capitalism medical industry tend to maximize its profit by selling drugs to who is not necessary(i.e. Healthy people), United States has become an over-medicated society. And as a consequence of over production and over consumption of drugs(especially Generic Drug), bacteria and virus has higher chance to expose to these drugs and develop resistance against them. Therefore, as a result, Capitalism increase the fatality of virus!
2008年10月6日 星期一
An issue of Causality in Psychology
I remember one time I was introduced to an experiment finding that human prepection process is very good at distinguishing action and facial expression in low definition picture. i.e. We could easily identify a hostile face from a blurred pictures. My question from that time till now is: Do we develop this capability after experience of exposing to real human facial expression? Or that is an inherent capability even before we are exposed to real human facial expression?
In the case of former, then we can deduced that logically, our Cognitive faculty through comparison with original template, thus is able to accurately guess from inadequate information presented. So that is a learned capability. On the other end, if we can recognize facial expression before we are exposed to them, that means the Cognitive faculty is prepared by evolution, it is especially adapted to recognize certain set of stimulates. Thus not all of the facial expression recognization capability is coming from learning.
That remain to be answered by psychology research.
In the case of former, then we can deduced that logically, our Cognitive faculty through comparison with original template, thus is able to accurately guess from inadequate information presented. So that is a learned capability. On the other end, if we can recognize facial expression before we are exposed to them, that means the Cognitive faculty is prepared by evolution, it is especially adapted to recognize certain set of stimulates. Thus not all of the facial expression recognization capability is coming from learning.
That remain to be answered by psychology research.
2008年9月17日 星期三
More thoughts on evolutionary theory
The hypothesis of Evolutionary theory is itself a tautology, it is a statement of simple Mathematical truth: Given anything that can reproduce itself, those who is more fitted for reproduction would have more ‘children’ then those who is less fitted. How can we tell the nature of reproductive fitness? We often do so by looking at the result of reproductive fitness itself, that certainly sound like a circular argument itself. The inherent difficulty of theory of evolution as a science is similar to History: Because we can’t do any historical experiment, and the question of external validity remain a headache for theory of evolution. It is difficult to exactly reproduce the historical condition when evolution happen, nor an experiment can be used to predict what has happened in the past.
Because evolution process had already happen, we simply can’t re-run the history to see what would happen otherwise, what we can do is to suggest the pathway which it may follow. However, there is always more than one pathway to arrive at the current result, therefore even if we manage to disprove one pathway doesn’t mean there is no way to get from here to there except by supernatural means. It is analogue to the idea of naturalism would can never disprove: How can anything beyond nature happened within the realm of nature? How to draw up an hypothesis or experiment that can give definite test to the theory of evolution itself? In what way we can disprove the process of evolution? In what way we can disprove tautology?
Because evolution process had already happen, we simply can’t re-run the history to see what would happen otherwise, what we can do is to suggest the pathway which it may follow. However, there is always more than one pathway to arrive at the current result, therefore even if we manage to disprove one pathway doesn’t mean there is no way to get from here to there except by supernatural means. It is analogue to the idea of naturalism would can never disprove: How can anything beyond nature happened within the realm of nature? How to draw up an hypothesis or experiment that can give definite test to the theory of evolution itself? In what way we can disprove the process of evolution? In what way we can disprove tautology?
2008年9月11日 星期四
Is evolutionary theory a better ‘explanation’?
There is a growing debate between the Creationism and Evolutionary Theory in USA as raised by Christian Right, and, of course it argue that the former is a better explanation than later, while scientist argue otherwise. Although this is the topic of my thesis paper when I was studying in a Christian College, I am not going to dwell into this issue here. There are good discussion of it on the Internet. My point here is to play Devil’s Advocate on the common sense that evolutionary theory in Biology is a better explanation.
What people often missed in the debate is what is qualified as an explanation? I would like argue for the point that although Creationism is not consider as an explanation since it replace one unknown with another, there are some issues associated with calling evolutionary theory an ‘explanation’.
Evolutionary Theory belong to realm of science, what essentially it gave is the how of the process of evolution but not the why. Some has considered that science is not suited to answer this set of questions. Although once we know the process, we can extend the theory to test its external validity(see if it can made accurate prediction), or even applied that to application in daily life (genetics); but can process be consider as ‘explanation’? Does knowing how we breath ‘explain’ what is breathing? Does knowing how our mind works means we can understand what our mind is? What I believe is that evolutionary theory is only the first layer of onion, the process of peeling the onion could go on indefinitely as we want it. Suppose we get the Physicist’s holy grail: ‘Theory of Everything’. Does it means not that we can further ask: Why is Theory of Everything is one way but not the another? Can we dig further into TOE and understand how is what it is? Therefore I could sympathy with religionists stop the investigation in the very first step, they may just know that they can’t finish peeling the onion, and they want to save time to do something else.
Evolutionary theory, in my opinion, by its nature is not really about explanation but predicting what is going to happen next, because what it said essentially is: Now is because of what is happened in the past led to this now but not the other now, follow logics from Mathematics and Statistics; plus some accidents.’ Thus Evolutionary theory, like history, suffer the same problem as it belong to ‘retrospective’ science. We can’t verify how history develop since we can’t test one hypothesis against another in the sense that the past is gone. How could we know what happen if ‘Martin Luther King is not murdered?’, or ‘Al Gore instead of George W. Bush is elected in 2004′? Similarly, although we can do experiment to test the hypothesis in the laboratory, but we can never be sure that the parameters in the laboratory is identical to the parameters of the part of evolutionary history we inquire. Therefore, the internal validity of experiments against hypothesis in evolutionary theory can never be completely ascertained (unless we have a time traveling machine to collect the sample from the past). And we also must not ignore that evolutionary process is full of accidents, since we don’t know exactly how those accidents happen, therefore the ‘explanation’ afforded by evolution theory can never be completed. It is not the fault of this theory itself, but because of the nature of object we inquire about. But it never rules out that there maybe better methods and framework (other than the scientific method) to understand the phenomenas of what evolution theory talked about.
Thus my conclusion is ‘Evolutionary theory’ is the better one at least because it could be argue against, and we can use this framework to build more powerful explanation; as compare to Creationism which can never be objectively falsify. Notice there is a philosophical bias toward intellectualism: Those which allow we to think and argue must be better than those doesn’t allow to think. Why must this be right?
What people often missed in the debate is what is qualified as an explanation? I would like argue for the point that although Creationism is not consider as an explanation since it replace one unknown with another, there are some issues associated with calling evolutionary theory an ‘explanation’.
Evolutionary Theory belong to realm of science, what essentially it gave is the how of the process of evolution but not the why. Some has considered that science is not suited to answer this set of questions. Although once we know the process, we can extend the theory to test its external validity(see if it can made accurate prediction), or even applied that to application in daily life (genetics); but can process be consider as ‘explanation’? Does knowing how we breath ‘explain’ what is breathing? Does knowing how our mind works means we can understand what our mind is? What I believe is that evolutionary theory is only the first layer of onion, the process of peeling the onion could go on indefinitely as we want it. Suppose we get the Physicist’s holy grail: ‘Theory of Everything’. Does it means not that we can further ask: Why is Theory of Everything is one way but not the another? Can we dig further into TOE and understand how is what it is? Therefore I could sympathy with religionists stop the investigation in the very first step, they may just know that they can’t finish peeling the onion, and they want to save time to do something else.
Evolutionary theory, in my opinion, by its nature is not really about explanation but predicting what is going to happen next, because what it said essentially is: Now is because of what is happened in the past led to this now but not the other now, follow logics from Mathematics and Statistics; plus some accidents.’ Thus Evolutionary theory, like history, suffer the same problem as it belong to ‘retrospective’ science. We can’t verify how history develop since we can’t test one hypothesis against another in the sense that the past is gone. How could we know what happen if ‘Martin Luther King is not murdered?’, or ‘Al Gore instead of George W. Bush is elected in 2004′? Similarly, although we can do experiment to test the hypothesis in the laboratory, but we can never be sure that the parameters in the laboratory is identical to the parameters of the part of evolutionary history we inquire. Therefore, the internal validity of experiments against hypothesis in evolutionary theory can never be completely ascertained (unless we have a time traveling machine to collect the sample from the past). And we also must not ignore that evolutionary process is full of accidents, since we don’t know exactly how those accidents happen, therefore the ‘explanation’ afforded by evolution theory can never be completed. It is not the fault of this theory itself, but because of the nature of object we inquire about. But it never rules out that there maybe better methods and framework (other than the scientific method) to understand the phenomenas of what evolution theory talked about.
Thus my conclusion is ‘Evolutionary theory’ is the better one at least because it could be argue against, and we can use this framework to build more powerful explanation; as compare to Creationism which can never be objectively falsify. Notice there is a philosophical bias toward intellectualism: Those which allow we to think and argue must be better than those doesn’t allow to think. Why must this be right?
2008年8月6日 星期三
甜與酸、甜與鹹及其他
甜與酸不是在化學上對立,只是在人的神經系統演化中,即人的舌頭中,甜與酸的感覺是互相排斥。甜與酸唯一算得上在某種意義上相反的地方,是的甜的東西放得 太耐變酸,而人體需要甜的東西作為能量來源,但酸的東西因為是欠缺能量或者是已經變壞,甚至對人的健康有害,因此人天生有一種喜甜厭酸的趨向。因為人的神 經系統的設計給予甜與酸一種相反的具體表現在,如果吃完甜的東西不去喝位水清清口腔(清洗味覺神經的記憶),再去吃比較不甜的東西,人就會覺得酸。
甜與鹹的相反的意義則只表現在中國人吃東西的習慣上,因為中國人通常是吃完鹹再吃鹹,又或者一餐只吃甜或鹹,較少會甜與鹹夾雜在菜式中。甜與鹹對於人的神經系統來說,只代表兩種不同的食物,本質上並無相反的關係。
其實甜與酸、甜與鹹相反與不相反,和化學性質無關,只是和人的生理需要甚至更高層次的飲食文化有關,如果人類不是人,或者又另一套演化的歷史,則甜、酸、鹹的對應關係就不同,甚至不再用甜、酸、鹹來分辦食物,甜、酸、鹹是人類演化的產物。
甜與鹹的相反的意義則只表現在中國人吃東西的習慣上,因為中國人通常是吃完鹹再吃鹹,又或者一餐只吃甜或鹹,較少會甜與鹹夾雜在菜式中。甜與鹹對於人的神經系統來說,只代表兩種不同的食物,本質上並無相反的關係。
其實甜與酸、甜與鹹相反與不相反,和化學性質無關,只是和人的生理需要甚至更高層次的飲食文化有關,如果人類不是人,或者又另一套演化的歷史,則甜、酸、鹹的對應關係就不同,甚至不再用甜、酸、鹹來分辦食物,甜、酸、鹹是人類演化的產物。
2008年6月13日 星期五
Evolution and Psychohistory
The disciple of Psychohistory function somewhat like Social Psychology, it is about predicting group behavior as a whole. The difference is which later doesn’t claim to have the capability of foreseeing the future, rather it is about observe and generalize from existing behavior of the mass; while the former is about extrapolating existing behavior of the mass to the future.
Evolution is, in a sense, about the future of the group by observing the changed happen in the past. Again, much like Social Psychology, it doesn’t claim to able to make sweeping generalization from its theory on the level of individual. We could only to infer result of Evolution on the group as a whole. However since Evolution is ‘intended’ to work on the level of the species as a while, however, the main vehicle which that evolution it happen is through genes of individual, therefore only manifest itself through certain behavioral tendencies on the individual level. That is also the level which Psychology
come into play, therefore it is difficult to discern the effect of Evolution at work in individual level. That is also the level which Psychohistory manifest itself, though it is too minimal to observe.
Evolution is, in a sense, about the future of the group by observing the changed happen in the past. Again, much like Social Psychology, it doesn’t claim to able to make sweeping generalization from its theory on the level of individual. We could only to infer result of Evolution on the group as a whole. However since Evolution is ‘intended’ to work on the level of the species as a while, however, the main vehicle which that evolution it happen is through genes of individual, therefore only manifest itself through certain behavioral tendencies on the individual level. That is also the level which Psychology
come into play, therefore it is difficult to discern the effect of Evolution at work in individual level. That is also the level which Psychohistory manifest itself, though it is too minimal to observe.
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