Skeptiko

A new podcast, called Skeptiko, has just started releasing episodes. It's about controversial scientific issues, and the scientific method. I've enjoyed the two episodes so far, so if you're interested in this sort of thing, you can download the shows from the official site or the usual way through iTunes.

The reason I mention this is to follow up my review of Dean Radin's book below. He was just on Skeptiko talking about the book and more. What I found quite cool is that the interviewer gave Radin several opportunities to put down "skeptical" critics - for example, by accusing them of fiddling with statistics in order to support their own agenda - but Radin did not go for it. Instead, he (rightly) pointed out that it's a double-edged sword. Every scientist, consciously or not, is going to focus on the results and methods that support their hypothesis, which is why it's good that there are proponents of both sides of the issue to bring balance.

Apparently Dr. Radin is now working on some research involving one of my favourite things in the world: chocolate. This place is where he gets the chocolate. I wish it was possible to taste things through a computer screen. If this research works out, I just might have to change my PhD dissertation to a replication of it. Of course, it will require constant sampling of the chocolate to make sure it's still good. For science.

Book Review: Entangled Minds: Extrasensory Experiences in a Quantum Reality, by Dean Radin

Wow. I'm always blown away after reading books about parapsychology. This is no exception.

Entangled Minds is almost like 3 books in one. It starts with a brief overview of what psi (i.e., phenomena like ESP and PK) is, with some examples, and an even briefer review of parapsychology's relatively long history. Radin is constantly pointing out that parapsychology research has been endorsed and conducted by top-notch scientists, including a surprising number of Nobel laureates. This might be seen as overly defensive, but it is necessary, given the common "no real scientists believe in psi" criticism. On the contrary, my experience has shown that the most vocal opponents of parapsychology are magicians, armchair "scientists", and other people with no scientific training. Radin points out that the most vocal proponents of psi, on the other hand, are the best that science has to offer.

The second part of the book is sort of a meta-analysis of meta-analyses of psi research. He goes over some of the major categories of psi research that have been conducted, such as dream studies (where one person tries to influence another person's dreams at a distance), presentiment (reacting physiologically to, say, a shocking picture, a few seconds before seeing the randomly selected picture), global consciousness (e.g. random number generators all over the world acted strangely on September 11th, 2001), and lots more.

This part of the book should blow the mind of anyone not already familiar with the research. It gives me chills even though I am. Radin shows that the results found would be astronomically improbable if chance alone were operating. Since chance is ruled out, he meticulously goes through alternate explanations (a bias in publishing, fraud, shitty experimental designs, etc.) and either rules them out completely or shows that even if they played a role, they cannot explain the overall results. The take-home message is that things like telepathy, clairvoyance, and psychokinesis really do exist. Not only that, but they have been clearly demonstrated in laboratories all over the world.

The strange thing is, from what I can tell, parapsychology research is conducted much more carefully than most psychology research. The effects in parapsychology are proven to exist to a greater degree than many effects in psychology. And, no offense to psychology, but parapsychology has the potential for discoveries of much greater importance, both scientifically and practically. Yet parapsychology is shunned, receiving a minuscule amount of funding and mainstream attention, while psychology thrives. I guess this is motivated by the same fear of the unknown that (temporarily) kept Copernicus from telling people that the earth isn't the center of the universe. But geeze...get over it.

Anyway...Radin does rely on quite a bit of math to get his points across, but it is not too deep and he explains it briefly beforehand. It should be easy to understand even for people with no knowledge of statistics. My only complaint is that most of the information was also included in Radin's previous book, "The Conscious Universe". The title of Entangled Minds implies that it will primarily be about the relationship between quantum physics and psi, but in reality most of the book is spent establishing that psi exists. The examples here are different and it is a good reference for "proof-oriented" psi research, but he really could have said "see my other book for proof, which I will now connect to the latest advancements in physics".

When he does get on to the physics stuff though, it satisfies the purpose that the title implies. Quantum physics is spooky enough on its own. Particles can be everywhere at once (or nowhere) until they are observed. A particle can be correlated with the observation of another particle that is miles away, with no communication between them. The observation of a particle in the future can even seem to affect a particle in the past. All this is stuff that mainstream physicists know and accept.

Radin essentially takes what we know about particles and expands it to a larger scale, including, of course, us. His main argument is that every particle in the universe is "entangled" (i.e. able to have the spooky correlations above) with every other particle. There is more to it, but at the very least, this makes it possible for psi to exist without overturning everything we know about science.

It's explained quite well, and he even manages to get across some very confusing quantum phenomena in a pretty intuitive manner (though I don't think quantum physics will ever be entirely intuitive to our big classical brains). If I had to complain, though, I would point out that he leaves some things ambiguous. For example, at one point he seems to imply that our unconscious is "in tune" with the entire universe, but we tend to focus on things familiar to us (such as a distant family member in trouble) for psychological reasons. We essentially filter out everything except the important stuff. But then later, he implies that people who are frequently physically close in spacetime are "more entangled" with each other. So which is it? Are we equally entangled with everything, but able to psychologically focus on familiar things, or are things that are physically close more entangled? Both?

(Side note: If it's the 2nd possibility, it would be fun to test. Have two people in close physical proximity for a few hours, maybe separated by an opaque wall, with half of them being aware of it and half not. Later, pair them up for a ganzfeld or something. Would mere prior proximity improve performance? What about later proximity?)

If little issues like this can be worked out, and details filled in, Radin could be well on the way to providing what could be considered the holy grail of parapsychology: An actual theory of how it works, with testable predictions. Scientists could go beyond proving that psi exists, and move on to figuring out how it works. Perhaps they'll even bypass the scientific bickering and move on to practical applications. Personally, I am getting sick of moving my physical body every time I wanna turn on a light. A psychic light switch would be so much nicer.

Anyway, I've gone on long enough. This book is well worth reading for anyone even remotely interested in science of any kind.

[Disclaimer] (in case future academic employers read this): I'm not directly involved in parapsychology. I'm not a believer in the subject matter of parapsychology, per se. I do believe in science and its methods, though, no matter what the topic of study. While there may be disagreement about what the results of parapsychology represent, anyone who reads and understands the literature would have to agree that something interesting is going on. I am not fully decided on whether I think that "something" is purely psychological, statistical, or paranormal, but any of these possibilities are fascinating and deserving of attention. [/Disclaimer]

Book Review: Sole Survivor, by Dean Koontz

I picked up this book for a few cents at a flea market, because I hadn't read a Dean Koontz novel in a long time, but remembered liking the ones I read as a kid.

Sole Survivor is about a dude whose family was killed in a plane crash. On the one year anniversary of the crash, he finds that he's being followed, and strange things are happening. The book starts out slow, but picks up in pace and scope, and is good light entertainment. I had fun reading it, but I'll probably forget I ever saw it in a few weeks.

Koontz is an OK author, but I often find myself taken out of the story by excessively cheesy metaphors. Most of the ending of the book also violates the big "show, don't tell" rule by having one mystery after another explained flashback-style. It would have been nice to have the climax of the book happen "on-camera", so to speak. Maybe if there were less words wasted on describing how the wind is like a pack of wolves, there'd be room to have the characters actually participate in the plot.

Still, it ain't a bad read.

Book Review: Stranger Than Fiction: True Stories, by Chuck Palahniuk

This is the first book that I listened to in audiobook format. That is, I downloaded an audio file of someone reading the book, and then listened to it on my iPod. I got it from Audible, which is a pretty cool site. The books are a lot cheaper than buying them physically, or even getting the same audio files from iTunes. And here's a secret...follow this link and you get two books for free. You're supposed to have bought a certain iPod accessory to get the offer, but it's not like they check if you actually have it. I just signed up, got the two free books, then cancelled the account. Nice.

Anyway, Stranger Than Fiction is a collection of essays that Palahniuk has written for various sources. Thus, it's sort of a mish-mash of random topics, some of which are fascinating, and others less so.

I enjoyed the autobiographical stuff the best. Much of it is about Fight Club, and the consequences of it being adapted into a popular movie. Palahniuk writes about how his jealousy of Brad Pitt's lips caused him to invest in a lip pump (sort of like a penis pump, but to give you bigger lips instead of a longer schlong); how most of Fight Club is based on true stories that he and his friends experienced, and the weirdness of seeing people imitating actors imitating characters in a book imitating real people; how people get annoyed when he doesn't reveal the location of real fight clubs. Funny stuff. There is also some material about writing itself. For me, it's always fascinating to hear about what fiction writers think about writing itself, given how mysterious of a process writing fiction can be.

Less interesting, but still worth reading, are some of the other random topics. The worst offender was the overly long chapter about people who dedicate their lives to building castles. I like hearing about the people who do that, but I really didn't need to hear the details on how to keep moister out of a concrete building.

Overall, it's worth reading, to see a bit into the mind of a unique author like Palahniuk, and learn a bit about some of the fascinating people and situations he has encountered. Especially if you are a fan of his fictional work.

One last note, though...don't get the audiobook version. It says "Unabridged Selections" in its title, which apparently does not mean you get the whole book. You get whole chapters (i.e. "selections"), but not all of them. I have no idea why two or three chapters were left out, but it sucks that I missed them.

New Words I Learned Today

• Hyperopia: An excess of farsightedness. Most people aspire to be farsighted. It's good to delay pleasure now so that we can be better off in the long run. But a recently published study (read about it here) interviewed people about what they regret. In the short term, people regretted partying when they should have been working. In the long term, though, people wished they partied more.
  
  On the surface, this seems like evidence that I should be partying right now instead of writing FOUR damn papers by the end of the month, but that's probably not the case. The people they interviewed were probably the ones who did work hard to get to where they were. They may regret not partying now, but fail to realize they wouldn't be alive to express their regret if they spent their entire life eating finger food and drinking martinis. I doubt they'd find the same results with less successful people. The homeless drug addict on the verge of death probably wouldn't say "yeah dude, I wish I partied more...my life would have been so much better if I had even less self control".
  
  Still, it illustrates that we should enjoy our lives in addition to working, or we'll hate ourselves later.
  
  


• Pseudocyesis: Fake pregnancy. This article tells the heartwarming story of a pregnant woman who went to see her doctor. She was quite far along, with a big belly, kicking baby, screwed up nipples, etc. The doctor, however, could not detect the baby's heart beat. After further research, he discovered that there actually was no baby. There never was a baby. She just wanted to be pregnant so bad that her body changed to look like she was.
  
  The hilarious part of the story, though, is that the doctor didn't tell her that she didn't have a baby. Instead, in a mind boggling breach of ethics and human decency, he told her that the baby was ready to be delivered that very day. Then he drugged her, and when she came to, he told her she'd lost the baby.
  
  You'll have to read the article to find out the rest. The power of the mind over matter in this case is fascinating, but equally fascinating is how horrible (but, looking back on them, hilarious) things have been done in the name of science.
  
  Thank science we have ethical standards now. Science bless you all. Merry Sciencemass.

Book Review: The Elegant Universe, by Brian Greene

It has literally taken me years to read this book. Not because it's uninteresting or anything, but because I have to be in a certain mood to read it. A mood in which I'm ready to read slowly and think deeply.

The Elegant Universe is about superstring theory and M-theory; basically, the "theory of everything" that physicists have always been searching for. It's written for a general audience, but still gets pretty deep into it - without much math. While that's a good thing, since most people (myself included) would need years of training to even begin to understand the math involved, it also left me with a feeling that I was always missing part of the picture. I guess that's unavoidable in a book of this sort, though.

The book answers a lot of questions, but also brings up just as many - most of which are things that the average person has never considered before. Many such questions are very very deep. So deep that it's nearly impossible to really grasp what's being talked about. Whenever possible, Greene illustrates things with 2 or 3-dimensional analogies, but again, you feel like you're missing something when, in reality, the theory involves 11 dimensions.

That's the thing, though - humans will never intuitively grasp a world with 11 dimensions. We live - and evolved in - the 3 space dimensions (and one time dimension) that we're all familiar with. Our brains simply weren't built to understand any more than that. Like a goldfish can never understand the math involved in buying a chocolate bar, maybe we will never fully understand the math involved in describing the universe.

People will damn well try, though. I have much respect for the physicists involved in string theory (and other cutting-edge stuff like it). Many would probably hate this word, but it involves a lot of faith. Faith in at least two things: 1) That humans are able to understand the universe, and 2) That the universe is understandable at all. As briefly discussed in the book, maybe there is no ultimate theory that ties everything together. Maybe planets just work a certain way, and photons work a certain way, and there is no connection between these two ways of working. Until they find it, these physicists don't even know if the theory they dedicate their lives to finding exists. Of course, they feel it exists, as I'm sure most scientists do. How could it not? And so far, everything has gotten closer and closer to meshing together cohesively. But it could stop at any point, and yeah, that feeling that it won't, in some way, that's faith.

These are deep issues, and I can't really get into them in a brief review, so you probably have no idea what I'm talking about. But if you want to have your brain challenged and get a better understanding of one way the entire universe might be explained, give The Elegant Universe a shot.

Video Games Make You Smart

I'll stick with posting about psychology, since school/work is all I've been doing lately.

I came across an article (Teasdale & Owen, 2000) which looked at trends in intelligence scores over the last few decades. As you may know, intelligence has been steadily going up over time. This study looked at a Danish population, to see if IQ is still going up. The graph above shows what they found. It's not going up as much as it used to, except visuo-spatial abilities (working with shapes in your head), which continue to increase.

Why is this? The researchers guess: "..it is tempting to speculate that [...] it has been growing exposure to video games and geometrically configured computer screens via operating systems, applications programs and the Internet, that have particularly accelerated the development of visuo-spatial abilities during the last decade."

So there you have it. Contrary to what some believe, video games are not responsible for the downfall of society; it's the opposite. Video games are making everybody smarter. Parents: start your kids off on the right foot. Get those toddlers playing Grand Theft Auto right away.

This also gives me an idea for my Ph.D. dissertation: "Does Playing Video Games All Day for a Year Make People Smarter? A Self-Administered Case Study. By Mike."

Here's the full reference for the article I'm talking about:

Teasdale, T., & Owen, D. (2000). Forty-year secular trends in cognitive abilities. Intelligence, 28, 115 - 120.

Psychobabble

You know, there are a lot of interesting things in the field of psychology, but not a lot of people know about them. When most people think of psychology, they think of Sigmund Freud sitting behind a patient on a couch while they talk about their childhood, while he fills out a prescription for crazy pills. That has very little to do with real psychology.

I think one of the reasons that most people ignore psychology research is that we use stupid jargon for very simple things. This makes us feel smart, but just confuses everyone else.

As an example, here is a line from an article I came across, defining what a "home page" is:

A home page is an entry interface of hyperdocuments for presenting a Website's information to visitors, which is mostly concerned with human perception in terms of users’ comprehension and mental representation.

Seriously. I barely know what it's talkng about. How about this? "A home page is the first thing you see when you visit a web site." Much better.

Book Review: Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk

Just finished reading Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk. Most people know him as the guy who wrote Fight Club. Invisible Monsters is so full of twists and turns that I feel that I'd give important plot points away with even a brief summary of the book. But basically, it's about a fashion model who gets her jaw blown off, and ends up going on a physical and psychological journey with some, um, interesting characters.

The style of this book sets it apart from most others. It's written like a fashion magazine; that is, it uses too many adjectives, the paragraphs are short, and it jumps around from topic to topic so that you feel like you're never getting the whole story at one time. I actually found that this made it more enjoyable to read, rather than less, though perhaps that just says something about my attention span.

The content is loud, shocking, hilarious, and campy. Easily disturbed or easily disgusted people will probably want to avoid this (though if you really wanna throw up in your mouth while reading, check out his short story Guts (click to read the whole story)). The themes running through Invisible Monsters will be familiar to anyone who's read Palahniuk's other novels, or seen Fight Club.

I've heard rumours that Invisible Monsters was being worked on as a movie. I find it hard to picture this as a movie, though. Without giving much away, let's just say it would have to employ some "unique" actors and/or actresses. I enjoyed the book from start to finish, though, so I'd recommend it to anyone with a strong stomach looking for a fun read.

I'm Back

It's a new school year, so how's about I start blogging on this blog again? Sounds good. As many of you know, I have another blog, but I only post relatively tame posts on this one (since it's the one I link to in my e-mail signature, and may be seen by people who have the power to hire/fire me). I've been slacking in copying the tame posts over to this one lately. Well, I just added a bunch of posts, and I'll continue to do so. I've also decided to get more serious about school and research, by keeping up with the latest literature in sciency stuff. This will probably translate over to this blog, since blogging about interesting stuff, and my opinions on it, will help motivate me to really think about what I'm reading.

See you soon.