Books III

I do book reviews once in a while, but I've been naughty and haven't done one in months... To make up for it, here are no less that 8 mini-reviews.

Somewhat strangely, I was introduced to the theory of evolution by natural selection (while I was in high school) through evolutionary psychology, specifically, through Steven Pinker’s How the Mind Works. And, following Pinker’s references, I read Dawkins, Dennett, Cosmides, Tooby and that crowd. To put it mildly, Stephen Jay Gould was never popular with these writers so I found myself being suspicious of and vaguely hostile to Gould, despite having read only bits of his work. When I came across a collection of Gould’s writings, The Richness of Life, in a bookshop last year it struck me how unreasonable this attitude was: partisans never paint a flattering picture of their opponents. I would have to read Gould himself to come to a fair assessment. So I bought the book and read all 600+ pages and I am extremely glad I did. Gould was without doubt a masterful essayist, a stupendously gifted writer, enormously erudite and capable of making charming connections between seemingly disparate topics. In fact, I would go as far as to say that Gould was one of the greatest 20th century essayists, up there with Medawar and Berlin.
That is not to say that I agree with Gould about everything or that I think his work was uniformly excellent. On the contrary, I think “The Spandrels of San Marco” was a travesty (and unoriginal to boot), and “More Things in Heaven and Earth” (his infamous New York Review of Books piece) was just horrendous. Gould's views about evolutionary psychology (“ultra-Darwinism” he called it) and the evolution of the human mind generally were silly. And, the actions of Science For the People – with which Gould was centrally involved – were inexcusable. Moreover, Gould misled the public because he failed to be clear about when he was explaining or illustrating settled science and when he was engaging in partisan debate.
All that said, I don’t think we should condemn him too much: it’s human (‘all too human’) to be led astray by one’s passionate political and moral convictions. Besides, there is no doubt that nearly anyone has much to learn from Gould and that his essays are, on the whole, delightful, cogent and enlightening. Read Gould (but with eyes open and pinches of salt at the ready).

Unfortunately, South Africa does not have very many science journalists who know their stuff (see George Claassen on this point), so we better support and treasure the ones we do have. Leonie Joubert (who blogs and has a Mail & Guardian column) is certainly on the side of science and reason and, yes, she knows her stuff. Scorched, her first book, is a riveting and beautiful account of the science of climate change and the projected effect this will have on South Africa. While not perfect (there are a few stylistic solecisms, there are missing references and Joubert sometimes bombards her readers with facts) Scorched ought to be widely read. The South African reality-based community, at a minimum, should all go out and buy this book and policy-makers would do well to pay attention.

The Tipping Point, published in 2000, is Malcolm Gladwell’s first book and though it is considerably less serious than his subsequent offerings, it is still worth a read. (It helps that it is short and very easy to read – I finished it in a couple of hours). The book, says Gladwell, is a biography of an idea: that products, messages and behaviors spread like epidemics. Broadly speaking, then, Gladwell is popularizing a kind of memetics, with the addition that ‘little causes can have big effects’ and that there can thus be dramatic and rapid changes when the Tipping Point is crossed. Gladwell illustrates these ideas with his trademark case studies and anecdotes, in this case, the sudden popularity of Hush Puppies in the 1990s, the dramatic fall in crime in New York, the success of Sesame Street, suicide in Micronesia, and others. Along the way, he outlines three ‘rules’ of the Tipping Point: the Law of the Few (“a tiny percentage of people do the majority of the work” [p. 19] and these people can be divided into Connectors, Mavens, and Salesmen), the Stickiness Factor (“there are specific ways of making a contagious message memorable” [p. 25], often by tinkering at the margins [p. 131]), and the Power of Context (“human beings are a lot more sensitive to their environment than they might seem” [p. 29]).
Gladwell has often been criticized for being unoriginal and not particularly rigorous and, frankly, I mostly agree. Indeed, Gladwell has admitted to the former (he’s a popularizer of science, not a scientist). The latter charge is more damning and is in evidence throughout the book. The ‘rules’ of the Tipping Point, for instance, are extremely vague, even when fleshed out considerably more than above, and there are no doubt many exceptions. Moreover, several of Gladwell’s examples are rather pat – he seems to simplify complicated phenomena for the sake of narrative clarity. For example, the story Gladwell tells about how HIV spread in North America – through so-called Patient Zero, Gaetan Dugas – crudely simplifies the real situation, and has been disputed.
Nevertheless, Gladwell remains my favorite science journalist, despite his flaws. I read his articles and his books because they introduce me to interesting research, which I can (and do) then follow up for myself. This may be condescending, but I don’t really expect scholarly rigor from Gladwell: he writes popular science for a wide-audience, not academic tomes for specialists. Just like you don’t watch the latest shoot-‘em-up for intellectual stimulation, or read trashy romance novels for their literary merit, or, indeed, read Science for its humor, so you shouldn’t read journalists for unimpeachable rigor or entirely justified true beliefs. In short, read journals, not journalists, for rigor. A well-written and entertaining but simplified account of solid research, worked into an interesting narrative, certainly has its place. And that is exactly what Gladwell provides.

Dark Continent My Black Arse by Sihle Khumalo is an engrossing, entertaining, funny and wonderfully politically-incorrect account of the author’s trip, entirely overland and by public transport, from Cape to Cairo. While not quite up there with Paul Theroux or Bill Bryson’s travel writing, the book is nevertheless very good indeed and worth the price of admission. A single complaint (the skeptic in me couldn’t let this go…): Khumalo on a number of occasions endorses bollocks, most notably, saying that rhino horn is ‘the best medicine for sexual vigour’. Six words: magical thinking + placebo effect + lamentable superstition.

Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America is an absolute tour de force, a modern masterpiece. [Mild spoilers follow]. The central character is the eight-year-old American Jew Philip Roth, who inhabits an alternative history where Charles A. Lindbergh, the notoriously anti-Semitic aviator who was the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic, wins the 1940 presidential election. True to form, Lindbergh then tacitly supports the Axis powers in World War II (under the guise of isolationism) and enacts successively more repressive anti-Jewish laws (under the guise of assimilation). The rest of the novel follows Philip and the rest of the Roth clan as they come to terms with, and accommodate to, the new dispensation. [Spoilers end].
I don’t pretend to be a competent literati, so I won’t do much of a review except to note that the prose is sublime and that Roth has a preternatural ability to render the psychology of people buffeted by events beyond their control and understanding. I said the same about McCarthy, but I think it’s equally true of Roth: he deserves the Nobel Prize for Literature.

The Ancestor’s Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Life is, in my view, Richard Dawkins’s best book since the excellent Blind Watchmaker. The device around which the book is built, modeled on Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, is a pilgrimage starting at the present with Homo sapiens, and working backwards in time to meet our common ancestors with the rest of life. The first rendezvous, for example, is with chimpanzees and bonobos (our common ancestor lived 5-7 million years ago), the 6th with the New World Monkeys (40 million years ago), the 17th with amphibians (about 340 million years ago), the 23rd with lancelets (very approximately 560 million years ago), and so on. Along the way, various creatures tell tales, among other things, about the history of life, the principles and quirks of evolution, and the methods and techniques biologists use to figure all this out. The book, then, is simultaneously a history of life, a primer on evolution, an account of human ancestry, and a survey of the diversity of life.
While it’s quite an investment of time – 629 pages in paperback – The Ancestor’s Tale richly repays that investment: I haven’t learned so much from a single book in a very long time. Not only that, but it’s as beautifully written as we’ve come to expect from Dawkins, and, perhaps more importantly, it illustrates the wonders of life, and sparks one’s curiosity and enthusiasm for such under appreciated critters as sponges, lungfish and fungi.
The dust jacket quotes the Financial Times thusly: “One of the richest accounts of evolution ever written”. It’s not hyperbole.

John Allen Paulos is a rare specimen indeed: an effective popularizer of and unflinching advocate for mathematics who is himself an academic mathematician. Not only are his mathematical credentials excellent, more importantly for his role as popularizer, Paulos writes exceedingly well. In his third book, Innumeracy, Paulos argues mathematical and, more particularly, statistical ‘illiteracy’ (the eponymous innumeracy) leads to the misunderstanding and misinterpretation of reality. He shows persuasively that the innumerate are vulnerable to personalizing the random, and thence to charlatanism, magical thinking and pseudoscience. The book is not, however, an abstract treatise on the importance of mathematics, it’s a vade mecum for the educated but innumerate. As such a guide, the book succeeds admirably: it gently introduces the basics of number and probability with a series of well-chosen examples. Overall, it is a superb little book which, I daresay, might benefit the numerate as well.
I can’t resist quoting Paulos at length:

The discrepancies between our pretensions and reality are usually quite extensive, and since number and chance are among our ultimate reality principles, those who possess a keen grasp of these notions may see these discrepancies and incongruities with greater clarity and thus more easily become subjects to feelings of absurdity. I think there’s something of the divine in these feelings of our absurdity, and they should be cherished, not avoided. They provide perspective on our puny yet exalted position in the world, and are what distinguish us from rats. Anything which permanently dulls us to them is to be opposed, innumeracy included. The desire to arouse a sense of numerical proportion and an appreciation for the irreducibly probabilistic nature of life – this, rather than anger, was the primary motivation for the book.

Financial feng shui bollocks

The world faces its greatest financial and economic crisis since the Great Depression. If there was ever a time to make prudent, rational, decisions based on a clear-sighted analysis of the facts, now is it. And yet Reuters decided to publish this piece of utter nonsense about what feng shui “masters” predict for the rest of the financial year. (I first saw it syndicated in the business section of South Africa’s Sunday Independent). Apparently, 2009 is the “Year of the Ox” and also a “yin earth” year, which means it “will be the most peaceful year globally since 2000” and the markets will thus be “calmer, if subdued”. Vincent Koh, a Singaporean feng shui “master”, advises that you avoid “high-risk assets” and remain patient. He also thinks banks will “continue to be reluctant to lend”, diseases will spread and natural disasters (landslides, floods and earthquakes) will strike the northern hemisphere (but not exclusively).

Sigh. I probably don’t need to say this, but there is just no reason at all to think that feng shui is anything other than silly superstition invented when humanity didn’t know any better. (Yes, it’s ancient. But that doesn’t mean anything). Feng shui may be interesting, or stimulating, or valuable in some vague sense, but it’s very likely false and it’s almost certainly worthless as a tool for predicting the future or ‘attracting wealth’. Look at those predictions again: they’re almost all either uselessly vague or high-probability hits. You don’t need a magical ability to detect 'metaphysical energies' to tell you 2009 will likely be calmer than 2008 – last year was so tumultuous that regression to the mean alone predicts that. And of course diseases will spread, landslides will occur, floods will sweep in and earthquakes will strike. That happens every year. And of course most of these will occur in the northern hemisphere: there are more people there (so we’re more likely to hear about it) and there is more land there (so they’re more likely to occur in the first place). And, of course avoiding “high-risk assets” is a good idea. But my gran could have told you that. And of course banks will still be reluctant to lend, it’s still not clear how much certain toxic assets are worth (if anything at all), so banks continue to be risk averse.

Despite some token skepticism in the article about how financial feng shui doesn't have a great track record, overall, the article is credulous crud. The Reuters editors ought to be ashamed of themselves for publishing such irresponsible and irrational bollocks.

UFOs vs Bigfoot

It seems the dismal science has something to contribute to scientific skepticism! Peter Leeson, an economist at George Mason University, is guest blogging this week on Freakonomics and has an interesting post on UFOs and Bigfoot. Leeson, who's other interests include piracy (as in, argghhh not as in file-sharing), reports the initial finding of a project he's collaborating on with Claudia Williamson to use the tools of economics to get to the bottom of the belief in alien visitation. Their intriguing preliminary result is that there seems to be a strong positive correlation between UFO and Bigfoot sightings per state. That is, US states where there are lots of purported Bigfoot sightings tend also to have lots of UFO sightings. Check out the graph below; it charts the total UFO sightings for each US state (per 10,000 people) between 1997 and 2007 against the total Bigfoot sightings in each state (again per 10,000 people):


This correlation is somewhat suggestive (but certainly far from conclusive) evidence that neither UFOs nor Bigfoots are real. Why? Because evidence for the existence of Bigfoots and evidence for alien visitation are clearly statistically independent, that is, sightings of the former do not increase or decrease the probability of sightings of the latter. Therefore, speaking very roughly, were there a real signal among the noise for either (or both) Bigfoots or UFOs, we'd wouldn't expect to find a correlation between them. (There are clearly a whole bunch of other ways in which a correlation could arise so there are numerous possible confounds. See Leeson's post for his response to some of these). The finding that there is a strong positive correlation between these sightings thus somewhat strengthens the skeptical argument that there is a common socio-cultural factor which produces both the purported Bigfoot and UFO sightings. It is important to keep in mind, however, that this research is (1) correlational and thus not compelling and (2) in its early stages. That said, it's certainly very interesting and seemingly quite a promising avenue of research.

By the way, I thought the second comment on Leeson's post was just awesome: "It strongly suggests to me that the aliens are Wookies." Indeed and LOL.

(HT: John McCoy).

Carnival of the Africans #1

Welcome to the inaugural edition of the Carnival of the Africans! The carnival is an outgrowth of an initiative I launched a while ago to foster better cooperation and communication between South African skeptical or science bloggers. A specifically South African carnival, however, struck me as far too narrow - there are very few African science bloggers (AFAIK) and part of the point of the carnival is to encourage people to start their own blogs or existing bloggers to cover science. Moreover, Africa as a whole needs science: it needs science to develop, to prosper, and to grow the reality-based community. So, as you'll see if you look at the guidelines, this carnival has an Africa-wide mandate: it covers any science or skeptical topic related to Africa and any science blogging by Africans. The aim, ultimately, is to promote the skeptical and scientific world view, but more concretely, to stimulate discussion, disseminate good blogging and to cultivate a greater sense of community among the small number of science-minded African bloggers.

A quick note on carnivals for the uninitiated. A carnival is a kind of blog event that brings together in a single place various bloggers' good posts on a specific topic. For example, once a month the Carnival of the Africans brings together science and skeptical posts on or by Africans. The point, again, is to highlight our best posts, to allow discussion and engagement, to create a community among African science bloggers and to attract readers to our blogs. As I've noted before, participating in carnivals is a really good idea. I encourage everyone, by the way, to link to this edition to spread the word. Also, carnivals only work if there is active participation - I've had to forage for posts to include here, I strongly encourage active submissions in future.

Without further ado, this month's Carnival of the Africans...

First out of the gate is "Captain" Owen Swart of 01 and the universe with two posts: the first is on quackery about chronic-fatigue syndrome (aka ME) and the second is a lactose eating session homeopathic suicide attempt! (Also check out his follow-up)... No prizes for guessing he survived.

Effortless Incitement has a substantive post about an awesome recent study in PNAS that concluded non-verbal displays of pride and shame are innate. That Darwin fellow sure was on to something...

George Claasen, founder of Sceptic South Africa and author of the blog Prometheus Unbound, is probably South Africa's most prominent skeptic, so it's certainly appropriate to include a post by him. Back in July George produced a particularly noteworthy post combining criticism of Angus Buchan (who allegedly has 'faith like potatoes') with a report on a recent survey he did on South Africans' belief in bollocks. Depressingly, large majorities buy into ESP, alien visitation, telepathy, and young earth creationism. South African skeptics clearly have work to do.

the little book of capoeira might be the blog with the world's least descriptive title but Wim produced a good post outlining the basics of the skeptical toolkit. He takes recent events in South Africa as an example of why a functional and well-honed baloney detector is indispensable.

Amanuensis is, admittedly, a blog that focuses on the lesser science of economics, but let's be inclusive. Simon has a daunting but fascinating three-part series of posts on University of Chicago economist John List. The posts, in order, are "List-onomics", "The Interpretation of Giving", and "Homo Economicus evolves, or not". These aren't for the faint-hearted, but they certainly repay careful reading.

Next up is Angela of The Skeptic Detective with a thoughtful post about discovering her doctor is a crank. On that score, my doctor routinely prescribes antibiotics when I have the flu. She knows antibiotics don't attack viruses, but she has some sort of convoluted explanation I didn't really follow. I really should get round to emailing Steve Novella about this...

Hugo of thinktoomuch submitted a post summarizing his criticisms of the Creation Ministries International's seminar series at Stellenbosch University. Oh man creationists annoy me - can't they at least leave universities alone?

Danie Krugel. Sigh. When will this guy go away? Well, let's hope the following two posts will help that along a bit... The excellent subtle shift in emphasis has long attacked Krugel's nonsense, and has two recent posts on the latest developments. The first piece deals with silly and irresponsible academics partly endorsing Krugel's device and the second with Krugel's most recent failure.

The new Yet Another Sceptic's Blog has already produced some great material, particularly, a post on the tragedy in Krugersdorp arguing death metal is not to blame.

Finally, my own contribution, also on the events in Krugersdorp. I take the same line as Yet Another Sceptic's Blog and argue there is little reason to think heavy metal music was causally involved.

That's it! The next edition of the carnival is scheduled for September 28th and will be hosted by Wim over at the little book of capoeira. If you'd like to contribute, please check out the guidelines and then email Wim at {wim}{dot}{louw}{at}{gmail}{dot}{com}. (Removing the brackets and replacing 'dot' and 'at' with the appropriate symbols). If you'd like to volunteer to host the carnival in the future, please email Mike at ionian.enchantment@gmail.com.

Brooks channels Olson

NYT op-ed columnist David Brooks has a great article out today that applies Mancur Olson's insights to current problems in international relations. Olson wrote three brilliant and influential books - The Logic of Collective Action, The Rise and Decline of Nations and Power and Prosperity - that applied game theory and economic methodology more generally to social science questions. One of Olson's most important insights is that otherwise puzzling phenomena can be explained if we distinguish actors who have "encompassing interests" from those who have "narrow interests". Why is it, for example, that people overwhelmingly prefer autocracy to anarchy and lawlessness? Autocrats ('stationary bandits' as Olson calls them), after all, engage in regular theft (i.e. taxation), whereas 'roving bandits' (criminal bands that thrive under anarchy) engage only in irregular theft (i.e. raiding). The answer, as Olson showed brilliantly in Power and Prosperity, is that stationary bandits have an encompassing interest in the society they rule, whereas roving bandits have only a narrow stake. As a result, the rational autocrat only steals ('taxes') part of people's possessions and, amazingly, even invest in public goods, whereas roving bandits have no incentive to restrain themselves or produce public goods. Similar logic explains how special interest politics works: farm lobbies, for example, get all of the benefits of subsidies and tariff protection (direct income transfers, higher prices for their goods), but carry only a small part of the costs (higher taxes and food prices). Add Olson's insight from The Rise and Decline of Nations that small groups are far easier to organize than large groups (because of lower transaction costs) and can thus more readily influence policy, and we can see why many countries have protectionist agricultural policies despite the fact that they are deeply irrational overall.

Brooks takes these general insights and explains why the international community has repeatedly failed to implement policies that are overall in everyone's interest (like trade liberalization). Contrasting the current situation to the immediate post-war period, Brooks argues:

Today power is dispersed. There is no permanent bipartisan governing class in Washington. Globally, power has gone multipolar, with the rise of China, India, Brazil and the rest.

This dispersion should, in theory, be a good thing, but in practice, multipolarity means that more groups have effective veto power over collective action. In practice, this new pluralistic world has given rise to globosclerosis, an inability to solve problem after problem.

...

Groups with a strong narrow interest are able to block larger groups with a diffuse but generalized interest. The narrow Chinese interest in Sudanese oil blocks the world’s general interest in preventing genocide. Iran’s narrow interest in nuclear weapons trumps the world’s general interest in preventing a Middle East arms race. Diplomacy goes asymmetric and the small defeat the large.

The current situation is indeed a 'tyranny of the minority' (in Olson's felicitous phrase) and a tragedy of the commons results as collective action on issues as diverse as global warming, trade liberalization, global security, environmental protection, space exploration and the protection of human rights falters.

So what to do? I agree with Brooks that John McCain's idea of a "League of Democracies" is a good start. Anomalies like 'rogue democracies' aside, liberal democracies (as defined by, say, Freedom House) have a lot of interests in common and, on Olson's logic, a subset of countries is much more likely to engage in successful collective action. Even if such a group is formed, however, vast problems will persist and national interests will be far from identical. I suspect, on current trends, that intergovernmental global governance will grow increasingly difficult, and thus supranational global governance will become increasingly necessary. But, of course, supranational institutions are exceedingly difficult to create and a global government is conceivable only in the very long run. The prospects for global collective action looks bleak for the foreseeable future.

(Brooks, by the way, has explicitly acknowledged he has been influenced by Olson, so I'm not reading too much into his column).

Neuroeconomics

There is an interesting article in this week's Economist about neuroeconomics. A representative paragraph:

As well as the ultimatum game, neuroeconomists have focused on such issues as people’s reasons for trusting one another, apparently irrational risk-taking, the relative valuation of short- and long-term costs and benefits, altruistic or charitable behaviour, and addiction. Releases of dopamine, the brain’s pleasure chemical, may indicate economic utility or value, they say. There is also growing interest in new evidence from neuroscience that tentatively suggests that two conditions of the brain compete in decision-making: a cold, objective state and a hot, emotional state in which the ability to make sensible trade-offs disappears. The potential interactions between these two brain states are ideal subjects for economic modelling.

Shermer on economic irrationality

Pinker isn't the only one who has a popular article out today that plays on an earlier book title, Michael Shermer (author of Why People Believe Weird Things) has an LA Times op-ed out entitled (wait for it...) "Why People Believe Weird Things About Money". Reflecting the fact that he's now a fan of evolutionary psychology (as I reported earlier), Shermer argues that various examples of irrational economic behavior (such as loss aversion) are the product of evolution. The article is a worthy read on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

Shermer, by the way, has a new book out, The Mind of the Market: Compassionate Apes, Competitive Humans and Other Tales from Evolutionary Economics.