Storytime

Al Denelsbeck

Previously, in regards to the talk by Sean Carroll, I mentioned revisiting the comment about the universe being made of stories, and so I return. This is little more than stream of consciousness, I admit, so don’t expect anything major.

First off, what does “the universe is made of stories” even mean? Is this metaphorical, poetic, or what? Well, as Carroll says, it means that we interpret our world not as individual facts, but as a large collection of associations, inferences, deductions, and predictions. The story is the explanation, past, and future of any particular subject, mostly things that we cannot experience directly – if it helps, replace the word with concept, idea, property, description, or theory. If we strike a match and see it burst into flame, we do not simply observe this, but see this as representing a particular property of matches, and we’re not at all surprised to see it happen again with another match, even one that does not directly resemble the first. Nor do we simply file this as just a property of matches, but are able to give this a particular future association: something we might use when we needed to light a campfire, candle, or Molotov cocktail. When we speak of understanding something, we’re actually referring to extrapolating properties from observations, and often even predicting future events or reactions. We have the tendency to make connections between observations, infer constants, and assume that these will remain dependable enough to base future actions upon – with an extremely high degree of accuracy, too. An enormous part of the functionality of our brains is the ability to create these stories, and this even extends to your ability to comprehend what I am typing here, not just in understanding what I say, but it taking the varying emission of photons from your monitor in specific locations and interpreting that as letters, comprising words and sentences, in a language that shapes and clarifies our thoughts. And so, it is not so much that the universe if composed of stories, but that we as a species can only interpret it in this way – if indeed, we can even use the singular “it” in good conscience.

It is worth noting that there is no such thing as a ‘true’ story. We have no way of determining any such absolute, and the best that we can do is to develop stories that are as accurate as possible. Pause here and realize that the very word ‘true’ is actually a failed story, a definition of something that we have no ability to establish, so the word is an oxymoron all by itself. But, it still has some value provisionally, being applied in areas of broad parameters to indicate a high degree of accuracy – or, sometimes, in areas where we want to imply such accuracy exists, in the effort to fool others. For instance, there are many stories about how our government operates, and some exist solely to generate certain attitudes from the listener, and not because they provide any degree of prediction or explanation.

That’s the thing about stories – they can mean anything to us, depending on what we expect to get from them. There are always things that we want to hear, and any story that provides this to us gains greater weight to us, generates more belief, than others. We can like a story because it seems to explain (and even predict) what’s happening around us, or what produced some particular effect. An example would be the flammable property of gasoline which expands to push the cylinders within engines. We never see this happening, but we can piece together all of the observations before and after to infer the process, creating a story that most of us consider explanatory with a very high degree of accuracy. Yet we can have other stories about the nature of ourselves, consciousness and mind and soul and such, that we accept not on their explanatory nature, but on the gut feelings that they fit. Instead of describing or predicting, they only validate desires, but this is often strong enough to override the search for descriptions or predictions. The strength of any story relies on what we consider important.

It is easy to think that the word “consider” above must denote conscious, intended thought, but this isn’t an accurate story. So much of our lives is governed by the subconscious prods of survival mechanisms, urging us towards certain feelings and actions without any distinct ‘selective’ input – what we might call, “making a decision.” Very often, we can accept this emotional input unquestioningly and immediately build a story about how it really was a conscious decision, as we might do with impulse buys, bad eating habits, or cheating on a spouse; we don’t want to admit that we acted without thinking, appeasing some inner demon. Yet the story that explains how and why we do this, the concept of our evolutionary past and selected instincts, both fits the facts and predicts much of our behavior, and does so better than anything else that has been told. It’s remarkably useful, but it does take a desire to see usefulness as a better trait than indulgence. Not everyone wants this from their stories.

Much of what I do here on this blog is to rewrite stories. We have many concepts that foster certain attitudes or perspectives, at times to our detriment, and what I attempt to do is to introduce the story from another viewpoint. The goal is to produce the same insight that struck me about some subject, the sudden moment when the only thing that changed was what I believed, but it suddenly made more sense, fit the facts better, or generated a more useful outcome. And to some extent, I also hope to introduce a new story that generates a more positive outlook, from social interactions to the pursuit of knowledge – most especially, the idea that stories should have greater impact on us than mere vanity. There might be a basic value to things that we want to hear, but it probably pales against the value of stories that explain, enlighten, and most of all, provoke further investigation and better interactions. We have a long history of these (much of it now called “science”) and to all appearances, they’ve been quite beneficial to us. Holding out for these higher standards looks a hell of a lot more useful.

That’s my story, and I’m sticking with it.

The binary age

Al Denelsbeck

This is just a casual, rambling observation, inspired by far too many of my experiences, but the skeptic in me forces the admission that none of this has been empirically tested or statistically supported. Yeah, you get that way when you spend too much time on such forums…

Much is made about the “connected” nature of our society anymore, and by that I mean, the ability by a noticeable number of people to check e-mail, establish a web connection, receive text messages, and otherwise communicate electronically from wherever they might happen to be. While much of this can be attributed to cellphones with more numerous capabilities (“smart phones”,) it also applies to many plain ol’ cellphones, netbook and notepad and laptop computers, and probably a few wristwatches and umbrellas. I cannot vouch for how many people exemplify this; the marketing hype at least implies that such things are inordinately useful and important.

I myself admit to being quite unconnected in this manner. I hate cellphones, mostly because I’m tired of losing signals or trying to understand someone who keeps cutting out. I have a little $20 emergency jobbie that I use when on the road for an appointment, or sometimes in an area by myself that might be hazardous; while you might imagine “the dark side of town” by this, what I mean instead is hiking in unfamiliar territory or areas where a fall is much more likely. I do not want to be connected; when I’m out away from the home phone, the “land line,” I am busy doing something, and not really into a random conversation, even when alone. And when I’m with someone, there’s this basic implication: If I answer the phone, I’m telling the person I’m meeting with face-to-face that someone else is more important than they are. Add to this that the typical overheard cellphone conversation seems to consist of, “Hello?… Nothing, what are you doing?… WalMart…”

(I am in the south, so this may be skewed a bit.)

Now, I recognize that I might be an old curmudgeon in this regard, resisting the newfangled gizmos and the changing times and all that. Yet, there’s too many things that seem to be reminding me that being this way might have been a good idea.

I’m not even going to talk about the hazards to driving – just be sure to figure them into the mix, because they’re significant. And I’ll only mention the abject stupidity of texting anything on a tiny keyboard, even a non-numeric one, just once, and leave it at that. It’s actually much worse than these.

Let’s start with, the number of people who cannot read a fucking map. I’ve ridden in cars with people who follow their GPS units blindly, and it’s pretty tedious, especially when you know the route and there’s a shorter one if you turn the other way. “Um, we’re heading south; why did you just turn north?” I kept quiet once, thinking they were running another quick errand, only to determine that they had set their unit for “major roads” or some such. And yes, I’ve seen the people who need a GPS, and where they end up without one, but that’s due to their failure to understand how a map works. About the only credit I can provide for that is it saves on refolding the typical pocket map…

Notice where I said, above, that I keep a cellphone handy when out in remote areas? The key word there is ‘remote,’ and the reality there is, no signal in at least a third of these locations. If I was dumb enough to rely on it, I could end up in serious trouble – but I’m not that dumb. There’s always a backup, usually someone who knows where I am, but also the overall idea that the cheesy little gizmo isn’t something I’m going to put my faith in. I did without one for years – it’s called planning.

Mostly what I’ve run into, however, is a noticeable tendency for ‘connected’ people to be almost impossible to reach, and worse to communicate with. You see, when someone checks their e-mail on their phone while at work or out shopping or whatever, they either a) save it for later, or b) type out a six word response. Since I’m silly, and use e-mail like a letter and not like a text message, I ask everything that I want to know in one missive. And then spend the next three to six trying to get answers to everything that I asked in the first. Considering that the average response time to each e-mail is a day or so, this can get ridiculously drawn out. This is, of course, if they really do get back to it ‘later,’ which often isn’t the case anyway.

There is also the idea that e-mail (and text messages) somehow save on time or effort or something – depending on where someone works, more than half of the important communications during any day might come through e-mail. Which is ridiculous when you come to think about it, since it takes at least ten times longer to exchange information than a phone call. E-mail is useful for casual communication over items without time constraints, but ridiculously tedious for anything else.

You may have noticed the little anti-icons in the sidebar, purposefully avoiding all of the social media bullshit. If you credited that to me being an old fart or something, try again. I not only had a Facebook account, I was responsible for playing the social media game where I worked, at the insistence that this would accomplish something useful. Yet, no one could ever tell me what distinctive benefits it was supposed to provide, least of all produce any real numbers, and I already had enough other tasks that updating statuses and posting pics wasn’t supportable unless it could justify dumping something else. Obviously, it couldn’t. And my personal involvement was actually boring me to tears – I already maintained a website, which allowed me as much control as possible over my own photos, and I get no weird sense of accomplishment in listing ‘friends’ that I’ve never even spoken to. I have enough websites to go to for interesting information, with the added benefit that the amount of utterly mindless dross, and photos of people’s food or vacation spots, take up none of that. Is it important for you to know that I like Colin Hay? Yeah, I didn’t think so either…

And then, there’s the camera phone. Obviously, I have some bias in the manner, so filter this as you see fit, but what a goddamned waste of time and energy. I have seriously toyed with the idea of starting a “Save the Electrons!” movement to eradicate the waste of memory space and power drain on servers from the deluge of images too stupid and low in quality to even exist (yeah, go ahead and make comments about irony if it makes you happy.) I spend a lot of time teaching people how to properly (and steadily) hold a camera, achieve good framing, and think about their photos, and 99% of phone images exemplify everything that can be done wrong to an image, including having taken it for no reason. Not that long ago, photography was preoccupied with sharp lenses, films with the best resolution, and good color rendition – people chose particular films for particular purposes (some of us still do,) and made the effort to find lenses that performed well. It’s startling how much this has changed, with people chasing megapixels on an expensive touchpad phone with a lens from a toy microscope. Believe me, I’m no equipment snob, but I encourage at least having some standards…

While the technology was supposed to make things so much easier, more efficient, and less expensive, the end result has been a remarkable decline in quality, expectations, and usefulness. It may be very nice that someone can instantly access a web page from wherever they are, yet this has importance less than 5% of the time in my estimate – the rest of it is spent on vapid nonsense. Hooray, seriously, for the GPS navigation of rescue operations, and the cellphone that can be used when someone is lost or in danger – I won’t attempt to deny the benefits. But if you have to search hard to find those benefits, maybe it’s time to re-examine the situation. I’m having difficulty seeing the value in paying $100 or more a month to know what some celebrity can say in 140 characters, or to get sports scores immediately, as if waiting until you got home spoiled them or something.

Maybe it’s just me…

It’s original

Al Denelsbeck

So, here’s a thought I had the other day about the nature of good and evil, which theologians and philosophers call theodicy; I’m pretty sure philosophers have a name for those little lint balls that you get in your navel. And theologians have some kind of explanation that they’re god’s plan – just not how or why.

Anyway, genesis tells us that everything was hunky-dory until adam & eve disobeyed and ate the fruit. We’ll ignore for the time being that god had to know this would happen, put the tree in the garden in the first place, created the serpent, and so on – while these are details with as much theodical import as everything else (which means they really should make sense to us,) they’re not central to my particular viewpoint here. After this little contretemps, typically called The Fall (or The Autumn if you’re classier,) eve & adam got kicked out of the garden, finding food became a necessary pursuit, some of the vegetarian animals became carnivores (yeah, that’s another question,) and sex was invented/discovered/whatever. Without this, the most intense pleasure that we can feel never would have existed, which is yet another question that I’m not addressing, which probably makes me a candidate for a honorary theology degree.

The concept of Original Sin, accepted by some sects, is based upon this event. Every last descendent of those two naughty Chosen People is stained by this one action in the garden, born without recourse under a Damoclean Sword (might as well mix it up a bit) from something they had no control over, which may have occurred millennia before they came along. But even if you don’t truck with the Original Sin idea, there’s still the whole ‘paradise denied’ idea that gives us the existence we now have.

Basically, this means humans were created in a default ‘good’ state, but screwed this up right out of the gate. Forever after, we must make specific efforts to re-attain this state if we want to receive our reward for going through life. Note that adam & eve didn’t actually do anything in the garden to earn their initial good status; they started that way.

Now, imagine if it had occurred the other way around. Suppose that god had decided they should start with a default ‘bad’ status, abused constantly by the viciousness within the garden, but by doing something that pleased the one who gave them their traits and knew everything that could happen (yeah, it really does look like a manipulative game, doesn’t it?), they could then be blessed with a ‘good’ status to pass along forever and ever to their offspring, or alternately just exit the garden of nastiness to live in a nice world without strife. Free food, no competition, no floods or volcanoes. What if we were born with Original Grace, and had to do something nasty to deserve eternal punishment?

Now try imagining what religion would be like, since it would be inverted in nature. Since we’d have a god that was actually pretty cool instead of spiteful, we’d almost certainly have priests and such who told us routinely that, despite how great the world was, god was the very personification of Hate. Sunny days and excellent crop yields would be evidence that we displeased him somehow, probably by being nice to one another, and deaths in unlucky or bizarre accidents would be trumpeted as proof of god’s inherently shitty nature.

Atheists would still be considered in league with satan, of course, but we’d probably be accused of not being shrill and strident enough…

Muttering darkly behind winter’s back

Al Denelsbeck


North Carolina winters are usually not too dire, and we can count on some good outdoor weather pretty much throughout, but this doesn’t mean that good photo subjects will be as readily available, so I’m resigned (albeit reluctantly) to the arrival of the slow season. This little gallery is my minor act of defiance.

Above, a photo that’s harder to capture than you might imagine. While the seeds of the decorative pampas grass are easy to spot when they propagate in a gust of wind, this is largely because they’re moving – a still photo lacks this advantage, so the puffs must be caught against either a darker or a smooth background, and numerous enough to communicate the idea. A gentle breeze isn’t sufficient. Waiting on the strong gusts is one of the typical frustrations of nature photographers; you spot the event without the camera ready, then wait patiently (or not) for it to repeat itself, whereupon the wind becomes incredibly shy. Since I’d switched to this subject because my macro attempts nearby were being thwarted by the wind whipping the plants around (necessitating a change of lenses to boot,) this was a great test of patience, to say the least.

The breezy conditions can sometimes help with macro subjects, but not often. One of those rare occasions is seen at left, where a tiny crab spider was throwing out strands of web to travel between plants (and yes, this is an aster bloom like you’ve seen here so often before.) Spinnerets high in the air, they extrude a very fine web and let the wind take it, where it hopefully contacts another plant nearby and sticks; the spider then tacks down the near end and scampers across this tightrope. I’m always impressed with something that can adhere strong enough from casual contact to bear the weight of the spider – my mind tells me this really shouldn’t be a trustworthy anchor. Some spiders use this to make their orb webs, stretching between trees, plants, or your porch columns, but crab spiders do not make capture webs, preferring instead to lie in wait on an attractive subject, often camouflaged, and pounce upon insects that come to the flower. Getting any kind of spiderweb in the image is harder than it seems, because seeing the web requires just the right light angle and a dark background, and this is multiplied for casting behavior by the action being so brief. Don’t get the impression that I’m trumpeting my skills, because I attribute this to luck and perseverance – I have dozens of shots, within the past several years, of spiders just mooning…


The shamrock plants of The Girlfriend’s Younger Sprog have proven to be more entertaining than expected. Even as they go into dormancy for the winter, they’re attracting bees and the occasional random insect, like this leaf-footed bug, Leptoglossus oppositus, who was sluggish enough to permit lots of close shots. You can get some idea of the difference between the Mamiya 80mm macro lens and the Mamiya 45mm reversed, both spoken about here, by the shots above and below. The one above is the 80mm, though full-frame; below we see a detail shot from the reversed 45mm, but this is a crop of only about 1/4 of the frame. Note the additional simple eye above the compound one.


On the same trip that I featured in this post, I got a couple of other images. Below is a magnolia green jumping spider (Lyssomanes viridis) whom I spotted on the underside of a leaf when I’d sprawled on the ground pursuing another spider. The sunlight coming through the leaf was also coming through the tiny spider, but capturing this demonstrates the tradeoffs of photography.


Macro work benefits from a high depth of field, which means a small aperture. Which means greatly limited light, thus either a) going for a longer exposure, b) increasing the ISO, or c) getting extra light in there, which is my typical method – virtually all of the macro images you’ve seen here are accomplished with strobes. That wouldn’t have worked with the sunlight through the leaf, though, and the slight breeze was enough to prevent a long exposure – not to mention the reluctance of the spider to hold still dependably, and the fact that I had skipped the tripod on this trip. The Canon 300D (Digital Rebel) drops significantly in quality with higher ISOs, so I went as high as I dared with ISO 400, and skipped the depth of field, shooting at only f5.6. As can be seen, this meant that most portions of the spider (which could have fit comfortably on your thumbnail) dropped out of focus, but I got the lambent primary eyes, which is the most important point. Those two big eyes facing front, in fact, are the telltales of a jumping spider, which helped a lot in identifying it because that’s not a typical jumper’s leg arrangement.

And finally, another frame from that trip (I’m not sure I should call this a ‘trip’ when it’s only 3 Km away.) I had originally included this image with the previously linked post, then removed it because I felt it wasn’t as strong as the others. A friend, however, indicated that he liked this one best, and it does illustrate how I feel about the seasons pretty well, so it makes a triumphant return.


Two hooked at once

Al Denelsbeck

At the moment (at least as I type this,) two prominent atheists are tossing forth and back about the old question of what would, or could, constitute evidence for god. Michael Shermer at Skepticblog and Jerry Coyne at Why Evolution Is True have fallen on two sides of the debate over the word supernatural (I tossed out my own take on this earlier.) Basically, it seems to be down to a disagreement on how naturalism is defined – Shermer appears to find it applies to everything that we could experience or interpret, while Coyne seems to find it applies to current physical laws or properties. Anything supernatural, then, may or may not be detectable in ‘naturalistic’ ways.

The whole discussion/debate, however, is exactly why I find philosophy such a godawful waste of time more often than not. This can be considered nothing more than a debate over what sounds the best – neither standpoint offers, or can even hope to offer, anything in terms of testable posits, useful perspectives, or interesting avenues of research. To even have them discussing the same thing, they have to back up and precisely define many of the terms they’re tossing about. It’s easy to see that this could become a perpetual court deliberation on minutia.

The problem is, there is no case to try. Even trials between major corporations in the US, as ridiculous as they can be, never argue over whether or not to accept some bit of evidence that hasn’t been introduced, and that’s exactly what’s happening here. Religious folk continually ask what would serve as evidence of god, not because they have something to present to the court, but only because they’re hoping to score an emotional victory by hearing someone say, “Nothing! I refuse to accept anything! La la la la la la la…!” In that way, believers can happily assume they’re smart for believing, simply because the unbelievers are stupid or petty or something – proof through mistrial.

The only useful answer to, “What would constitute proof of god?” is, “What have you got?” You see, Coyne and Shermer are talking about whether planets spelling out messages could be either a provisional god or simply very powerful aliens, while believers have only produced, “My aunt says she spoke to god and she’s pretty convincing,” and, “The bible says the bible’s true.” This is worse than sitting down in a sandbox and discussing the hydrodynamic issues of building a road on sand with a three-year-old who’s bulldozing with a Lego.

I’m not against anyone doing anything because they have an interest in it, regardless of the impact (he says on a blog,) but this is obviously intended as both a public discussion and a salient point. Yet it can’t lead anywhere, and the reasons for it being introduced at all are too juvenile to treat with respect. Applying deep thought to it doesn’t make it any better. The trap of thinking that we have really cool minds is that we believe our minds can only produce really cool things, despite that formula being one of the first fallacies of logic.

Moreover, there’s an opportunity missed here, and one that both of these distinctive educators should be exploiting. Science isn’t about proof, and cannot be – there is no way to prove something beyond the shadow of a doubt. Everything in our knowledge base is provisional, based on the weight of the evidence and the dependability of the tests. Newtonian physics worked very well for centuries, until it was found that on extreme scales relativistic physics was more accurate. Science can and does accept the new evidence and changes to accommodate it, in recognition that we are mere humans and can not determine absolutes or ultimates, but only probability and replication. We will never be sure, but we can certainly be confident.

That right there is the biggest difference between belief and knowledge: believers want their absolutes, and try to deny to themselves that we cannot reach them – there will always be doubt. Knowledge, however, involves accepting this handily and striving to make doubt as small as possible. I am quite confident that gravity will draw things towards the center of the planet, and 99.999999% of the world’s population is right there with me. Not because it’s proven, but because it’s dependable. That’s been working pretty well for the entirety of human history, with indications that it’s been a hell of a lot longer than that. One would think that was enough.

That’s the bar that we should always set. Stooping to the level of anyone who doesn’t recognize why we use science only implies that we think they’ve got something to contribute; instead, we need to bring them up to the level of the most reliable knowledge structure that we have ever used as a species. Or they can play in the sandbox by themselves.

On composition, part 15: The background

Al Denelsbeck

We all have experience with missing something right under our noses, or someone speaking to us who remains totally unheard because we’re concentrating on something else. The proper term for this is inattention blindness, and lots of videos and examples can be found online (Richard Wiseman, over there in the sidebar links, deals with this trait from time to time.) It is something that is amazingly prevalent in photography, so let me emphasize that any photographer needs to keep making the effort to remain aware.

The primary manner in which this occurs is by focusing all of our attention on the subject itself, with no awareness of the background, the surroundings, and so on. This can have two distinctly negative effects. The first is that we let something else become visible in the frame, a distraction from the subject, or perhaps something that detracts from the overall feel of the image – trash or wires in the background are good examples. But the other effect is that we don’t frame the image with respect to the surroundings, how the image interacts or fits within. We are not simply after a photo of a bird, but a scene which contains the bird (yes, this is directly related to my spin on the Rule of Thirds.) Everything visible within the frame should be working as a whole to convey a certain idea to the viewer, or at least, doing nothing to detract from it.

Something that often defeats us is the aperture, or f-stop if you prefer. It remains at maximum opening up until we actually trip the shutter; commensurately, it also remains at the shortest depth-of-field. This means some details and distractions are much further out of focus to us in the viewfinder than they will be in the resulting image, though we can easily spot them when not looking through the camera. So it helps a lot to note everything in the field of view before raising the camera to shooting position; then when the white blotch is visible in the viewfinder, we know it’s a road sign or discarded paper bag and can shift position accordingly to eliminate this.

Even when we have achieved an appropriate, uncluttered and undistracting background, we can sometimes do more. For the fall shot featured in part seven, I waited for the (painfully slow-moving) clouds to provide a break behind the peak, while for the lizard seen here, I shifted position slightly to put its head against a leaf that provided better contrast. Such things make us aware of the three-dimensionality of our shooting locations – when we shift position, closer items within our frame move differently from more distant ones, and we can easily change their height, size, and position relative to one another.

That, actually, is an important factor in using the background and settings. Your subject can stand out better if it is framed among, or against, something that complements it well, providing contrast as needed. Getting lower can frame a subject against the color of the sky, or a slight shift may put it among a more solid, consistent background rather than a cluttered one with too much detail. This image isn’t actually showing the sky in the background – it’s showing the pond surface reflecting the sky, which was an angle that I could actually achieve. In using such a technique, a shorter depth-of-field very often helps, but be warned: some consistent patterns, like fences and walls, remain and betray their presence even when significantly out of focus. And as indicated at that link, you can also do some simple things to improve the appearance of the background.

We can also plan around a background, most especially weather conditions. This is usually the place where ‘background’ becomes ‘setting’ or even ‘mood,’ but this doesn’t diminish its importance. A subject can become even stronger placed against a background that is appropriate, more colorful, or more dramatic, and this can mean coming back at another time when the weather or sky conditions produce better effects. When on photo trips, I almost always have someplace that I want to see the sunrises and sunsets against, and make sure that I’m on location well before this occurs (usually) – I also carry a compass to know exactly where these will occur in relation to my subject. Be aware that sky conditions can change very rapidly, so suddenly realizing that there are great conditions and then trying to find an appropriate foreground interest for it won’t work unless the choices are very close. Some sunset, rainbow, and cloud conditions are drastically changed within just a couple of minutes, and sometimes even seconds.

Then we come to the really sneaky part of composition, bringing us back to the idea of the scene. Whatever reaches the edge of the frame essentially goes on forever, or at least represents the principle traits of the setting. This means that what you don’t include is as important as what you do. I use the image at right in my workshops to illustrate how this works, because it fails to show any indication that it was taken in a plastic pond liner only a meter across. What is communicated to the viewer (provided I keep my mouth shut) are only the immediate conditions, and the viewer fills in the locale with their own imagination. Some settings and backgrounds produce their own ideas from common association, the metaphorical aspect that can lend a lot to your compositions.

For all of the cameras that permit the photographer to frame their image in the LCD on the camera back rather than the viewfinder, I always recommend using the viewfinder as much as possible, primarily because it just makes for more stable habits. But there’s another reason why the LCD can be bad, and it’s because the manufacturers want to jam so damn much info onto the screen at the same time that you’re supposed to be composing your image. All that stuff at the edges tends to make the photographer subconsciously push the subject into the middle, and often can hide distracting elements that will nevertheless be in the final image. Chances are, you’re not going to be getting much of anything from the LCD info, since you already have spare batteries and memory to back you up anyway (right?), so just switch it all off. Use the entire frame, and look at everything in your image. If you see something that doesn’t belong, changes the mood or idea, or makes the image too complicated, get it out of there. While you’re at it, you may well find something that makes the image even stronger, if you change your position slightly. And be sure to examine the scene without looking through the viewfinder as well, to see what else can be used to better effect. A few seconds of awareness can change a snapshot into a stunning image.

Too cool, part 16: Now this is smart

Al Denelsbeck

A few years ago, a friend of mine told me about his young son, then three years old. It turns out the sprog was not only playing games on his folks’ computer, he had figured out how to install new ones on his own. This was not a child prodigy, and he wasn’t reading at the time – he’d learned it intuitively, by watching what his parents did and noticing how user interfaces were constructed.

Impresses as I was by that, it’s not half as impressive as an experiment in two villages in Ethiopia. As part of an educational program called One Laptop Per Child, nearly a thousand tablet PCs were deposited, still boxed, within the villages; no instructions, no demonstrations, no explanations. Just some specialized learning software and a solar charging interface. Bear in mind that not only had no one in the villages ever used a computer of any sort, they hadn’t even seen a written word.

Don’t let me spoil it all – take the time, right now, and read the source article. It’s fabulous.

One of the most interesting lessons in the program is how much we’ve built an infrastructure around our learning methods, and how little this might actually be necessary. Learning doesn’t require any real structure – we do it all the time, whether we’re intending to or not. What might be necessary is presenting the challenge, and the sense of accomplishment. One might also realize that these kids probably networked and cooperated in their accomplishments better than 99% of classrooms in existence, perhaps because they weren’t expected to perform some task set by adults, but because this was their own task – quite possibly assisted by the thought that they were being sneaky. We know how well this works sometimes – we were kids once.

Of course, some questions arise from the method in Ethiopia, which is admittedly just an initial experiment. Isn’t this expensive? Is there a high damage rate to the tablets? How sustainable is it? And how does one determine the program’s usefulness? But compare all of those questions against the typical classroom structure that we envision schools are made of, with a salaried teacher per certain number of kids, and the concept of progressing at a more-or-less fixed rate, and even the idea that the kids are competing for the teacher’s approval in the form of grades and praise. While these might work very well for our own circumstances, they’re much more difficult to implement in remote areas. Are you ready to go teach, even for a year, someplace without even electricity? Tablets really aren’t very expensive, and require far less maintenance that people do.

I have taught myself how to operate most of the software that I’ve ever used; this is not bragging, but a reflection of both the interfaces that they’re designed with, and my desire to use them. Because of this, I’ve had to teach the use of numerous packages to many people that I’ve worked with. Some picked things up quickly, and even taught me a few shortcuts. Others, however, almost literally fought with it, and with me. They liked their old ways of doing things, and had issues not just with technology, but with the idea that their employer was pushing something on them. Their learning was blocked not (necessarily) by my structure or the complication of the software, but by their own attitudes towards the task. Which makes me wonder now how I might have been able to motivate them better, with a change in my attitude.

I have several programs on the burner for schools right now, revolving around photography and arthropods – now I’m inclined to see how I might be able to incorporate some form of this structure within them, and how well that will work. This could be very interesting – not to mention a challenge ;-)

Like we mean it

Al Denelsbeck

This is an extension of a much earlier post on meaning, or the universe’s apparent lack thereof, as well as Sean Carroll’s presentation from The Amaz!ng Meeting 2012. Both of those are virtual prerequisites for making the most out of this post, primarily because I don’t feel like reiterating a bunch of stuff.

So, given that there is no meaning to life, the universe, & everything (small l, t, u & e, to differentiate it from the Douglas Adams book,) yet this still remains a disturbing thought to many, it seems to indicate that we actually want some meaning. What, exactly, does this mean? And no, I’m not trying to be funny.

As noted, mixing up ’cause’ and ‘intent’ is responsible for a lot of confusion, but knowing this difference is what helps to explain why we seem to have this thing about meaning. Somewhere in our evolutionary development, we developed a desire to seek cause. Call it curiosity, call it (as I have before) a ‘puzzle’ instinct, call it a fundamental understanding of Newtonian physics – whatever you like. It’s even possible, given what we see of curiosity from other species, that the only part unique to Homo sapiens is its strength. But we have a natural tendency to see things, especially change, and ask “why?”

This isn’t enough by itself – there’s another little bit that contributes, and it’s loosely defined as ‘ego.’ While we are a cooperative or social species, relying on others around us to form a tribe of mutual interaction, we are also to a certain extent a competitive species, especially among ourselves. Sexual selection is a significant contributor to this, since if we can convince a potential mate that we are more worthy than those around us, we get to pass along our genes. I am not sure if this underlies all of our drive to improve ourselves to stay ahead of the pack – do greater privileges and/or more possessions stand by themselves as a survival drive, or do they merely reflect an extension of sexual ‘fitness?’ – but there is no doubt that competition is also inherent in our species, and important to survival. Thus, we have a certain level of self-awareness in terms of making ourselves important/desirable/better individually, and this is separate from the internal drives for social cohesion. It’s easy to imagine that these are theoretically in conflict, but selection of strong members within a tribe for preferential reproduction does nothing to harm the tribe.

A brief, pertinent side note: there are two forms of competition. One is where any individual works hard to make itself better than others – think of Olympic games. The other, however, is where others are perceived as a threat and require a discouraging response – aggression, threats, or violence. This distinction is important, because as a species we mistake the two constantly. A tribe can function perfectly well with the former, not as much with the latter.

Getting back to meaning, however, we can see how these factors all work. We may wonder how the planet got here, or how light works, and that’s primarily due to the curiosity/puzzle drive. But then, our species has a fierce propensity to wonder what the purpose of things is, most especially when it applies to ourselves. Because we see ourselves as important, more important than any other species, this likely contributes to the idea that we have a special goal, that our presence is not something as inconsequential as the existence of rutabagas or weasels. And thus, the “how” question becomes the “why,” and we start thinking in terms of intent rather than cause.

Another likely contributor to this is a further part of our social/cooperative drives. As Homo sapiens, we relate to one another on an sympathetic level, concerned about how others feel and how they view us; we constantly pursue this feedback. Again, it works well for tribes – you scratch my back, etc. – but it probably results in considering sympathy as a vital function of human beings, and since we established above that we’re higher beings, then this is by extension a higher function. It’s not often that we consider any other species as sympathetic to us, and very often exactly the opposite. Thus, any supposed cause of human existence may get automatically associated with sympathetic feelings; if it created us, it must like us. And so we jump from cause to intent, and it’s easy to see that we like this idea much better than an indifferent cause. Note, also, that the human trait of pareidolia has us finding faces – other humans – in totally inanimate objects with barely the faintest hint of anthropomorphism, and that imaginary childhood friends are surprisingly common, and that we frequently believe animals think like we do. It’s not hard to see that we are geared towards ourselves.

Interestingly, all of this gives very strong indications that religion was created out of these thinking traits of ours, rather than (as is often supposed) this information having been imparted to our ancestors divinely, or our ability to actually see evidence of design and intent. Given events that we did not understand, with a desire to find cause and a propensity to see humans as important, it’s not hard to imagine how a sympathetic creator can be hypothesized, and this does a pretty good job of explaining the widely varied concepts of gods throughout human history with only a few basic traits in common.

We have a lot of fundamental ‘desires,’ emotional goads within our brains that prod us towards behavior that helped us to survive, the same as any other species. Some are stronger than others. We want to believe that everything we do is based upon conscious, rational decisions, but this just isn’t the case. Drives and emotions, however, aren’t terribly specific by nature; they do not arise only when functional, and they do not produce specific intent. Most of the time, all we know is that we feel a certain way, and (most importantly for our purposes here) we can satisfy such feelings in multiple manners. Everyone is familiar with compensatory indulgences, such as eating to combat depression, and drug addiction is nothing more than trying to produce the euphoria associated with emotional success, the brain’s reward system for performing some act related to survival.

Ergo, the search for meaning, which addresses several desires mentioned above. Note that very few people seem to have a good grasp of what their own meaning actually is, and in the large majority of cases, the search goes on. It becomes an (admittedly mild) itch that perpetually waits to be scratched, and even though many people have gone their entire lives waiting for it, to be told that scratching is not possible makes it that much worse. So, what can we do?

Sean Carroll begged off on this aspect, saying that it wasn’t up to him to define meaning for anyone else, and this has a certain reality to it; he wouldn’t be able to provide something that would perfectly fit everyone’s vague urges in this direction, and neither could I. What he explained is that we have plenty of good reasons to believe it all to be a false quest (or at least significantly misunderstood) – we have the science that throws the whole concept of ultimate meaning into serious doubt, but not how to cope. In some cases, however, that’s actually enough; if you recognize that meaning is a false impression, it automatically loses the importance it once had. I used to believe that the smiley faces my elementary school teachers would (occasionally) draw on my tests were reflections of my abilities, but now I know that they were only manifestations of my teachers’ own selfish pleasure in successfully performing their career functions, and I was just another clay figure to them!

Sorry – digressed a bit. You have to break up the long screeds sometimes ;-)

Still, what remains are internal urges that we want to satisfy, ones we are rarely able to recognize consciously. We seek goals, something that makes life more than occupying ourselves until we die. Yet, the quest for meaning isn’t a dead end – while we may not have an ultimate meaning, something cosmic or transcendent, we can still find plenty of things that fit the bill on a more local level. Nature’s goals are simple, or supposedly so: survive and reproduce. This is the manifestation to the individual which produces the net effect, which is the continuation of the species. In a world as complex as ours, with countless variables affecting us daily, these deceptively simple ideas have to take hold in detailed ways. Like many other species, we function best in a pack/tribe/village/community, mutually cooperative, and so we get good feelings – internal rewards – from behavior which reinforces this. Unlike the search for meaning or the self-indulgent euphoria of getting stoned, this is actually what we evolved to do, and it continues to be useful and important. Something as simple as helping others is meaning, and actually moves our species along. Compare this to the sop to selfish ego that cosmic meaning, whatever the hell it is, tries to provide.

Even cool nature photos. Right?
The achievements of our species, the remarkable development of tools and vehicles, medicine and industry, science and technology, are all fostered by the social structure. Nobody would accomplish very much if they had to individually reconstruct what any of our great scientists, inventors, or doctors have done – we are as advanced as we are, at least in terms of knowledge, because we share it. Is that, in itself, a meaning? Countless millions of people the world over, when faced with rough times, can cope solely because someone else is there to help, whether physically, medically, or even just emotionally. Does that mean anything? Hell, the roads and electrical grids, even the waste removal services, all contribute to the quality of life we have now. Is meaning really that goddamn elusive?

There is another side to all of this, however. Other emotions can easily be misinterpreted, mistimed, or misapplied. Above, we considered the competitive aspect of humans, and the functionality (and yes, importance) that this has – but also a brief look at the abuse of it as well. In the quest to be considered higher than others in some respect, we can build ourselves up, or we can tear others down – one of those really doesn’t have much application to improvement, and if we built a society on it, such a society wouldn’t go very far. Yet, we engage in this all of the time. Very, very few circumstances that we might find ourselves in require an aggressive response, or what might be termed as a ‘threat competition’ rather than an ‘achievement competition.’ Long ago it was a different story, and we (probably routinely) had to protect the family and tribe against predators and raiding parties; this was a facet of life for millions of years of our development. Only recently, in an evolutionary eyeblink of time really, did this vanish from our lives almost entirely. Right now, the survival traits bred into our brains are still catching up.

This means that we aren’t so good at differentiating threat competition from achievement competition, and see an awful lot of things as threat when they represent nothing of the sort. The average social dynamics in most places of employment today can attest to this. It’s safe to say that virtually no one’s coworker presents anything remotely resembling an actual threat; they might, however, present someone that needs to be surpassed in ability in order to secure a raise or promotion. Thinking, “They threaten my livelihood,” or alternately, “my rightful position in this company,” doesn’t change the nature of what we should be doing about it. They are not the enemy; they are the bar we must clear.

The same may be said of religion. Nobody’s religion is threatened at all – this actually isn’t possible, any more than anyone’s choice of soft drink can be threatened. The most that can be said is that someone is blocked from the free expression of their religion, but basically, so what? We do not have thought police, so believe whatever you want. The idea of religious oppression is an asinine one, most especially throughout the Americas and Europe. Any attempt to do so can only affect what someone might be allowed to do publicly, but even if their church is burned to the ground, that doesn’t affect what they believe (actually, that’s probably not true – it very likely makes it even stronger.) Galileo famously signed a statement from the catholic church when they demanded that he recant his idea of heliocentrism; his response (I admit to paraphrasing here) was, “Sure, whatever the fuck you like. It still doesn’t change the facts.” Tellingly, the event came about because of the church’s belief that his meticulous research was a threat. But heliocentrism had nothing to do with trying to damage the church – it was simply a far more convincing argument. And the only ‘threat’ to churches these days is exactly the same thing. The bar is now set even higher.

I have to point out something else here, too. Many, many religions present deities with strong threat responses, as if they could possibly have something to fear – this is especially nonsensical in the monotheistic religions. It might be a petty trait in humans, but completely insane in a deity, yet three of the ten commandments, as an example, specifically portray insecurity over a supposed threat – in this case, that puny humans might choose not to worship. Seriously?

Even the pursuit of wealth and status is almost always a response to feelings of inadequacy, but how is this supposed to work? Is it actually important to achieve a certain income bracket? Does this, in any possible way, benefit us as a species, a society, a community, or even a family? Or is it merely a selfish attempt to appease poorly understood emotions? What has more meaning: getting rich, or building a better future for others who weren’t born in the right circumstances? Which provides more status, better community standing, and a measurable advancement for human beings? These aren’t hard questions.

You may have noticed something: by abandoning the idea of ultimate meaning and trying to understand the reasons why we even have the desire, we can find not only useful meanings (and further, motivations and responses,) we’re actually doing exactly what the traits had evolved to help us accomplish anyway. Petty achievements and inappropriate responses to competition are not what will make Homo sapiens survive in the long run, and it’s not anyone’s concept of divine purpose that brings that realization. The credit for that goes to science. Consider this the next time someone says that science can’t answer the big questions about life.

Book on sale

Al Denelsbeck1 Comment

Courtesy of Jerry Coyne at Why Evolution Is True, I want to alert people that Donald Prothero’s book Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters is now on sale at Amazon, in e-book format. Normally $23.99, for month of November it is just $3.99!

In addition, one of Coyne’s readers, James (yes, the same James we all know and love) is throwing in an extra bonus: append his referral code to the end of the URL, and he’ll donate his referral fees plus $25 on top to Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (the same place that donations to that “Nonbelievers Giving Aid” link in the sidebar go.) Just put /gumbercules-20 at the end of the URL – note that I have already added it for your convenience in the book link above.

I am forced to admit that I have not actually read this book yet, despite having the hardcover version, but this is serving as my prod in the ass – I will finish the book and post a review before the sale ends. I have read several different articles and posts by Donald Prothero – he’s a regular at Skepticblog – and I definitely agree with both his style and approach. So based on that, and the various positive reviews and recommendations that I’ve come across, I can say this is definitely worth the sale price (and very likely the full price.) I may even pick it up in e-form and compare the two.

You do not have to have a Kindle or e-reader to read e-books – Amazon offers free Kindle software for your computer so you can enjoy it in between my fascinating posts here. So for less than the cost of lunch, what can you lose? Check it out!

Yes, that’s the camera remote between the fingers of my right hand.

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