Yearly Archives: 2009

Lee Kuan Yew on Darwin and breeding

Lee Kuan Yew

Lee Kuan Yew

Just one quick follow-up to the last post on Darwin: I was reminded of a controversy from my days in Asia, involving Lee Kuan Yew, the “founding father” of Singapore. (Most Asian controversies seem to involve Lee Kuan Yew, if you look closely enough.)

He had once opined on the truly bizarre situation that humans have created today. Biologically and historically, the “fittest” (most adapted) members of a population are the ones whose genes (alleles) are most represented in future generations. Lee Kuan Yew, perhaps contemplating his own daughter, who was then a neuroscientist as intellectually impressive as she was single, observed that

our brightest women [are] not marrying and [will] not be represented in the next generation. The implications [are] grave.

Some of the fittest among us, in short, are voluntarily opting out of evolution. A biologically suicidal strategy, and thus worthy of study.

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Greatest thinker, runner-up: Darwin,

So here we are in the ninth and penultimate post of The Hannibal Blog‘s search for the world’s greatest thinker ever. And the runner-up is…. Charles Darwin.

Darwin’s thought fits all the criteria The Hannibal Blog has laid out so far: his insight was simple and yet non-obvious and subtle (and thus still frequently misunderstood). He appears to have been right. And for good measure, his insight is also extensible, explaining far more than “just” speciation.

Simple:

Even though the details are still being debated, the core insight is so simple that I always think it borders on tautological. Those genes whose vehicles (phenotypes) are relatively better at making it to the next generation and the next and the next … are the ones you see around you today. Duh. Those genes that manifested themselves in phenotypes that kicked off too early to reproduce, or that reproduced but created offspring that couldn’t repeat the performance … are not the ones you see around you today. Duh.

Subtle:

As Geoff Carr, our science editor at The Economist, once reminded me, people often get the implications of natural selection and evolution (which is what I described above) wrong. I’m not even talking about the fire-and-brimstone creationist types. What many people infer is that evolution is somehow about improvement. (This is the seed of an entire genre of cartoons.) It is not. Instead, evolution is about adaptation. It would merrily go on if we humans were to wipe ourselves out tomorrow with a nuclear war. The bacterial slime in thermal vents would carry on unperturbed.

The other thing that people get wrong is to overemphasize the survival part. It’s the reproduction part that drives the process. Somebody once explained it to me best by saying it’s about which organisms have the most grandchildren. Ie, think of a strapping stallion and a purdy donkey. Both are great at surviving, and great at reproducing, but something in their genotype makes them choose each other. They will have lots of sterile mules. Two generations later, their genes will be gone.

Extensible:

I think the expansion of the concept really kicked off in earnest with Richard Dawkins and his idea that even non-biological systems evolve. Culture is such a system, and the equivalents of genes are idea snippets called memes. Some memes (ideas, fads, fashions) adapt, travel and spread, others do not.

The basic concept also explains so amazingly much else. Why grandmothers tend to be closer to their daughters’ children than to their sons’. Why women show a bit more skin at one time of the month than during the rest of the month. Why humans are sometimes altruistic and sometimes not. Why so many of us are religious. And on and on and on. In short, why we are who we are….

Next time: the overall winner. Once again, I promise a surprise.

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Great, if not greatest, thinker: Kuhn

I’ll make this the last post in my sub-series on “honorable mentions” for the prize of the world’s greatest thinker ever. We could of course go on forever, but I don’t want it to get tedious. So, the next post will present the runner-up, and the one after that, well, the world’s greatest thinker ever. And I promise that you’ll be surprised.

But today: Thomas Kuhn.

(Remember, the honorable mentions have all gone to great thinkers who made a simple yet non-obvious contribution to a circumscribed area of human endeavor.)

Area of Interest: The progress of human knowledge

Why great: Because he showed that (scientific) knowledge does not accumulate in a steady (linear) way, as common sense has it, but rather that it leaps ahead in sporadic upheavals or “revolutions”. This means that at any given time, society can be in one of three phases: before a crisis/revolution, when the world seems stable; during the crisis/revolution, when it appears to be anything but stable; and after, when the world looks completely changed.

Comments:

It’s a pity that the sort of crisis/revolution/upheaval that Kuhn described has since become known as a paradigm shift, which must be the ugliest and corniest piece of jargon out there (along with leverage and core competency). But that shouldn’t distract from Kuhn’s amazing insight.

The default assumption for most people is that every scientist (thinker?) pushes ahead independently into new territory. Kuhn says No. Most scientists are “puzzle solvers” that try, conservatively, to corroborate whatever theory they have been taught. If evidence shows up that contradicts the theory, the scientist producing that evidence is blamed for getting it wrong.

But eventually, the contradictory evidence accumulates, and everybody panics. Then, some people start thinking outside of the box. A breakthrough occurs. We shift to a new understanding. Nothing is ever the same again. And a whole new set of gray mice in white coats gets busy corroborating the new theory.

This reminds me of the old debate in the field of evolution between the “creeps” and the “jerks”. In this context, Kuhn says, knowledge advances in jerks. Lesson: Don’t assume you’re wrong just because everybody else says so. (But don’t assume you’re right either.)

Incidentally, this also dovetails with Galenson’s theory about “young geniuses” and “old masters”: As Kuhn said,

Almost always the men who achieve these fundamental inventions of a new paradigm have been either very young or very new to the field whose paradigm they change.

(I don’t know why he said “men” instead of “scientiests” or “thinkers”. Applies to women just as well.)

Anyway, I could go on forever with the honorable mentions: Hayek, Burke, Aristotle, Laozi, …. But, as I said, just two more posts. Runner-up, then winner. The former will not be surprising, the latter most assuredly will.

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Non-profit newspapers

Orville Schell

Orville Schell

Orville Schell, formerly the dean of the graduate school of journalism at Berkeley (where I used to teach) and one of my mentors (of which more another time), has for years been saying that the future, if there is one, of the news business is as a non-profit public service.

In the last couple of years, I’ve been sensing that this is becoming conventional wisdom. Today, David Swenson, a legendary fund manager of Yale’s endowment, makes exactly this case in the New York Times. Given his credibility in matters of analysis–especially when the subject is endowments–this might lead to actual and big change soon.

Note that The Economist, though officially called a “newspaper”, is in a very different position than the kind that you used to wrap your fish in. Still, after years of chaos in the wider news industry, the thinking is at last getting clearer…

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Too busy writing books to read them?

As Carl Jung might say, synchronicity: On the very same front page, the New York Times mourns the passing of one great author and, separately, observes the trend toward self-publishing by lots and lots of “little” authors:

The point may soon come when there are more people who want to write books than there are people who want to read them.

Ahem. That touches a nerve. I’ve been too busy to read books (at least books that are unrelated to the research for my own book) because I am writing a book. The same goes for most of the people I seem to know.

I’ve opined on all this before, of course. Still, it always comes a shock to discover that

In 2008, nearly 480,000 books were published or distributed in the United States, up from close to 375,000 in 2007, according to the industry tracker Bowker.

Some time later this year or early next year, mine will be one of the half million in that year’s batch! Hmmm. Here’s hoping that Riverhead, my publisher, continues to defy trends and … rocks.

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Great, if not greatest, thinker: Hobbes

Be afraid, be very afraid

Be afraid, be very afraid

Next up in the roll call of “honorable mentions” as we lead up to the overall winner in our search for the world’s greatest thinker ever: Thomas Hobbes.

Area of interest: Fear and its relationship to legitimate violence.

Why great: Because he wrote out of a profound fear that only people such as himself can understand–people who live through civil wars or genocide, through periods of wanton cruelty of man upon man–and drew from it a concise and lasting conclusion: namely, that any society needs a monopoly on legitimate violence in order to avert anarchy. The monopolist is the state (with an army for external violence and a police force for domestic violence). Allow this monopoly to become an oligopoly or “free market”, and you get unspeakable suffering.

Comment: A great one for liberals, lest they forget that a small government can never become no government because that would destroy the freedoms they hold dear. On the other hand, no need to get carried away and overdo it in the other direction either…. 😉

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Great, if not greatest, thinker: Gödel

Gödel

Loyal readers of The Hannibal Blog are by now familiar with the wit of one Mr Crotchety who has already made cameos as a poet of Haikus, Senryus and Limericks. As soon as I began my series of posts in search of the world’s greatest thinker ever, Mr Crotchety began lobbying fiercely for Kurt Gödel as a candidate. Since we are now in the sub-series of posts on “honorable mentions”, I have invited Mr Crotchety himself to make the case for Gödel. Here it is, in Mr Crotchety’s words:

I am adding some additional criteria to the Great Thinker debate:

  • Do his/her great thoughts presently frame the basis of all other thoughts?
  • Do his/her great thoughts have anything to do with the meaning of life?
  • Did he/she go bonkers?

One of Gödel’s great thoughts is The Incompleteness Theorem. With respect to The Hannibal Blog‘s foremost criterion, the conclusion is simple (though not simply derived)… the First Incompleteness Theorem says that something can be true and unprovable. This is a very important conclusion for all of mathematics (hence, a great thought).

There is a conflict with the finite and infinite. No wonder Gödel went bonkers.* People who believe in the Bible and the Koran and the like must love this idea. Mathematicians must love this idea, too. Philosophers stay in business. Everyone is happy! Not only is it a great thought, but it inspires others to think great thoughts…

I’m tempted to go the route of some mystics and say that Gödel’s incompleteness theorem, like quantum mechanics**, is a paradox and really difficult to understand. Therefore it must have greater applicability (i.e., with respect to the meaning of life). I’m not prepared to go that direction, but it is good for the debate…

Notes and comment:

*Mr Crotchety refers to Gödel going “bonkers”. Apparently, he had an “obsessive fear of being poisoned” and “wouldn’t eat unless his wife, Adele, tasted his food for him.” In her absence, he refused to eat, “eventually starving himself to death.”

**Mr Crotchety likens the incompleteness theorem to quantum mechanics. Instinctively, this feels right. I am thinking of Werner Heisenberg and his famous Uncertainty Principle. It says that, in the context of observing sub-atomic particles such as electrons, it is impossible to observe with certainty both the position and the momentum of a particle. One suspects that what is true of the world at that little scale is also true of the world on our scale. So if Gödel reminds us that much of our “knowledge” will always remain “incomplete”, Heisenberg reminds us that much of our world is fundamentally “uncertain”. Simple and non-obvious: Great thoughts by great thinkers!

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Zooming in and out of the inauguration

Have fun moving, zooming and playing with this unbelievably good photo. Just think of the tangled webs of human relationships …

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Welcome to WordPress, Tom

Tom Standage

Tom Standage

Tom Standage, a friend and colleague at The Economist, has finally migrated to WordPress and started regular blogging. Check in on him regularly. His first five books are a great read and I can’t wait for his sixth, which is on food, but with a historical angle not unlike the one I’m using in my book.

Tom edits the Business Section AND the Tech Quarterly, so you’ll also enjoy his musings on topics such as whether Apple will come out with an eBook Reader this year that might kill Amazon’s Kindle. As it happens, I am testing a Kindle right now. I’ll tell you anon how I think it will affect the future of reading….

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Great, if not greatest, thinker: Ricardo

Not an absolutist

Not an absolutist

We’re still in the sub-series of posts on “honorable mentions” in our wider search for the world’s greatest thinker ever. To remind: in this sub-series I commend great thinkers who made a huge contribution, but in a circumscribed area of expertise. Today: David Ricardo.

Area of interest: Trade (not necessarily between countries!)

Why great: Because he demonstrated with simple logic something non-obvious, which is that two individuals (or households, or countries…) can both benefit from specializing and exchanging their wares even if one side is better (more efficient) at producing all the wares.

The key insight is that there is a difference between absolute advantage and relative advantage, or comparative advantage, as Ricardo called it. Let’s say that A is better at making guns and butter than B, but its advantage is greater in guns. If A makes the guns and B the butter and both trade, both will have more guns and butter than they did before.

Comment: At first glance, Ricardo’s idea may seem very geeky. But actually it has far-reaching implications about interdependence in a harmonious society, which includes a household and a global society. For all its simplicity, the idea is also astonishingly hard to grasp. People keep getting it wrong. You hear politicians and journalists saying things like: “What if China has a comparative advantage in everything…” Well, that’s logically impossible. It means that the speaker does not understand the idea.

But the moment I realized that this was a truly great idea came when I read about research that showed that the Neanderthals succumbed to us, ie Homo Sapiens, because they did not have a division of labor whereas we did. Neanderthal women joined the men in the hunt. Cro Magnon women looked after the children and gathered, whereas the men went off to hunt. Even if women of both species had been better at hunting in absolute terms than men, their relative advantage would have been greater in caring and gathering, so that specialization and trade gave us the edge. Put differently, Smoot and Hawley were … Neanderthals. 😉

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