Archive for March, 2015

Potatoes Not Prozac

Saturday, March 21st, 2015 | Books

Someone recommended the book Potatoes Not Prozac by Kathleen DesMaisons saying that it had really helped them. It describes itself as a food programme to help with depression, though what it actually turns out to be about is a guide for people who are “sugar sensitive”.

Sugar sensitivity is something that Dr MesMaisons has made up. Or discovered if you were being generous. There is nothing on Wikipedia about it. There is a stub article about sugar addiction, a topic still under research before we have any real understanding of it. However the book justifies its existence using the following phrase.

“a solution too important to wait for the approval of scientific authorities”

From there it turns to a classic self-help book that is big on claims and small on scientific references. The text is regularly interlaced with quotes from people telling the reader how good the programme is and how it has changed their lives. As long as you follow the programme to the letter of course.

It’s the classic heartwarming story – an underdog doctor without the backing of the scientific community dares to go it alone because she has seen it work for hundreds of people. She has developed a simple programme that offers quick results without pharmaceutical. It’s all our dreams come true. In fact, it’s so simple that 9 of the 256 pages can be devoted to a copy and paste of an internet chat in which people on the programme describe how they felt before and after it.

Helpfully there are also lots of references to the Radiant Recovery programme that MesMaisons runs, including which of the products you might want to buy. But who am I to say that George’s Shake® isn’t as delicious as claimed? Maybe it is. With sugar sensitivity being linked to alcoholism, there are also some references to Alcoholics Anonymous. Another programme that can boast of having no evidence of efficacy.

The programme starts by encouraging you to eat breakfast and have some protein in it. One of the example meals is a sausage. Of co,urse eating processed meat every day will literally take years off your life (the scientific authorities have had time to approve that), but if it improves your quality of life, that is a trade off you might feel is worth making.

There is probably some good stuff in here. Eating sensible meals three times a day in some kind of routine is going to provide your life some structure and normality. The rest remains an unknown though. Perhaps it will eventually be scientifically proven. However, as it is I cannot see the evidence nor it is packaged in a way that I can describe any other way than yet another cultish self-help book.

Potatoes not prozac

Memoirs of a Geisha

Friday, March 20th, 2015 | Books

I read Memoirs of a Geisha as a kind of back-up career plan, in case things go sour with the whole programming thing.

I identified strongly with Chiyo. Sure, she lived on the otherwise of the world, came from a small fishing village, worked as a geisha, lived through World War II and spent her life dreaming of a certain man, and I didn’t do any of those things. However, on a deeper level, we’ve both faced the universal struggle of keeping our hair in place.

I had a vague idea of what a geisha was, but it was interesting to get more of an insight into their lives, even if it was a fictional story. I was also a little surprised how recent such practices as selling off your daughter were still used.

Importantly, it had a happy ending, which are the best endings.

MemoirsOfAGeisha

The Blank Slate

Thursday, March 19th, 2015 | Books

If the claims made in this book are true, it is probably the most important, the most surprising, and the most controversial book I have ever read.

The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature is a 2002 book by Steven Pinker. It challenges three modern ideas of human nature. These are:

  • The blank blank slate – the idea that the human mind has no innate traits
  • The nobel savage – the idea that humans are inherently good and it is society that turns them bad
  • The ghost in the machine – the idea that we each have a soul that is separate from our biological brain

Pinker argues that the brain is predisposed to certain beliefs and practices, that it is inherently violent and needs society to quell this. The “soul” refers to the Cartesian model of consciousness that Dan Dennett tackled in his book Consciousness Explained.

It’s a big book and for me to do the arguments it puts forward justice in one blog post would be absolutely impossible. In part, because I probably do not have my head round all of them. However, I have discussed some of the most interesting and most controversial points below.

Why is it that Europe flourished while Africa did not? It could of course be luck. However, one explanation that helps explain it is that cultural practices are probably easier to share across Europe and Asia than they are across Africa. Methods of agriculture for example can be shared across a wide thin continent because being at the same longitudes, they have similar clients. Whereas Africa, being a thin tall continent, has different climates at different longitudes, so agricultural practices need to be developed again and again.

Pinker argues that the slate cannot be blank, because blank slates cannot do anything. Take the computer for example. We have to programme it to do anything useful. Something must be innate. This is probably why artificial intelligence research has been unable to replicate human intelligence with a generalised artificial neural network – these networks can learn anything, but the human brain is actually a series of specialised sub-systems.

The problem with this from a neuroscience point of view, is how the brain takes shape. Our genome contains about 750 megabytes of data. This is no where near enough to specify such complex systems. However, we know that all input affects the brain (otherwise we would have no memory) and that the body uses feedback circuits to shape themselves – joints for example grow to fit each other. There is nothing supernatural about the brain, so it seems sensible to assume it works the same way.

That is not to say that the brain is fixed. Indeed, from what we have seen above, it is clear that it is not. Areas of the brain can be re-purposed – musicians have an expanded cortex that controls finger movement and dead people re-use their auditory cortex for processing sign language. However, this does not mean the brain is plastic to be moulded into any shape any more than a joint’s ability to fit together implies it could also be your liver. We can sometimes re-purpose things, but they do have a purpose.

The blank slate is thus destroyed. However, it is not as easy to let go as all that because it is a scary thing to do. We have linked the blank state to our system of morality. Everyone is equal because our brains are equal, and if we let that idea slide that could open up the door for thinking people are not equal. Godwin know’s where that leads.

Pinker rebukes this idea though. He points out that differences in race are smaller than differences in individuals. Two races may have slightly different standard deviations, but they will mostly overlap. Secondly, the idea of the blank slate is actually more dangerous. If we accept the blank slate, we accept the idea that people could be conditioned enjoy or accept slavery. The hatcheries of Brave New World would work today.

Thankfully, the slate isn’t blank, and humans will not submit to this. Orwell’s Big Brother does not control human nature. It is hard-wired into us.

How about the nobel savage. Are humans inherently good and corrupted by society? Pinker argues not. The evidence shows that pre-state societies were in fact the most violent and murderous. Pre-states had a homicide rate of 10-60% (that is to say 10-60% died of being murdered, rather than natural causes). Even in America, a country stereotyped for everyone shooting each other, has a homicide rate of 1.5%.

He discusses altruism, and breaks it down into two kinds. The first is nepotistic. he look after our family more than other people. This is because they share our genes, and so we are biologically wired to protect them. This seems a big doom and gloom – was Thatcher right about there being no such thing as society? Maybe, but this does not prove it in my opinion. You’re right, I am going to look after my kids first of all, because they share half of my genes. However, I share a lot of genes with the rest of the human race, and many with other living creatures too. So I would suggest nepotistic altruism could have an effect on how we treat everyone, though to a much weaker level.

Secondly, reciprocal altruism. This is the concept of “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours”. This is probably the key to how society works. The selfish gene produces the altruistic organism because we work better when cooperating. However, this only works in a structured and regulated society.

In The Believing Brain, Michael Shermer discusses why he is right-wing, or at least supports some authoritarian in a state. He points out that people are only altruistic, and people only follow the law if they can see that justice is being done to those who do not.

Pinker argues the same thing. He points out that communes never work because people will inherently do a little as possible if not being monitored and have a psychological tendency to overestimate the share of work they have done, so even if they are being honest with themselves, they may well have not done enough. This, combined with humans being hard-wired to care more about their own offspring than others, seems to be an excellent explanation of the ultimate failure of kibbutzim.

This has implications for things like judicial sentencing. I have previously believed that rehabilitation is the most important, possibly the only important, consideration when sentencing someone. However, under the model of the ignoble savage, there is nothing “fix” and deterrence becomes the most important consideration.

How about differences in gender? Now Pinker is on thin ice, politically. He starts by talking about sexual reproduction and suggests that males seek quantity whereas females seek quality. He puts this down to our evolutionary background. Men have very little investment in a child – they just need to provide some seed, so in order to maximise spreading their genes they should attempt to have as many mates as possible. A child is a much bigger investment for a female, however, as they have to grow it and care for it once it is born, so they are more interested in picking a high-quality mate that will produce a health child and hopefully stick around to look after this.

This does not justify the social attitude that men who sleep with lots of partners are “players” while women who sleep with lots of parters are “sluts”. However, it does suggest that there is an evolutionary basis for why we might be pre-disposed to think this, rather than it being another evil of “the patriarchy”.

He then goes on to argue that men and women are clearly different, and their brains are not interchangeable. The fact that traditionally women stay at home and look after children while men do not is not a social construct. It happens throughout the animal kingdom with the overwhelming majority of mammal species working the same way.

This has significant impact for the gender pay gap for example. For some reason, we have been unable to solve it, even though it is illegal to pay one gender more. It’s not easy to see why this is. Under the model of the blank slate, we blame the patriarchy, and stereotype threat, and spend a huge amount of money trying to get girls to do STEM, even though research suggests this is not justified.

However, if we accept the non-blank slate model, we can then begin to really tackle these problems, because we can actually tackle the correct problem. However, the current political climate of not even being able to suggest such ideas without being written off as a racist means that most evidence-based solutions for the problem are automatically written off.

Again, it is critical to stress that none of these biological explanations justify the current situation. It is not okay to discriminate against someone because of gender or race. However, the only way we can tackle these issues are to accept that these problems are evolutionary based and that we have biased we need to correct against!

The view that we are noble savages and that society has created racism and sexism is not the case. These things are wired into us and it is society that fixes them. Until we accept that these are natural biases that we need to use society to counteract, we will struggle to make progress.

If this isn’t getting your blood pumping yet, Pinker then goes on to discuss rape. Again, I will stress that I cannot do justice to an entire book in one blog post, so I would recommend you read it yourself to ensure that your understanding of my understanding of what Pinker is arguing actually matches what Pinker has written.

He argues that rape could be “natural”. That doesn’t mean it is good of course – arsenic, cancer and being eaten by a bear are all natural. However, it does seem to have been a feature of pre-state society and takes place in much of the animal kingdom too. Mallard ducks regularly engage in gang rape for example, and many species have bits of their bodies design specifically to restrain the female when mating. He then makes an extended case for the idea that rape genuinely is about sex, rather than being about power or violence.

I do not want to go too deep into this because with it being such a sensitive subject, so again I would not want to do injustice to Pinker’s writing. The last thing I will add on the topic however, is that Pinker points out that civilisation reduces violence against women. Two driving factors behind controlling rape are punishment (in our case being incarcerated) and ostracisation (being thrown our of society). Both of these things require society.

Finally, just when you think your beliefs have been rocked enough, Pinker goes on to discuss parenting. If I was being flippant, I would suggest that he says it “doesn’t matter”. However, like everything else in the book, once he has destroyed the belief you used to have, he then goes on to explain why it should still matter.

He argues that home environments do not matter. For example, if you take identical twins and split them up at birth, they turn out the same even though they were raised in different households. Whereas if you take adoptive siblings, raised in the same household, they are as different as if you picked people at random.

Immediately, I had two issues with this line of reasoning. The first is that “good” parents produce “good” children and “bad” parents produce “bad” children. I am not really sure what terms to use with regards to “good” and “bad”, they are certainly not the best, but I am drawing a blank as to what the best term would be. By this I mean smart, well-educated, care about their children, etc. However, this argument does not hold up, because it could equally be genetic. Of course high IQ parents produce high IQ children, we do not need a non-genetic reason to accept that.

The other issue I would take with it is that clearly genes do not account for all of the variation in a child. However, Pinker argues that this variation actually comes from a child’s peer group, rather than their parents. Children select their peer group, which is why differences show up in individual children, but do not show up across the twin and adopted sibling studies, which would suggest parenting and home life played a role.

If he is right, parenting just became a whole lot easier. For example, all that stuff you are doing to stimulate their brain, is completely pointless.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that you do not need to be good parents. Firstly, mistreating your children can seriously damage them. Secondly, there is a plain and simple moral imperative to be nice to them. Thirdly, you still want to build a relationship with your children. After all, they will (hopefully) be looking after you when you are older. However, it does mean that you can spend your time enjoying your time with your kids, rather than worrying about shaping them into the person you want them to be.

This is a massive claim of course, and one that even if I accept, and don’t think I really do at this point, I am not sure I could bring myself to follow through on it because the risk of being wrong are high.

Summary

Where does this leave us? Well, if it is all true, and the critics have not been able to do much to dismantle it, it means I need to re-consider my philosophy. The idea that people are inherently good just isn’t true. We are reciprocally altruistic which only works in a society that is fair and just. Of course I want to live in a society that is fair and just anyway, but this suggests that we need a partially authoritarian society to do this, rather than aiming for a utopian dream where everyone is just honest.

As for raising my children, this is a claim I am not sure I can accept. Even if I could accept it, would I really follow through on not trying to stimulate them and shape them into the people I want them to be? Probably not, because the risks of being wrong are large, and if the theory turns out to be right, they will turn out the same anyway. It is like walking eyes-open into another of Pascal’s Wagers, but I’m not sure I can help it.

If anyone else has read it, I would be fascinated to hear what you think of it.

The Blank Slate

Formula One 2015 changes

Wednesday, March 18th, 2015 | Sport

The 2015 Formula One season has arrived. What’s changed?

Team changes

The ten “big teams” remaining the same this year, but there are two changes further down the field. Caterham entered administration at the end of 2014 and never made it out. Their property is currently being auctioned off. Marussia did make it out of administration under the name Manor, but failed to make it in to the Australian Grand Prix.

Driver changes

Team Driver Last year
Mercedes Lewis Hamilton Mercedes
Mercedes Nico Rosberg Mercedes
Red Bull Daniel Ricciardo Red Bull
Red Bull Daniil Kvyat Toro Rosso
Williams Felipe Massa Williams
Williams Valtteri Bottas Williams
Ferrari Sebastian Vettel Red Bull
Ferrari Kimi Raikkonen Ferrari
McLaren Fernando Alonso Ferrari
McLaren Jenson Button McLaren
Force India Nico Hulkenberg Force India
Force India Sergio Perez Force India
Toro Rosso Max Verstappen none
Toro Rosso Carlos Sainz none
Lotus Pastor Maldonado Lotus
Lotus Romain Grosjean Lotus
Sauber Felipe Nasr none
Sauber Marcus Ericsson Caterham

The following drivers have not returned:

  • Kevin Magnussen drops from McLaren’s front line to their test driver slot
  • Jean-Eric Vergne leaves Toro Rosso
  • Sauber drops both Adrian Sutil and Esteban Gutierrez (who has gone to Ferrari as a test driver)
  • Kamui Kobayashi has no team left after Caterham folded
  • Max Chilton has not survived Marussia’s change to Manor

Sadly, Marussia’s other driver, Jules Bianchi, remains in a coma following his crash during the Japanese Grand Prix.

Shadow DOM

Tuesday, March 17th, 2015 | Programming

If you’re using HTML5, you may well have come across templates, which are a way to create reusable code clocks. They can be used in conjunction with the Shadow DOM to create more semantic markup while still adding all the additional goodies in terms of additional CSS and HTML that you would like.

For example, lets say we want to put an email address in a fancy box into a website. The old horrible way of doing it is something like this:

<style>
    #email {
        background: url('images/at.png')
        center left no-repeat;
    }
    #email .label {
        font-size: small;
        text-transform: uppercase;
    }
</style>

<div id="email">
    <div class="outer">
        <div class="label">Email address</div>
        <div>
            john@example.com
        </div>
    </div>
</div>

Look at all that stuff we do not need. Semantically we do not need all those divs. Crawlers don’t need to seem them. Neither do accessibility tools. It would be way nicer if we could mark the page up like this:

<div id="email">john@example.com</div>

Turns out we can! All we need is a little help from templates and the shadow DOM. Lets work from that markup, and put the additional markup into a template tag.

<template id="emailTemplate">
    <style>
        #email {
            padding: 0.5em;
            background: url('images/at.png')
            center left no-repeat;
        }
        #email .label {
            font-size: small;
            text-transform: uppercase;
        }
    </style>
    
    <div id="email">
        <div class="outer">
            <div class="label">Email address</div>
            <div>
                <content></content>
            </div>
        </div>
    </div>
</template>

You will notice that this is basically the same code as we started out with, except now it is in a template tag, and instead of having the email address in there, there is a >content> tag. This acts as a placeholder that the contents of the div will be put into when we combine it all together.

Finally, we use some JavaScript to activate the shadow DOM.

<script>
    var shadow   = document.querySelector('#email').createShadowRoot();
    var template = document.querySelector('#emailTemplate');
    var clone    = document.importNode(template.content, true);
    shadow.appendChild(clone);
</script>

This allows us to add all the additional styling that we had initially, but thanks to the shadow DOM we are able to eliminate a lot of the additional markup in the page itself that made very little sense semantically.

Ember.js

Monday, March 16th, 2015 | Programming

emberjs Ember.js is a JavaScript framework for creating “ambitious web applications” apparently. What that translates to is a JavaScript framework that allows you to get started quickly and have URL-based apps.

It is under heavy active development at time of writing so means that there is plenty of new stuff but also means that the documentation can quickly get out-of-date, so it might take a bit of time fiddling around to get it bootstrapped up and up-and-running. There is a helpful Chrome plugin that fits into the Developer Tools too, though most of the time I spend time looking at the standard console.

Once you are ready to go, things are easy to build. It uses Handlebars, or at least a Handlebars style syntax, so if you have used Handlebars, or even Mustache before then you will probably have a basic idea of what you are doing. You can then layer up pages within each other to build complex applications that can all be bookmarked.

It is designed to work out-of-the-box with Ember Data, which provides instant support for a REST API. If you do not have a REST API, Ember.js claims it is easy to adapt to something else, though I’m sceptical that it is as easy as they claim. It seems to work best if you build the app, and then create a standard REST API to work with it.

I have implemented some simple embedded Ember.js apps for my photo gallery as well as working with it for some more complex projects elsewhere. It is a fun framework to work with, but the documentation is a little parse and it is not quite as flexible as I would like. See the Ember.js website for more information.

Talent is Overrated

Sunday, March 15th, 2015 | Books

Talent is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else is a book by Geoff Colvin.

I read it after I was recommended it by a friend. He is a member of my Toastmasters club and is a lovely and funny guy. But several of his talks have irked the sceptic in me. In one unlucky incident, for example, he gave a talk on neuro-linguistic programming, a field that has now been completed debunked. Unfortunately for him, I was his formal evaluator that way, and was quite outspoken in my evaluation speech!

In another speech he spoke about Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hour rule, which again is probably nonsense. I challenged him on it and he recommended I read “Talent is Overrated”. So, after that extended backstory, here I am having read it with my usual attempt to keep an open, yet appropriately-sceptical mind.

The central theme of the book is that you do not need “talent” to be good at something, you just need lots of time. It challenges the idea that there is a correlation between IQ and success. Research does not support these suggestions.

However, it does make an important point about the quality of practice. It says it is very important, and it is. One of the biggest criticism’s about Gladwell’s 10,000 hours is that he largely ignores quality of practice whereas Colvin stresses it is the most important thing.

The second half of the book turns into a management handbook for motivating your staff. This makes a good point that staff are your most valuable asset. However, some of it felt a little confused. For example it claims you need to have a long-term plan and talks about Panasonic’s 500 year plan. Then it talks about having to reinvent your business model every 3-4 years. How do we reconcile long term plans with the increasingly uncertain future?

The book finishes off by going back to the original topic of why are highly successful people so successful. It discusses age-related degrading of talents and suggests that while we do degrade as we get older, if we continue to push our skills they tend not to degrade much at all (but the rest of our bodies will). I’m not sure on the research on this, though I might just choose to believe it because it sounds pleasing. Ah the bliss of ignorance.

It also puts forward the idea that if you want to be truly amazing at something you need to start really young. This is probably a controversial point, that is probably true. Thus entirely justifying living out your dreams through your kids…

Talent is overrated

River Cottage: Pig in a Day

Saturday, March 14th, 2015 | Distractions

Oh Mr. Fearnley-Whittingstall. My hero, my idol, for at least the past two months. How much damage you can do with two comments.

River Cottage: Pig in a Day is a course run at River Cottage HQ to teach people how to butcher a big. They then translated it into a two hour DVD. The DVD starts with a really nice section on keeping your own pigs and what fun they can be, before showing footage of sawing through a head and butchering the entire body of a dead one.

There were however two bits that annoyed me. Firstly, Hugh said the only real health problem he gets with his pigs were coughs and colds, that he treats with homoeopathic remedies. Boo! What a confidence knock in an otherwise sensible man.

Though this does have the advantage that you can clearly just ignore colds because they will go away by themselves. Or does it? This brings up an interesting question as to whether placebo works on animals. RationalWiki suggests that you can condition animals to get the benefit.

Secondly he referred to organic salt. What the fuck is organic salt? Presumably one with additives because you need to get the carbon in there somehow…

Anyway, that aside, the show really does embrace Hugh’s “nose to tail” philosophy as he calls it. They eat pretty much everything. I say pretty much because a bit of fat gets cut off, and the eyes come out. However, that is pretty much it. The organs are cooked, the trotters and tail are used for stock, and even the brain is fried up and scoffed.

It was a mildly interesting watch, but I’m not sure how much appeal it has. You are either a) do not have your own pigs, which seems very likely, so how relevant is the content? Or B) you do have your own pigs, in which case are you really going to try and butcher the entire thing based a DVD? If so, I tip my hat to you, you clearly have some balls. Specifically pig’s balls.

Terry Pratchett, 1948-2015

Friday, March 13th, 2015 | News

terry-pratchett

Someone once told me that polls of people’s favourite authors of all time consistently came up with only one living author. I don’t know if that is actually true or not, because I can’t find a source. Sadly however, even if it was, it no longer is now.

Jeremy Clarkson is an appalling character

Thursday, March 12th, 2015 | Religion & Politics, Thoughts

It’s not that vile people like Jeremy Clarkson exist that makes me sad. It is that after he has been allegedly suspended for punching a producer, over half a million of you sign a petition to have him reinstated.

His antics over the years include:

  • Making fun of Gordon Brown for being disabled
  • Using the word “nigger” in a nursery rhyme
  • A series of Nazi jokes at the Tokyo Motor Show
  • A seemingly endless series of racist jokes with targets including India, Mexico, South Korea, Burma, Wales, Romania, Scotland and Japan
  • Using derogatory terms for people with mental health issues
  • Using derogatory terms for gay people

These are just a few of the most prominent. Wikipedia has many, many more. They even have a second page of it. This isn’t even the first time he has physically assaulted someone. Clarkson’s racist, homophobic, sexist, bigoted and violent personality has no place in civilised society, let alone the national media platform that he enjoys.

Stuart Lee does an excellent deconstruction:

NOTE: Since original publication, I have removed Clarkson’s joke about murdering public service workers in front of their families as such comments could be viewed as justifiable in context.