The Alien's Dilemma

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The mid-May edition of New Scientist features articles on "information."  Something called "Maxwell's Demon" plays a large role in one article. It seems that James Clerk Maxwell, the 1880s darling of the posh physics set, constructed a mind experiment to demonstrate how information could move from an intellectual, mental construct to a physical reality. 

Maxwell asked us to imagine a two-chambered box, divided by a wall with a frictionless gate. In each chamber an equal number of molecules were bouncing around at random.  However, Maxwell's Demon knew when a molecule was approaching the gate. Armed with only that information, the Demon could open the gate and allow a molecule to pass between the chambers, creating an uneven number of molecules in the two chambers. That, according to the second law of thermodynamics, would cause a temperature change in the box. This proves, according to Maxwell and his Demon, that "information" could do "work" and hence had very real physical characteristics.  I'll get back to you to clarify that concept in six or seven years. 

But it did get me thinking about the idea of thought experiments and how they might be useful in "rethinking" some of the important issues in our life.  So the idea of Maxwell's Demon combined, no doubt, with the episode on crop circles that I had recently watched on the History Channel to come up with this thought experiment I call The Alien's Dilemma. Imagine if you will that . . . . 

Zoron is a scout for the for the Galactic Empire.  It is Zoron's task to evaluate planets with life that has evolved to a certain level of intelligence and decide whether or not they can be admitted to the Empire.  This is a big deal because member planets receive Galactic knowledge, freedom from sickness, immortality, intergalactic cruises, all those for which intelligent life pines. 

Zoron begins the assessment of the third planet from the star in a minor star-system. The locals call it earth.  The wrinkle in this thought experiment is the fact that Zoron can only sense affiliation and action.  Zoron knows when the entities on Earth feel they are affiliated with other entities - so Zoron call discern among all our social and cultural clusters - from huge groups like racial identity and nationality, down through things like religious and political affiliation, all the way to cliques on a middle school playground.  And Zoron can assess the actions that unfold between and among those groups. But that is all that Zoron can understand. Zoron cannot understand the explanations that the various affiliated groups offer for their actions. It is a binary assessment: affiliation and action. 

What is revealed to Zoron is that we, most commonly, resolve conflicts between and among affiliated groups violently. Zoron looks up previous assessments of the planet called earth in the galactic records and discovers that there appears to be no record of any time on Planet Earth that was free from violent conflict between various affiliated groups. Earth appears to be a planet constantly at war. 

As you might guess this is sufficient data to put the blue ball of earth in the rear view mirror, set the GPS to Alpha Centauri, and set all thrusters on full escape mode. Nobody in their right mind would advocate bringing an entire planet of blood-stained cretins into the galactic empire. And that would be the easy choice, were it not for the Alien's Dilemma. 

You see, every scout has the option of visiting a sentient planet if the scout believes the planet is worth saving. If they so choose, the scout may land on the planet and champion the inhabitants by converting them to the harmonic precepts of the Galactic Empire. Zoron knows this option exists, and it has the scout on the horns of a .  .  .  well, you know what. You see, if the scout fails to establish the appropriate criteria for entry into the Galactic Empire on the planet - the punishment is harsh. The scout must remain there. For Zoron the frustrating thing about this little planet is that shows flashes of higher order thinking. There seem to have been isolated instances when affiliated groups have attempted to resolve conflicts without violence. Even the most dominant affiliated groups show occasional evidence of the harmonic precepts of the Galactic Empire, often just before bending all the resources of their affiliation to assuring the bloody demise of another affiliated group. 

For the time being, I am going to leave Zoron there, poised on the horns of the Alien's Dilemma. My next post will deal with how we, through our own behavior, might increase the odds that the Alien’s Dilemma might be resolved in our favor. 

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Diamond and Gold

Diamonds and gold,

Diamonds and gold, 

Neither will keep you 

Warm when you're cold. 

Still they sparkle and shine 

When pried from the mine 

And something about them 

We find passing fine. 

So we keep on digging 

No matter the toll 

We keep right on digging 

For diamonds and gold. 

It is a silly little ditty that crept into my head, waking me at 3 AM the other morning.  But rather than disparaging avarice, it reminded me that value clings to that which is scarce. Increasingly, for me, the commodity in question is verbiage. When I first wandered up to the front of a college classroom, some 44 years ago, to face a sea of student faces, loquaciousness was an important arrow in my quiver. Never was the old saw "if you can't dazzle them with brilliance, then baffle them with bullshit" more apropos. Give me any topic remotely related to my field and I could ride a veritable tsunami of sentences that, as often as not, would - some 50 minutes later - come to rest on a beach that passed for insight. Later I honed the skill to such a degree that anything less than a three-hour seminar seemed an unworthy challenge. 

Perhaps the ebbing of that tide of prose led to the late-blooming third of the four primary tenets of Distilled Harmony: Distill Complexity. Though my students would no doubt argue the point, I have largely abandoned bullshit, seeking instead to provide genuine insight supported by clear, contemporary, supporting evidence. Trying to hit that small, swift target on the fly has profoundly increased my respect for skeet shooting. 

The problem, you see, is that the classroom demands spontaneous composition. Unless you wish to be reduced to the stereotype of the ivy-covered professor droning on over yellowed notes before a classroom stuffed with dozing students, you need to create lectures that weave the verities of the past together with the evolving evidence of today - extemporaneously. Pull!  Blam! Damn! Missed! 

Perhaps it is the increasing illusiveness of the spontaneous bon mote that leads me to now prefer words upon a page. They don’t slip around as much there as they do in front of a hundred students, when the perfect example is lodged there on the edge of your brain but eludes your tongue.  On paper they behave more like brush strokes on canvas; changing the lighting there, softening an edge there, painting out the ugly parts altogether.  

  

The more I think about it, what I’m talking about - well, writing about - is part of a set of natural cycles of caring and competence.  As we move though our lives we encounter existential niches that capture our hearts and our minds and we invest in that niche to hone the competencies demanded by it.  Across the middle decades of my life, as a camp counselor, an acting major, and then as an instructor in small college classes [15 to 25 students], storytelling was such an important niche.  Whether telling a tall tale around a campfire, depicting Miller’s Willy Lohman, or unfolding the early history of the Pony Express - watching the gleam in the audience’s eye was the key to knowing when and how you would punch the important line.  And it shifted with every audience.  In today’s modern and “online classrooms” clinging to that caring for the individual camper, audience member or student is an exercise in frustration. In today's efficiently humongous lecture halls there are too many students in the classroom [60 to 360] to actually see them as individuals, or in the online classroom, there are no students there at all - just a camera pretending to be alive. 

It is more bland than distasteful.  After all, working in front of a camera isn’t that much different than working from a stage where you can hide in the light and imagine the audience loves you.  It’s OK - but just not much more than that. 

Words on a page however are something else entirely.  The allure is at least twofold, maybe threefold or morefold. One attraction lies there in “morefold” that my software is desperately trying to correct for me. [Psst! Robert, that’s not a word. It should be “more fold.”] But if you accept that correction the software will then try to correct your grammar. The fight can be tedious, but I have come to see it as a personal bond with Shakespeare.  The Bard is often credited with adding about 1700 new words to the English language. No doubt the upper crust looked down from their boxes and sneered, “Bedazzled!? Z’wounds, its not even a word!” But it became one - because it was just so right for the moment.  I doubt that “morefold” will gain the traction of "bedazzled,” but whenever I take arms against a sea of software, I feel a sense of, probably unwarranted, kinship with Billy, as we try to bend the language to our purpose. 

Secondfold, is the idea that the words leave here and make their merry way across the Internet, at least into your mailbox, to Senior Correspondent and perhaps even further afield.  It is not too difficult to imagine you reading them - as some of you write back and tell me that you do. Students, not so much, if tests are any indication of attention.  But still on occasion, sometimes after several years, a student will slide into my email box and say “Thank you. Your lectures were interesting and valuable.”  And, like golf, that one good shot keeps you coming back. 

Thirdfold, is just the pleasure of giving these thoughts and words and sentences a home.  They, I assume, wake me for a reason.  They are notes that are important, somehow, to the chord that is me; to the sentient articulation that is my unique presence in existence. I should give them the attention, the caring, they deserve.  And, of course, it would be silly to get up to write without seeing what was left in the refrigerator. 

And finally, there is morefold.  No doubt I will find just the right words to describe that entity after a small sandwich, or perhaps a doughnut.