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The Male Biological Clock, Ctd

Kathleen Goodwin summarizes a recent paper that examined how paternal age affects children:

[R]esearchers found that in a sample size of over 2.6 million, advanced paternal age has a detrimental effect on the mental health of offspring, with a greater risk for autism and attention-deficit/ hyperactivity disorder, as well as likelihood of suicide attempts and low educational attainment, even when controlling for multiple other factors.

She considers the implications:

Until now, the onus of choosing when to prioritize career and when to attempt pregnancy was ultimately a woman’s to bear. While men are undoubtedly affected by their partners’ decision to delay pregnancy and the ensuing fertility issues and health risks that accompany this decision, they were free of the worry that their aging sperm would have any negative consequences on their unborn child. Anecdotally, there are many examples of successful men have married younger women and thus been able to avoid the complications of advanced maternal age (Donald Trump comes immediately to mind—his current wife Melania Knauss-Trump is 23 years his junior and he was 59 when their son Barron was born). The publication of this study puts the age of a father into the list of factors that parents must balance when deciding to begin a family. If this study is able to be replicated with the same results and becomes part of the public health lexicon, men will be forced to consider their own age when it comes to planning their careers and choosing when to have children with their partners.

Previous Dish on the subject here.

The Most Beautiful Equation?

There was an objective way to find the answer:

[R]esearchers led by Semir Zeki of University College London asked 16 mathematicians to rate 60 equations on a scale ranging from “ugly” to “beautiful.” Two weeks later, the mathematicians viewed the same equations and rated them again while lying inside a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner.

The scientists found that the more beautiful an equation was to the mathematician, the more activity his or her brain showed in an area called the A1 field of the medial orbitofrontal cortex. The orbitofrontal cortex is associated with emotion, and this particular region of it has shown in previous tests to be correlated with emotional responses to visual and musical beauty. …

The study found … that the beauty of equations is not entirely subjective. Most of the mathematicians agreed on which equations were beautiful and which were ugly, with Euler’s identity, 1+eiπ=0, consistently rated the most attractive equation in the lot. “Here are these three fundamental numbers, e, pi and i,” [mathematician Colin] Adams says, “all defined independently and all critically important in their own way, and suddenly you have this relationship between them encompassed in this equation that has a grand total of seven symbols in it? It is dumbfounding.”

(Image of Euler’s Identity scarification via Flickr user gruntzooki)

Subatomic Free Will?

David Graeber considers the possibility:

Is it meaningful to say an electron “chooses” to jump the way it does? Obviously, there’s no way to prove it. The only evidence we could have (that we can’t predict what it’s going to do), we do have. But it’s hardly decisive. Still, if one wants a consistently materialist explanation of the world—that is, if one does not wish to treat the mind as some supernatural entity imposed on the material world, but rather as simply a more complex organization of processes that are already going on, at every level of material reality—then it makes sense that something at least a little like intentionality, something at least a little like experience, something at least a little like freedom, would have to exist on every level of physical reality as well.

Why do most of us, then, immediately recoil at such conclusions? Why do they seem crazy and unscientific? Or more to the point, why are we perfectly willing to ascribe agency to a strand of DNA (however “metaphorically”), but consider it absurd to do the same with an electron, a snowflake, or a coherent electromagnetic field?

The answer, it seems, is because it’s pretty much impossible to ascribe self-interest to a snowflake. If we have convinced ourselves that rational explanation of action can consist only of treating action as if there were some sort of self-serving calculation behind it, then by that definition, on all these levels, rational explanations can’t be found. Unlike a DNA molecule, which we can at least pretend is pursuing some gangster-like project of ruthless self-aggrandizement, an electron simply does not have a material interest to pursue, not even survival. It is in no sense competing with other electrons. If an electron is acting freely—if it, as Richard Feynman is supposed to have said, “does anything it likes”—it can only be acting freely as an end in itself. Which would mean that at the very foundations of physical reality, we encounter freedom for its own sake—which also means we encounter the most rudimentary form of play.

The Ways Guns Kill People

A reader writes:

I’m disappointed that you only put up the numbers from accidental gun deaths. It seems a bit disingenuous, as the number of non-accidental car deaths, pool deaths, etc., are, of course, dramatically lower. In 2010 the FBI recorded 12,996 homicides. Of those, 8,775 were committed with guns. That compares to 1,704 with knives, the next closest, 540 with blunt objects, and 11 with poison. Even if you would argue that, of those killed by guns, many would have been killed with another weapon, it’s hard to see how that would directly play out. How many drive-by knifings can you have? How many people can get hit by crossfire from a baseball bat?

How about suicide? In 2010, we had 19,392 gun suicides. Not so many with cars. And for those who would argue that guns don’t matter when it comes to suicide (i.e. people will kill themselves regardless of what tools they have to accomplish the deed), multiple studies have proven that access to guns dramatically raises the risk of a successful suicide attempt.

But if you want to stick with just accidental deaths, as you’ve done, let’s contextualize it a bit. From 2005-2010, almost 3,800 people in the US died from unintentional shootings. 1,300 of those were under the age of 25. 31% of those shootings could have been prevented by the addition of two devices: a child-proof safety lock and a loading indicator. And 8% of those shootings (that’s 304) were carried out by shots fired from children under the age of six. How many accidental road deaths are caused by drivers who are under the age of six?

So, yes, lots of stuff can kill you. No surprise. But in the US, we’re at a much higher risk of death by firearm because of the lobbying efforts of the industry whose product is design to kill.

Another reader, from the other side of the debate, quotes Waldman:

On one hand, there are over 300 million of us, so only one in 500,000 Americans is killed every year because his knumbskull cousin said “Hey Bert, is this thing loaded?” before pulling the trigger. You can see that as a small number. The other way to look at is that each and every day, an American or two loses his or her life this way. In countries with sane gun laws, that 606 number is somewhere closer to zero.

That sentence encapsulates what I hate about the anti-gun crowd.

While Waldman is ahead of the game in that he at least admits that at .5% of all accidental deaths make accidental gun deaths a pretty low priority, he goes on to say that we should eliminate all personal gun ownership to take care of it anyway. Why does this bother me? Well, because it says that he doesn’t value my desire to own a gun to the point where he would take my gun to solve a problem he just admitted was insignificant.  So by extension, what I want is even less significant than this insignificant issue.

Look, as a responsible gun owner I want to reduce the number of gun deaths, and there are many ways of doing this, from requiring guns to be locked up when not in use so that minors cannot accidentally shoot somebody, to universal background checks to at least make it difficult for criminals to get their hands on guns.  The problem is that it is difficult to work with somebody who puts such a low value on something that you value that they see no reason why anybody would even want what you want.

If you want to know why it is so easy for the NRA to sell the idea that some people want to take your guns away look no farther than Paul Waldman (and Obama, Bloomberg, Feinstein and others) who on one hand say they don’t want to take your guns while making statements that make it clear they don’t value you having one.

(Chart based on data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, via Leon Neyfakh)

The Data-Driven Life

Ed Finn argues that “when we start depending on our computers to explain how and why things happened, we’ve started to outsource not just the talking points but the narrative itself”:

The idea that a computer might know you better than you know yourself  may sound preposterous, but take stock of your life for a moment. How many years of credit card transactions, emails, Facebook likes, and digital photographs are sitting on some company’s servers right now, feeding algorithms about your preferences and habits? What would your first move be if you were in a new city and lost your smartphone? I think mine would be to borrow someone else’s smartphone and then get Google to help me rewire the missing circuits of my digital self. …

But of course we’re not surrendering our iPhones or our cloud-based storage anytime soon, and many have begun to embrace the notion of the algorithmically examined life. Lifelogging pioneers have been it at it for decades, recording and curating countless aspects of their own daily existences and then mining that data for new insights, often quite beautifully. Stephen Wolfram crunched years of data on his work habits to establish a sense of his professional rhythms far more detailed (and, in some cases, mysterious) than a human reading of his calendar or email account could offer. His reflections on the process are instructive:

He argues that lifelogging is “an adjunct to my personal memory, but also to be able to do automatic computational history—explaining how and why things happened.” We may not always be ready to hear what those things are. At least one Facebook user was served an ad encouraging him to come out as gay—a secret he never shared on the service and had divulged to only one friend. As our digital selves become more nuanced and complete, reconciling them with the “real” self will become harder. Researchers can already correlate particular tendencies in Internet browsing history with symptoms of depression—how long before a computer (or a school administrator, boss, or parent prompted by the machine) is the first to inform someone they may be depressed?

On a related note, Nick Diakopoulos urges reporters to focus more on algorithms:

He wants reporters to learn how to report on algorithms — to investigate them, to critique them — whether by interacting with the technology itself or by talking to the people who design them. Ultimately, writes Diakopoulos in his new white paper,“Algorithmic Accountability Reporting: On the Investigation of Black Boxes,” he wants algorithms to become a beat:

We’re living in a world now where algorithms adjudicate more and more consequential decisions in our lives. It’s not just search engines either; it’s everything from online review systems to educational evaluations, the operation of markets to how political campaigns are run, and even how social services like welfare and public safety are managed. Algorithms, driven by vast troves of data, are the new power brokers in society.

(Image of Wolfram’s chart based on data from his digital pedometer via Stephen Wolfram)

Watching The Day Go By

Fong Qi Wei has transformed his photo series Time is a Dimension into the GIF art series Time in Motion:

The idea for Time In Motion came to Qi Wei while working on its predecessor, and has taken about four months to put together. For the original series, Qi Wei shot at the same location for between two to four hours, usually at sunset to catch the most dynamic and glorious lighting. The challenge then was to slice up an image in an interesting way, then to find ways of using the best moments in a given shard and arrange them into a coherent overall image. In this [new GIF series], the same balance was necessary, but has to be sustained across each frame.

One thing lost in the conversion is time for inspection and contemplation. The images now generally pass by far too quickly to be discerned, leaving the overall effect to be taken in. Ultimately, Qi Wei is as interested in notions of time raised by these pictures as he is in the aesthetics of the images themselves.

(Image by Fong Qi Wei. Hat tip: Doug Bierend)

Apathetic Atheism vs New Atheism, Ctd

A reader speaks up for “church-going atheists”:

We are many.  Just not all of us are open about it!  I don’t like the term “atheist” (being freighted with Dawkins anti-theism); I prefer the term “non-believer”.  I passed through my ex-Catholic/angry-atheist phase to a post-religion phase where I value what we have in common more than I care about what separates us. I go to church because 1) I married a woman of deep faith, and 2) because we found our way to a community that welcomes both of us, when she was effectively driven out of her cradle Catholicism by the horrors of California’s Prop8.  In fact, I was lobbying her to become Episcopalian for years, as that seems the logical place for a Vatican II-style Catholic with progressive views of church and justice.

Mutual respect makes our inter-faith relationship work.  My wife’s service in church (she’s now the Head Verger of an Episcopal cathedral) is a major part of her life, and I love her completely, so of course I support her wholeheartedly.  And she respects who and where I am as well. I too was raised Catholic, so the ancient rhythm of the liturgy is familiar, and the music is simply amazing (thankfully she went “nosebleed high” when she swam the Thames).  I guess I am essentially a cultural Trinitarian sacramentalist Christian, even if I don’t believe per se.  So I’ll do gladly do Episcopal calisthenics on a Sunday, though I don’t pray, sing, or take communion, because that would be disrespectful of the community.

As the members of my church say, “Whoever you are, wherever you are on the journey of faith, you are welcome here.” Kinda restores my faith in Christianity.

Another reader:

Reading your most recent post on Apatheism, I thought I’d relate the following story of how politics have made this outspoken atheist into a staunch defender of religious freedom.

I’m what you might call a “movement atheist.” I go to cons. I write for a well-known skeptical website. I am 100% for the complete separation of church and state. But in the last year I have found myself in the rather unexpected position of loudly and publicly advocating for the right of Muslim women to wear the hijab, among other public expressions of religious values.

You see, I live in Quebec, where the separatist government’s proposed “Charter of Values“ would ban public sector workers – which here includes all university and hospital employees in addition to your standard public servants and primary/secondary educators – from wearing any “ostentatious” religious symbols. This includes not only the hijab, but also the turban and the kippah for observant Sikhs and Jews.

The ban does not, however, extend to employees of state-funded Catholic parochial schools, which receive substantial government funding, or to the giant cross in the National Assembly, which is part of Quebec’s “cultural heritage.”

The brazen xenophobia of the whole endeavour is utterly repellant to me, especially given the province’s worrying history of anti-semitism, but the proposed charter is unfortunately quite popular with the general electorate outside of Montreal (where nearly all the affected populations live and work) and may in fact lead to the PQ winning a majority government in the upcoming election and forcing it through.

Should the measure pass, many committed atheists like myself plan nonetheless to wear banned religious articles in solidarity with our colleagues of faith. Needless to say, as an atheist activist, this is just about the last thing on earth I would ever have expected to do, but racist politics make very strange bedfellows.

Read the whole discussion thread here.

The Best Of The Dish This Weekend

Great to hear an actual defense of the ACA from Charlie Crist. Why, I wonder, do we almost never hear Democratic members of Congress say the same thing? Why the constant defensive crouch? Why do we not have an aggressive, active campaign to defend the ACA? I’ve never understood why Democrats seem so incapable of making the case for their policies. Part of me thought the Obama era could overcome that. But Democratic uselessness seems far too deeply ingrained for that.

This weekend we featured two very different pieces of music – Mendelsohn’s sublime interpretation of Psalm 55 and then an affecting, bass-driven music video of a rave-party hookup (put your earphones on). Two videos – Steven Soderberg’s cut of two versions of Psycho … and an interpretation of the life of H.G. Wells.

Scruton takes on scientism; Larry Siedentop (a beloved old Oxford professor) champions Saint Paul as the real inventor of Western equality; Michael Walzer tackles Shylock.

e.e. cummings celebrates “the leaping greenly spirits of trees” and the flowers open – in slo-mo.

The most popular post of the weekend was my old post about why we’re publishing dirty pics on Saturday night – The Dish’s NSFW Saturday Night. Next up: Getty Gets The Internet.

See you in the morning.

A Poem For Sunday

“i thank You God for most this amazing” by e.e. cummings:

I thank You God for most this amazing

day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees

and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything

which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,

and this is the sun’s birthday;this is the birth

day of life and of love and wings:and of the gay

great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing

breathing any—lifted from the no

of all nothing—human merely being

doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and

now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

(From Complete Poems: 1904-1962 by E.E.Cummings, edited by George J. Firmage © 1950,1952, 1956, 1978, 1980, 1984, 1991 by the Trustees for the E.E.Cummings Trust. © 1979 by George James Firmage. Used by permission of  Liveright Publishing Corporation. Video is of Cummings reading the above poem.)