Apple is a gibbon; everyone else are sloths

by cliff1066™

Talking about monkey bars from my last post got me thinking about gibbons and their mode of travel – brachiation. By swinging and properly timing their movements, they can accomplish really exceptional progress, apparently effortlessly. They adapt to what is needed to get them where they need to go.

Now look at another arboreal mammal, one that is just the opposite of the gibbon – the sloth.

Notice how it does not let go with one paw until the other has a firm grasp. It  is slow and careful because it doe not have the ability to adapt quickly to changing circumstances. The gibbon can change immediately if the branch is not capable of holding it. Not so for the sloth. It must be certain of each of its moves, before it can even make them.

Most large 20th Century corporations act like sloths. It is just too hard to change direction. They  will not let go of one product until they know for sure that the next will be successful. They can not use their momentum – timing the transition to take the best benefit of their energy – to make rapid adaptive change.

But now we live in an environment where being able to rapidly change directions is a strong adaptive response. This change happens so rapidly that corporations will simply lose if they wait for things to be certain. Their slothlike organizational skills simply do not allow them to take real advantage of 21st Century processes.

Apple, on the other hand, does. It has created an organization that can not only come up with wildly popular and amazing products but can also make sure it can produce them and sell them worldide, in quantities that are simply mind-boggling to people from 20th Century companies.

A sloth can only tolerate success. One misstep at it can fall to the forest floor. Even to defecate requires a tremendous risk. The gibbon can take much greater risks because its agility and adaptibility permit it to recover from mistakes.

Which one will have more success in a rapidly changing environment?

I’m betting on the gibbon.

Most important what-if question regarding Apple

by Jessica.Tam

When exceptional growth is not an exception
[Via asymco]

Apple’s last quarter’s sales growth was an impressive 83%. It was not as high as the 92% earnings rise because there was a higher mix of iPhones this quarter than in the past. The iPhone is the most profitable product in Apple’s portfolio so it impacts the gross margin significantly.

The iPhone is, in fact, a huge part of Apple’s business. In units it reached 5% global share and 14% US share. I’ll go over the overall industry data as soon as all the major reports are in, but already it has been estimated that Apple is the largest phone vendor by profit and sales.

In the following chart, you can see just how important the iPhone has become. Together with the iPad and iPod touch, iOS-powered devices make up about 65% of sales. That’s almost three times the value of OS X based products which make up 23% of sales. That also leaves just 12% of sales not directly affected by these two juggernaut platforms (though music and peripherals are clearly indirectly affected by Apple’s own platform products.)

[More]

Quoting Asymco:

What if blockbusters are really something that can be built with repeatable consistency. What would that be worth?

What if Apple can keep doing this?

Apple has not only presented one disruptive idea – they have continued to introduce ones about every 3-4 years. The iMac changed the way PCs looked and worked. The iPod created an MP3 player for everyone, the iPhone changed the smartphone industry and the iPad created a novel new device.

These have all driven sales so greatly that year over year sales are almost up 100%. Can you name any other 40 tear old company with over 46,000 employees that has done this even once in a 4 year period, much lest 4 times?

In fact, as the data show in his figures, Apple has actually done something few companies have been able to do – it will sacrifice one extremely profitable, disruptive product to open way for another one. The share of total sales held by iPods 4 years ago has almost all been taken by iOS devices. It has seen a shift in the relative importance of its products from computers to iPods to iPhones, each shift doubling sales but with a focus on leveraging each bit rather than destroying them.

But, in the nice wat things work today, they do not have to destroy the village in order to save it. They still sell iPods and computers. In fact, their sales of only OS X devices has increased at a much faster rate than any other computer maker. They disrupted the netbook-laptop market with the iPad and Macbook Air.

Many are noticing that Microsoft’s main problem is not that it does not have great research. It is that is simply can not move away from Windows and Office. It cannot recreate itself to move into new areas. It suffers from the Innovator’s dilemma – moving into a totally new area requires it to let go of a perfectly profitable product.

Most companies hold on to a money-making product until it completely fails in the market place. By that time, they have generally ‘wasted’ all the profits – CEO salaries, etc. – and have nothing to bootstrap themselves into the next step. In fact, they often only start looking when it is already too late.

Apple is a 21st Century Company – one based on a degree of resilience and adaptability that will serve as a model for this century. It takes the profits it is making to leverage up to the next step WHILE the product is still extremely profitable.

Think of monkey bars. If you swing from one to the next, letting go with one hand and then grasping a new bar at just the right time, you can move through them very quickly with little extra energy.  If you wait until you start swinging backwards, it is really hard to get moving again. If you just hang there, moving one arm forward and then the other one forward, holding on bar by bar, you will often become too tired to make it across.

Adding ads to an app – storming the Bastille time

by kevindooley

Action – push ads to everyone, not just those actively using the app

Airpush — Push Notification Ads for Android
[Via Daring Fireball]

Sounds like hell on earth.

Update: Dan Wineman:

Airpush sounds like a really good way to turn “inactive users” into active uninstallers.

[More]

Reaction – torches and pitchforks

How Do Users React When a Developer Adds Airpush Ads to an App?
[Via Daring Fireball]

Not kindly.

[More]

Making money based on ads simply does not seem like a viable approach. The amounts are tiny, the revenue stream is out of your control as Google controls the price of ads and the app can go from 5 stars to 1 star in a heartbeat if things go wrong.

A thing to remember in an App Economy is that feedback is immediate – both positive and negative.

Why you should not let Facebook control anything important of yours

Facebook shoots first, ignores questions later; account lock-out attack works
[Via Ars Technica]

Got enemies on Facebook? Facebook is so eager to protect copyright that the mere accusation of copyright infringement is enough to get an account locked. Ars found this out the hard way Thursday morning when our own Facebook page became inaccessible, with no warning, no explanation, and no clear appeal process.

[More]

If all it takes is a complaint to shut down your Facebook page and they can simply make up an email address.

The only reason Facebook seems to be working with Ars is because they have a huge audience. How about for the lesser people without as large a soapbox?

Apple’s Senate hearings and the power of the RDF in the post-PC era

by Valkry Productions

I had this interesting comment from an earlier post.

Just wait. A congressional hearing will be, or try to be, a lynching of Apple! The Feds use PCs. Do you really think they are to admit that their computers and phones are worse than Macs? Of course not.

I have a couple of responses – one is that in a post–PC world, the tools being used are much more heterogenous than before, making it very hard to characterize any entity – and especially one as complex as the government – as interested in just one device.

Many, many Federal employees are using Apple products – such as iPhones, iPads and Macs. And they are just as fanatical about them as any Mac fan. They are people, after all ;-) Well, most of them.

So I do not really see that a lynching as a credible possibility. (Besides, as I mention below, there are practical reasons I do not believe it will not be anything like a McCarthy era HUAC hearing.)

Apple has done a much better job the last few years getting their computers approved for government work. The Government Computing News site has written about the rapid uptake of iPads and iPhones by government employees.

I actually think this is part of what Jobs means by a post-PC world. In a PC world, the organization still determined what computing device people could use – Windows won. But in a post-PC world, the employee chooses the device and the employer is really unable to stop that. So they prety much acquiesce.

And that is exactly what we are seeing in both the government and in business. The Interior Department just gave 1000  iPads to its field agents as well as iPhones. DARPA is modifying iPads to use throughout the Department of Defense. Almost every Executive branch office and many of the Legislative are integrating Apple products. Why? Because people were going to use them anyway so they had to figure out how to incorporate them.

In fact, I would imagine that the real reason there has been such a rapid outcry from the government is their own worry about security. Mobile devices are already  being used by people in very sensitive positions. The thought that information about those people could be sent to third parties would make them rightly stand up and take a hard look.

I do not think they are setting this up to torpedo Apple since many people in the government love them. I actually expect several on the committee will make that known. I think there is a rightful concern about privacy that Apple will have no problem answering. Because Apple’s only concern is the user experience. If users do not trust them, they will buy another product.

Not so for the other company invited – Google – where the user experience is really only secondary to servicing their advertisers – the ones who pay the bills.

In fact, I think just the opposite to an Apple lynching is possible. I think Google could be in for some hurt here. They will have to contend with the most potent secret weapon Apple still has – the Reality Distortion Field of Steve Jobs.

I have full faith in the RDF. Apple would be a very successful company without this weapon but is simply devastating using it. No other company or Senatorial committee stands a chance if Jobs decides to be there to testify.

Even Senators will want to bathe in it rather than go head-to-head against it. I expect that by the time Jobs is through – if he appears –  the audience will not only give him a standing ovation but so will several Senators ;-)

How will Google be able to deal with this? Would you want to be at the same table – as a competitor of Apple – when the RDF is in force? Steve has already hinted that ‘others’ do much worse with privacy. Google may well be one of those others sitting at the same table.

Both Microsoft and Google send back location information including unique device IDs so that they can tag specific information back to specific users. Apple has said it only uses anonymized information so nothing can be tracked back to a specific user.

If asked by a Senator if they can  track a person’s specific location, Apple can say ‘No’ while Google will say ‘Possibly’. Apple only has a database of nearby cell towers and Wi-Fi spots which can be used only by someone with your phone – or computer – in their possession. Google gets your exact GPS coordinates which they can give to … who?

And what about the forgotten child here?  Microsoft used to be somebody. I have to think that poor Steve Ballmer is trying to get himself invited to this committee also. All the cool kids are invited. Why is no one concerned with the relevance of Microsoft here? Poor MS. I’d almost think they would prefer being lynched than being ignored.

Finally, Jobs is a well-known liberal – all of his political donations go to Democrats – but whose machines are used by  the most important conservative pundits. There is no political advantage to be gained here by a lynching. So I simply do not expect there to be anything other than a dog and pony show to demonstrate how serious they all are about privacy. Well, that is what to usually expect from Congressional hearings. But, like having Feynman on the Shuttle Committee, people with RDFs – and Feynman’s was every bit as strong as Jobs; why is Feynman one of the only theoretical physicists anyone has heard of? – can often turn the hearings onto completely different tracks.

I would imagine that any hearing that Jobs is at will be covered live and be watched by millions. That is all a politician wants. But Jobs might have another agenda, one that could really enhance Apple.

I expect Steve to be there if he can. The full court press he is putting on now indicates to me that he will be a strong participant in these hearings.

I would not be surprised by the end for Apple to be on top and Google to be struggling with how it deals with the questions.

Google and MS should be the ones concerned here. Jobs and Apple will be fine.

Full court press from Steve Jobs

by epSos.de

Steve Jobs outlines Apple’s efforts to clarify iPhone location tracking issue
[Via AppleInsider]

In an interview with Wall Street Journal blogger Ina Fried, Apple’s chief executive Steve Jobs explained the steps his company took to respond to the explosion of interest in reports concerning how iOS devices use location services.

[More]

Wow. Steve was everywhere yesterday, giving interviews with just about any media reporter that would listen. I don’t every remember Apple and Jobs putting on this much of a coordinated outreach to alter incorrect perceptions.

This is because Apple’s business focus is on the customer and their experience. Google’s and others have a business focus on their advertisers.

An adaptive and resilient company can leverage this sort of event – based largely on the misrepresentation of a bug – which could really hamstring more hierarchical organizations. Instead of purely using press releases, Apple sends out its best weapon – the Reality Distortion Field of Steve Jobs.

Apple does whatever it can to make sure the customer’s experience is at the forefront. Google does whatever it can to make sure the advertisers experience is forefront.

I expect that by the time Jobs appears in front of a Congressional committee, this will  be turned into a messaging about how responsive Apple is to customer comments and how it never uses location services knowingly to make a buck with third parties.

While Google does exactly that. As I understand it, Google sends back data with a unique identifier for every phone, allowing it to datamine the locations and personal info from people. Apple anonymizes the data so that it can be mined – such a crowdsourceing information – but not so it can identify anyone.

Now this is a real security problem and it does not involve Apple

by PseudoGil

Sony admits utter PSN failure: Your personal data has been stolen
[Via MacDailyNews]

I“Sony has finally come clean about the “external intrusion” that has caused the company to take down the PlayStation Network service, and the news is almost as bad as it can possibly get,” Ben Kuchera reports for Ars Technica. “The hackers have all your personal information, although Sony is still unsure about whether your credit card data is safe. Everything else on file when it comes to your account is in the hands of the hackers.”

[More]

So, hackers now have all your personal data and may have your credit card numbers. Sony is not sure. This looks like a real screwup. I wonder when Sony will be called in front of Congress.

Nobody was put out by Apple’s bug. Sony’s recommendation is to change your passwords else where if they are the same as the Playstation Network and to get new credit cards.

Isn’t that special! This is going to be one huge lawsuit.

The market is not rational when it comes to Apple

by terren in Virginia

The Apple Growth Scorecard
[Via asymco]

Apple’s revenue for the first quarter was $24.7 billion, which at 83% was the largest quarterly revenue growth they ever experienced. Operating margin was an all-time high of almost $7.9 billion, representing 31.9% of revenue and yielding 95% EPS growth.

After earnings were announced the share price reached $350.7. This includes $70 in cash. Trailing twelve months’ earnings were $20.97. That makes the Price/Earnings ratio 16.7. Excluding cash, P/E is 13.4. The average growth over the past four quarters was 77%.

The following chart shows the share price vs. earnings. The green line is price and the blue line is share price. I also added multiples of the earnings to show how the stock traded in certain multiple bands.

[More]

If this was a baseball game, the official scorer would have been fired a long time ago.

Normally, the price to earnings ratio (P/E) should serve as a reasonable substitute for the growth of a company, as expected by the rationalists on Wall Street. A P/E of 25 means they expect larger growth than a P/E of 12 – roughly twice as much.

So, the greater the earnings the greater the price should be. Except with Apple. As shown in the asymco post, there is no correlation between P/E and earnings growth at all. In fact, as he shows in a great graph, since the recession started, the P/E pretty much is independent of earnings growth.

Earnings grow 10% – P/E of 20. Earnings grow 100% – P/E of 20. Wall Street just does not value Apple’s fundamentals in any sort of rational way.

When it comes to Apple , they appear to simply be irrational. Since 2009, Apple’s sales have been accelerating, with sales growth actually increasing. And its earnings have also accelerated from 11% over the previous year in 2009 to 92% just this last quarter! So the increase in earnings is increasing each quarter.

That is what is normally seen as a growth company and is usually regarded with a higher P/E.

Yet there has been no change in the P/E numbers. Wall Street just cannot understand what a 21st Century Company really looks like.

It is like the team keeps hitting grand slams but the official scorekeeper only gives them singles. So anyone reading the scorecard thinks that things are just barely passable, instead of off the charts.

And in Wall Street’s world, the official scorekeeper not only keeps their job but gets a bonus. Ain’t America great!

Getting freaked out at Apple for a bug

Apple issues statement on iOS location controversy, says fix is coming
[Via AppleInsider]

Apple on Wednesday responded to growing concern over a bug in the iOS mobile operating system that powers the iPhone and iPad, informing customers that it is not tracking them and revealing that it will address the issue with a forthcoming software update.

[More]

As I mentioned before, this is not a problem. There is a valid reason for the data. They just forgot to make sure that it was being erased  properly. As the message from Apple stated:

6. People have identified up to a year’s worth of location data being stored on the iPhone. Why does my iPhone need so much data in order to assist it in finding my location today?

This data is not the iPhone’s location data—it is a subset (cache) of the crowd-sourced Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower database which is downloaded from Apple into the iPhone to assist the iPhone in rapidly and accurately calculating location. The reason the iPhone stores so much data is a bug we uncovered and plan to fix shortly (see Software Update section below). We don’t think the iPhone needs to store more than seven days of this data.

INstead of running off with wild stories, mostly designed to increase page hits, maybe it would be better to actually talk with the company first. We seem to be in such a rush to find conspiracies for anything that I even expect people to disregard this message from Apple.

Science loses to law – Why rhetoric is often more important than facts

by Brian Hillegas

Is Reasoning Built for Winning Arguments, Rather Than Finding Truth?
[Via The Intersection]

How is this for timing? Just as my Mother Jones piece on motivated reasoning came out, the journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences devoted an entire issue to the case for an “argumentative theory” of reason, advanced by Hugo Mercier of the University of Pennsylvania and Dan Sperber of the Jean Nicod Institute in Paris. You can’t get the article over there without a subscription, but it’s also available at SSRN, and here is the abstract:

Reasoning is generally seen as a means to improve knowledge and make better decisions. However, much evidence shows that reasoning often leads to epistemic distortions and poor decisions. This suggests that the function of reasoning should be rethought. Our hypothesis is that the function of reasoning is argumentative. It is to devise and evaluate arguments intended to persuade. Reasoning so conceived is adaptive given the exceptional dependence of humans on communication and their vulnerability to misinformation. A wide range of evidence in the psychology of reasoning and decision making can be reinterpreted and better explained in the light of this hypothesis. Poor performance in standard reasoning tasks is explained by the lack of argumentative context. When the same problems are placed in a proper argumentative setting, people turn out to be skilled arguers. Skilled arguers, however, are not after the truth but after arguments supporting their views. This explains the notorious confirmation bias. This bias is apparent not only when people are actually arguing, but also when they are reasoning proactively from the perspective of having to defend their opinions. Reasoning so motivated can distort evaluations and attitudes and allow erroneous beliefs to persist. Proactively used reasoning also favors decisions that are easy to justify but not necessarily better. In all these instances traditionally described as failures or flaws, reasoning does exactly what can be expected of an argumentative device: Look for arguments that support a given conclusion, and, ceteris paribus, favor conclusions for which arguments can be found.

Behavioral and Brain Sciences contains not only the paper by Mercier and Sperber, but also a flurry of expert responses and then a response from the authors. SSRN does too, and there is a site devoted to this idea as well.

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Anyone who has seen a debate between a scientist and a creationist knows of this dynamic. Most creationist’s arguments take the form of legal rhetorical debates while scientists argue from a very different perspective. They usually present information and try to enhance the knowledge of the those around so they can make their own decision. Creationists argue to support their views using the same sorts of techniques used to validate a guilty verdict. The goal is not to impart information but to drive a decision using the best argumentative tools.

Science does not work that way. At least it tries not to. Thus is often loses in these reasoning sessions.

I would argue that the idea of reasoning used in this report is a very different one than a scientist would use when saying reasoning. Not that I disagree with its point and the idea that these sorts of reasoning arguments in a social setting could be very important for human survival.

But science – our tool for understanding the world around us – has spent the last 400 years moving away from these sorts of arguments and approach to reasoning. Science is not decided by who has the best argumentative personality or knows the best tricks of rhetoric. It is decided by facts that represent the natural world, not just our logical arguments.

Some of the most dramatic debates in science history actually rely on these sorts of reasoning arguments. The debate between Huxley and Wilberforce is one of them. Or Darrow and Bryan.

But these great debates are only remembered because the science was right, not that the argument was.

A large part of the modern scientific enterprise is to reduce this sort of reasoning to a minimum. Not that it is gone in the least. Scientists often use every single aspect of reasoning when discussing their work. But there have to be facts and a real connection to reality.

No matter how forcefully Pons and Fleischmann ‘reasoned’ about cold fusion, it did not make it real. That is why virtually every scientist will lose in a reasoned debate with a lawyer on a topic. We recognize that no matter how strong our arguments are, nor as data-filled, they will always be provisional at same level. That weakens them in a debate with someone having a hardened argument

There will always be a segment of grey, no matter how well defined the rest is. Reasoning from that viewpoint will almost always lose in a debate with someone who can argue from only a single shade.

When framed as a black and white debate, having shades of gray make you look weak along with your argument.

To win such a reasoning argument, a researcher often has to take a rhetorical position that is somewhat anathema to their viewpoint.

They have to remove the shades of grey that all researchers know exist. They must argue from a black and white view. But this often alienates other researchers while not really providing a satisfying argument.

I think this is why so many scientists are poor communicators – not when it comes to talking about the science but when it comes to arguing about decisions.

Science takes data and creates information. Transformation of information by the sorts of reasoning mentioned above results in knowledge. Knowledge allows us to make decisions. Wisdom is about making the right decision. Science can helps us with knowledge by providing information but it cannot always prevail in a purely rhetorical setting. It is good at creating information but not well prepared for the transformation of information into the knowledge needed to make a decision.

Perhaps what researchers need is not better communication skills but better training in how to present their scientific arguments in this sort of arena of reasoning – helping transfer the information they create into the knowledge needed to make the decisions in society.

I think this is where Mooney and Nisbet’s ideas of framing come from. Not to deny the science or to ignore the facts. But to find a way to permit scientific arguments to get a fair hearing in these sorts of argumentative settings that determine just what decisions get made.

We are working on getting researchers to be better presenters and speakers of their science. We need to actually be training them how to enter these reasoning arguments in a way that can benefit us all. Because their attempts at the moment are ham-handed and not helping move us forward.

They need to be given a rhetorical arsenal that allows them to enter these reasoning sessions that will be crticial for our survival.

Understanding blame in lost climate debates

by Syntopia

Climate Policy Failure, and Laying Blame
[Via The Intersection]

My latest DeSmogBlog item continues the discussion of the whole Romm-Nisbet brouhaha, which is of course mostly about how to engage in accurate finger-pointing in the wake of what all perceive as a failure of climate policy.

Romm has now given some actual rough percents for how he sees the blame-o-meter, and I comment on those–I’m guessing I’m somewhere between Romm and Nisbet, probably closer to Romm:

I would never downplay (as Nisbet did) all the attacks on science that have occurred. But I also would not exonerate environmental organizations. God knows they have their problems, and personally, I’ve felt that the inward firing squad is the biggest—and the lack of unity and common cause.

Nor would I completely exonerate scientists—and they’re not letting themselves off the hook either. They know they need to communicate better. The introspection and reflection going on in that world at the moment is a really impressive thing to see.

But Romm is right that science denial and the media (combined) have been the biggest problem. I don’t know about 90 percent, but surely in the 60-90 percent range.

[More]

The article is one of the reasons I often agree with Mooney more than Nesbit in the area of science communication. Nisbets frames sometimes ignore large swaths of factual information. This may be more useful in changing some minds but is very repugnant to those who follow a reality-based world view.

Mooney, on the other hand, frames this debate in a way that I find much more understandable and useful – who has power  and what they did with it.

How do you calculate these percents, anyway? To me, the main factors in attributing “blame” (and I don’t think this is especially novel) are power and responsibility.

Thus, those who deny or attack climate science have a lot of power (through political influence, largesse, etc), and have done the wrong thing (responsibility) by undermining knowledge, disseminating misinformation, etc.

The media, meanwhile, also has vast power, and have done the wrong thing by not covering adequately the story of the century, and thus not living up to their societal responsibility.

Hence both deserve a lot of blame.

And of course here’s why scientists and environmentalists (and the Obama administration) are different: They didn’t misinform, and they wanted to do the right thing. Did they go about it the right way? Surely not, at least in many respects. And they do have power (especially Obama), so they are hardly blameless. But are they as blameworthy as those who have misled us, or those who ignored the problem? You see my point.

This may also explain why there was such a strong reaction to Nisbet’s report. While he might be willing to admit that much blame should  fall on the denial machine, the media, etc., his report was framed in such a way that it appeared to neglect them, while casting aspersions elsewhere. Thus, it seemed to shunt this power/responsibility dimension of laying blame.

By not showing outrage, it sparked outrage.

Nisbet put the blame for failure not only on those with the least amount of power – such as scientists –  but those who were trying to be the most responsible. Ignoring the powerful who irresponsibly misled the public is not a fair way to discuss balance.

Postulating that the researcher’s positions somehow made the powerful act irresponsibly does not help find a solution without recognizing that the powerful had in fact acted irresponsible. Blame should then fall on both parties, not mostly on the least powerful group trying to use facts to responsibly find useful public policy.

That was my main disagreement with Nisbet and something I wish had been discussed to a greater extent. It would have made his report much more important to all of us.

Reading allows us to belong to fictitious groups

How Reading Expands the Sense of Self
[Via Big Think]

New psychological research out of the University of Buffalo demonstrates how, “When we read, we psychologically become part of the community described in the narrative—be they wizards or vampires. That mechanism satisfies the deeply human, evolutionarily crucial, need for belonging.”

[More]

This fits with my previous post – about how expanded our caring circles are compared with other mammals. We can even care about characters that do not exist. We can belong in a make believe world.

In fact, many of these works allow us to explore morality in a context that is relatively safe. It may well be that the printed word has done more to expand our sense of who belongs and who does not than any other creation of the human race.

Morality is an instinct and a learned behavior

by Mr. Kris

Where morality lives – The Boston Globe
[Via the Boston Globe]

What is morality? For millennia, the problem has bedeviled philosophers, who have debated whether it’s divinely inspired, instinctual, or an abstract set of rules that we should figure out rationally. Patricia Churchland, a philosopher at the University of California San Diego, thinks it’s time for a different kind of answer: Understanding morality, she argues, means understanding its roots in the brain.

Churchland, a former MacArthur “genius” fellow, has built a career trying to knit together neuroscience and philosophy, two fields that usually prefer competition to cooperation. In her new book, “Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tells Us about Morality,” Churchland aims to combine the explanatory power of science with the caution and clarity of philosophy. She starts by explaining what’s most clearly known about how morality works in the brain. We know, she argues, that human moral behavior is rooted in the brain’s “circuitry for caring”—ancient biological circuitry that we share with other mammals. (When wolves care about their offspring, what happens in their brains and bodies is remarkably similar to what happens in ours.) Most mammals care only about themselves and their children. In human beings, though, the circle of caring extends widely, even to strangers.

These broad circles of caring are the foundations, Churchland says, for morality. They create the tensions that are the essence of moral life. Tension is inevitable, because caring broadly raises challenging, practical problems: All those competing moral obligations need to be balanced out. Churchland argues that we solve those problems the same way we solve other practical problems: sometimes instinctually, but also by drawing on our learning, reasoning, and culture. In the end, her picture of morality recalls Hume’s, or even Aristotle’s: Aristotle, she writes, knew that morality had its roots in human nature, but he also recognized moral problems as “difficult, practical problems emerging from living a social life.” In this conception, morality is rooted in our instincts, but it isn’t entirely instinctual.

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The ability to expand our caring – our morality – to a wide range of other people and even other forms of life strikes me as one of the strong abilities that has produced our success as a species. We can create and maintain complex social networks that are unheard of with any other  animal. This permits a relatively unspecialized animal such as humans to excel in almost any area.

Because once someone figures out how to do anything, these social networks transmit that information much more rapidly than simple Darwinian evolution could permit. In many ways human society, with its enhanced morals, evolves using Lamarkian means, not Darwinian. In many ways morality is passed down based on what was successfully learned during a lifetime.

It could be argued that most of the sweep of human society the last epoch have been an ever increasing circle of who is cared about. That the increasing circles of caring have helped enhance our natural abilities.

The problems we face today is that this success also holds the possibility of harming future success. We face some tremendous problems if we hope to be as successful the next thousand years as we have the previous.

I would expect that our increasing circles of caring, and the enhanced morality that embraces, will help us find a solution.

Great news to hear about Giffords

Giffords to attend shuttle launch
[Via BBC News | Science/Nature | World Edition]

US congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, shot in the head in January, is declared fit enough to attend her husband’s space shuttle launch on Friday.

[More]

She gets to see her husband takeoff on one of the last Shuttle missions. I just hope she is up to all the publicity this will entail.

Her progress is remarkable but the sort of injury she has means a very long road back. I’m encouraged by her husband’s comment that her personality is 1005 there as that is one of the more likely consequences of this type of injury.

Are vaccine denialists mostly left wing?

by @alviseni

Vaccine Denial and the Left
[Via The Intersection]

Kevin Drum has blogged my MoJo piece, and while he likes it, he adds this:

…be prepared to be annoyed when Chris wrenches his spine out of shape bending over backward to find an example of liberals denying science as much as conservatives. It might be true that you can find vaccine deniers in the aisles of Whole Foods, but if there’s any rigorous evidence that belief in the vaccine-autism link is especially pronounced or widespread among liberals, I haven’t seen it. Surely there’s a better, more substantive example than that floating around somewhere?

So I want to further explain my assertion that vaccine denial “largely occupies” the political left. It arises, basically, from my long familiarity with this issue, having read numerous books about it, etc.

First, it is certainly true that environmentalists and Hollywood celebrities have been the loudest proponents of anti-vaccine views. To me, that is evidence, although not necessarily definitive. So is the fact that we see dangerously large clusters of the unvaccinated in places like Ashland, Oregon, and Boulder, Colorado, which are very leftwing cities.

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Interestingly, there does not appear to be any polls or other really hard data on this issue. My feeling is that a more liberal axis is involved but it is easy to be fooled. It might be hard to get a good handle on since I also think that real anti-vxxers are fairly rare and might not be a large enough part of the population to easily poll.