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From: "Gary W. Sims" <simsgw@cs.stanford.edu>
Subject: Social Sunburn
While I'm in a talkative mood here, let me note a disturbing
tendency this last hundred years or so.
When I looked into popular gun literature a couple of years ago
to help Cindy choose a gun, I encountered a familiar mix of
writing. Enthusiasts debating trivial issues as if they mattered,
just to have a reason to talk about a favorite subject. Many
people offering thoughtful instruction based on practical
experience, and a couple of scientists/engineers offering
technical information to serve as a foundation for the tougher
decisions. And a couple of folks offering pseudo-scientific
justifications of their personal prejudices.
Since I began reading about golf a couple of months ago, I've
found the same mix in the fifteen or twenty books and innumerable
magazines I've read. One of the best instruction sources was a
man who died recently in his late nineties after training many
champion golfers of this generation and the last couple. A
contemporary of Ben Hogan who sincerely described himself as
"merely a caddy grown up who loves golf and studies it's practice
every day." And reluctantly allowed his notes to be published in
his ninth decade so the information wouldn't be lost. No attempt
at science. Just opinion, based on intuition informed by decades
of experience with the best practitioners of the art. Another
book by a physicist was very helpful to someone able to handle
the technical discussions, but probably no more helpful to laymen
than the technical papers on wound ballistics that I examined in
selecting a cartridge for our personal guns. (Never had to decide
that for myself while on active service. Short version of
results: They all make holes. Some holes bigger than others.
Nothing else matters. Go with modern 9mm, 45 caliber, or 357 in
an expanding round. We got a couple in each caliber, but that's
probably excessive<g>.)
Highlighting that collection of golf material are:
a) A man who's convinced that his science proves
everyone
else swings a golf club the wrong way, so he advocates
"natural golf";
b) Another whose muddied memory of geometry when
he passed
the classroom of better students has led him to
create
astonishing devices to force a circular symmetry
on the human
body that it lacks; and
c) A hilarious and pompous discussion of a scientific
"study"
that proves Jack Nicklaus isn't really the best
golfer, as
everyone else thinks he is... Because why? Because
this bozo
videotaped the swing of 200 professional golfers
and took the
average position of their arms and body at each
point in the
swing to define the scientific "perfect swing".
He even used
a computer to do the hard parts. (Like the arithmetic
and
spell checking, one guesses.)
To the author of that last exemplar, anyone who thinks that
different body shapes may swing most efficiently in different
ways is obviously wrongheaded, because "science deals with the
common factors, not the exceptions. If Jack Nicklaus swings
differently, he won despite having a swing less effective than it
could have been if he'd known me. I have a doctorate in gym
socks, so I know what science says about these things."
Don't over apply that last comment. I'm not hostile to the sports
program of your favorite school. Honest. I knew some very nice
people in the sports corner of the campus where I taught. But
none of them claimed to be a scientist. Ludicrous pomposity. We
should be proud of what we are for Heaven's sake, and not try to
borrow glamour with the misuse of titles from other fields.
But this is not a problem limited to guns and golf. Science
became a religion for many by the late nineteenth century. Well,
not quite. More precisely, people who sell you snake oil or
salvation of any sort became convinced that an appeal to
"science" was more likely to succeed than an appeal to divine
guidance. Worse yet, the sincere ones who would have embraced one
religion or another as the salvation of the world a hundred years
ago now believe they can design a better world through science.
Not the science we use on the boring technical end of the campus
of course. All those integrals and infinitesimals and silliness
just get in the way of truth. And the truth shall make you
free... or make you something.
With a little consideration, you can quickly build a list of
nonsensical "social science" and "medical studies prove..." One
flagrant example outside the notorious "health studies" about
guns:
*** If you don't like tobacco, campaign to stop its use around
you. Don't flatter yourself that "science" proves your personal
irritation is universal because tobacco causes pimples or cold
sores or cancer or impotence or rock music. It doesn't. And if
you claim it does, you have to distort the whole meaning of
causation. [And no I don't smoke -- I'm just a real scientist,
statistician, and engineer. And I do read reports when they make
interesting claims like that one.]
But those are merely annoying symptoms of the problem. Let's
consider sunburn.
Kids take a long time to learn about sunburn. Thirty or forty
years isn't unusual. You go out to play, and it feels great. Many
hours later the child begins to glow in the dark. If a decade or
so past puberty, this is when the child will comment: "That's
okay. I don't burn, I just tan..." The following day blisters
begin to form. Standard second-degree radiation burn. We all
tan... and we all burn. Even the folks who start with a generous
charcoal-like share of melanin.
Now if we felt the pain of the sunburn at the time of exposure,
these "kids" would learn sooner. The feedback loop is broken
because the event that causes the radiation wound is associated
in time with pleasurable sensations, and the pain is too distant
in time for efficient learning to occur.
The problem lies in the time constant of our skin's reaction to
radiation. It's too slow. We learn best when things react
quickly. When things respond faster than we can act a second time
or a third, then it's easy to associate each action with a
distinct reaction. Our natural learning ability lets us attach
labels to our actions: good, bad, don't care, and so forth. And
in areas of talent, we learn very subtle variations between
action and response. Examples are rife. Think up your own.
Mothers? Did you notice how fast your baby boy learned to cross
his legs and cover his crotch defensively? That's a learned
response every male will have thought of almost immediately. Do
this --> pain. Learned response: Don't do that. Don't let anyone
else do that.
Sunburn is isolated in time from the fun we have in the sun. Do
this --> fun. Learned response: not much. "I don't burn, I
tan..." One of the early airplanes built with a computer
"enhanced" control system had an interesting trait any computer
owner will recognize. Sometimes it got a little behind. The pilot
would move the control stick left, and the aircraft would not
respond at first. Naturally he would move the stick further. Then
it would respond all at once to both movements. Test pilots are
the most quick of reflex in a trade that favors the quick and
precise in all things. This pilot taxed his reflexes to the limit
and coped by anticipating the delay in initial response. This
worked through the first couple of very careful test flights.
Walking on eggs would be a polite version of his description I'm
told. Then he actually tried to take off with the system engaged.
At that point things began to happen in shorter time intervals
than the computer delay. A left correction would be followed by
the need for a slight right correction, then a stronger left
correction. And then a little up-stick would be needed, and
then... All this was needed while the computer was still
digesting that first "give me a slight right correction..."
This is not a stable situation. It's a classic problem with
untalented student pilots, who insert enormous compute times of
their own between each correction -- but a new phenomenon for a
naturally talented pilot like those chosen for test duties. He
got behind the airplane. Badly behind, and very quickly. Built up
a reaction debt similar to the national debt of Argentina. >From
airborne hopes of glory, the test aircraft became a rolled-up
ball of aluminum just off the end of the runway. Admittedly a
very long runway, but the length of flight achieved did not help
the careers of the engineers who designed the control system.
Things go out of control when we try to take successive actions
in an interval shorter than the time constant of response of a
system. When the time constant is very long, we don't even know
we're heading for the end of the runway. We'll still be wiggling
the stick while rolled into a ball.
In the case of solar radiation, we deal with this disconnect of
action from response by creating rules for our children. How long
they can stay in the sun without clothing. And so forth. This
works while they're young enough and within our sight. One large
category of the Rules of Life are intended to deal with
situations where you have not yet learned all the causative
connections that exist. And situations where you never will learn
them because you don't care to take the time to study. And if I
may be permitted a politically incorrect observation that some of
us are a bit brighter than others: in situations where the person
being told the rule never would be able to understand the
causative connections.
Back in the fifties, Harvard Business School was in the forefront
of a new trend in business thinking that almost scuttled several
of our U.S. industries. The most familiar catchphrase from that
movement was "You sell the sizzle, not the steak." Well, yes.
Obviously. Unless you plan to negotiate price with a
no-longer-hungry customer. However, the steak is still the
essence. Unfortunately for Detroit (to take one example), large
markets move slowly. That is, their time constant of response is
quite long. Detroit tried a change. Wow! That worked. Tried
another. That worked too! Tried another... Kept this up for quite
awhile. Quick changes of management approach, engineering
guidelines, marketing tactics. All that and more. And all
happening within the time constant of response of the automotive
market. Within. That is, before the market could respond in a
serious way. Like quit buying Ramblers. By the time the market
began to respond, the aircraft was rolling inverted near the end
of the runway. We lost two of our major automakers, bailed out
another with taxpayer capital, and so forth -- all because of a
long time constant and a impatient hand on the stick.
Now if car buyers respond slowly enough to fool people who like
to fiddle with business basics, how comfortable should we feel
revising the rules for an entire culture?
Religions are rules to live by, to raise the next generation, to
deal with conflicts between neighbors, and conflicts between your
own culture and others. Some of the rules are explicitly attached
to divine guidance, and others come with the package without
being identified as specifically religious. "Mind your own
business" is one of those from my cultural background. Often a
culture will embrace a new religion and change so little that it
seems only the forms and ritual practices have been affected. The
religion takes on the shape of the culture, rather than the
other way around. The rules of life may not have changed at all.
They merely acquired a new sponsor in the changeover.
Now the thing of it is this. Each of the major religions works
within its cultural context as a set of rules. That's why they
are the major ones. People love to point out the seeming random
nature of religious rules. "Why, did you know in Hottentot, they
always..." Yes, but did you count the Hottentot delegation to the
United Nations? And most of the important rules about which
religion concerns itself are interrelated and deal with
complexities of human response beyond simple analysis. Screw up
the rules, and your culture will end up a ball of aluminum at the
end of the runway. So the major religions are major because they
are a generally effective set of rules for dealing with
situations that change on a very slow time scale, and whose
interaction of causation is so complex that few will ever
understand why the rules work. And when you don't understand how
a rule like this works, you need to believe "because Mommy SAYS
you have to put this shirt on..."
I, of course, can infer an enemy's intended laydown of nuclear
strikes, allowing for his having taken into account the
interaction of each strike with the next, and the probable
reaction of my defensive systems. From that, I can design a
defense that will be effective despite his plans. I helped design
a precursor of the Internet (well, a co-cursor I guess<g>), and
Cindy and I made our living because intelligence agencies came to
us for knowledgeable critiques of computer networks distributed
across battlefields and near space. So you can trust us to create
new rules for a billion or so people. We're capable of
understanding the issues involved.
Hmmm? Not sure you want to trust my design skills? Afraid I'll
miss some interaction that takes a long time to reveal itself?
Maybe several lifetimes? Well, gee. It can't be that hard. People
who don't even understand a personal computer design new social
rules by the week...
Not that people are not entitled to change their religion, mind
you. But the successful cultures on this planet fall into two
major camps. One family inhibits change. Very "conservative" in
the classic sense of that word. China is the dominant example.
(And interestingly, she is also an example of a culture absorbing
a religion instead of the other way around. She absorbed
Communism with hardly a change in her culture. It changed a lot
of personal lives, but the culture changed only in superficial
ways. Verrrrry slow change is safe change.
The other camp could have been characterized as "mind your own
business" until recently. With the obvious corollary that if you
stick your nose into my tent I'll bloody it for you. Another way
to characterize these cultures, also oversimplified, is the
"free-market" image of social change. Highly distributed control
of cultural activity means that most changes are local and the
success or failure of local changes determines their popularity
and whether the changes will spread. That view is really too
simple, especially because it overlooks the sunburn problem.
Successful cultures resist the spread of new practices too
quickly. Skinny dipping is always popular until the blisters
form.
The new "scientists" want to mandate change on a widespread scale
based on their analysis of the perfect golf swing... and a few
other things.
Robert Heinlein observed fifty years ago that in the culture of
the U.S., you could get away with the most astonishing practices
if you called your beliefs a religion.
The corollary did not occur to him (or at least did not make it
into his printed works). His original observation was true
because our culture followed the "mind your own business" rule
with regard to religion. If you want to dance with snakes on
Sunday, that's your business. I won't interfere. So you indeed
can do anything you like if you call it a religion, because the
system is set up so that you can't impose your religion on me...
But what if you insist your belief is not a religion? Then we
have no "structural" protection against your imposing it on the
rest of us. Turned out the corollary to Heinlein's Law is: If you
do NOT call it a religion, you can force everyone to do anything.
However silly.
How could there not be a rule against imposing on the rest of us?
Isn't a system of beliefs a religion? Ahhhh. Not if it's Science!
And so the problem of science "proving" which cartridges are
"Street Stoppers," and the teaching of silly "scientific" golf
swings is not so trivial as it sounds at first blush. "Science"
has become just another belief system to a large class of people.
One of their tenets is that people can be made "good" and they
understand how that can be done. People who don't understand
their own toaster think they can implement a better way to run
the world.
And they don't want to hear that the problems of schools in
[small town in Colorado] might actually be caused by their
foolish attempts at a new, nearly universal, batch of rules based
on what they wish the world were like, rather than ten thousand
years of trial and error. "We just need a little stronger left
correction here. Yank on that stick harder." Let's see, if we
work on those nasty gun shows and this silliness about personal
reliance and....
Just a passing thought or two, and a suggestion that you grab
your wallet (and maybe cover your crotch) whenever someone starts
citing "Science" to justify his beliefs.
Gary W. Sims, Major, USAF(ret)
--------------------------------------------
Hoping everyone knows that real science is not a system of
beliefs, and delights in exceptions. Positively dotes on them At
or about 34ø42' N 118ø08' W
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