An Equal Measure of Order and Tolerance

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron. -- Dwight Eisenhower, April 16, 1953

Societies compete with eachother for resources and territory. In the most extreme, intolerance is war because one cannot tolerate the triumph of a certain point of view. With the extreme intolerance of a civil or international war on one end, to the passive acceptance of just about anything on the other end, where are the guidelines to say where we need to put our foot down. What is worth fighting for? What is better to put up with that to fight ?

Your right to swing your fist ends where my nose starts (source: my father... hmm. what is the real source?)

Society advances by the addition of new behaviours. Behaviours which adversely affect the ability of its practitioners to metabolize and reproduce will die out. Those that provide an advantage will spread through a population. Some ideas are so obviously helpful, that they spread within a single generation. Some of those obviously helpful ideas are wrong, but in subtle ways that it takes longer to sort out. It is difficult to follow the latest innovations and be consistently correct. There is a bleeding edge in innovation no matter which is the field of endeavour.

The principle of the "survival of the fittest answer" (see previous entry) is that the most competitive groups will generate the most answers possible, and let the incorrect answers fall under their own weight, leaving the correct answers to survive. It is difficult to establish what the right answer will be a priori, and when we try to guess, we often get it wrong, so it is probably best to make as few overt choices as possible.

Our environment is changing. Two thousand years ago, the world was very different from what it was two hundred years ago, and very different from the world today. Lately, the rate of change is accellerating as science has started creating new behaviours far more quickly than at any time in history. Humans' strength is their ability to adapt to changing environments, and to adopt improved social behaviours (or ideas, science and technology are examples of such behaviours) which can confer evolutionary advantage much more quickly than normal biological evolution, and also modifies the environments in which future competition occurs.

If we compare societies where there was relative freedom versus rigid orthodoxy, we can see many cases where the orthodoxy resulted in the decline of that society. Contrast arab Spain, a cultural and scientific magnet during the middle ages (king of the three religions), with the time after Fernando and Isabel, when rigid orthodoxy was enforced and the Inquisition terrorised society. Contrast Holland with most of the rest of europe during the 17th and 18th centuries. Today, one can contrast Europe with the arab world. Real discussion of the points above is left to a future entry. For now, I will only say that the contrast in wealth generation, and societal advancement as expressed through scientific discoveries is dramatic.

Limits on liberty, naturally enough, involve actions which constrain other people. By imposing punishment for behaviours on others, we are reducing the number of solutions that will be proposed, and that may have an effect on the competitiveness of the society as a whole. One must value liberty up until such liberty is used to restrain the liberty of others in thought or action.

Simply put: The society should seek the widest variety of behaviour and interests in its population, in order to generate the most answers (discarding all the wrong ones), which are improvements in that society. The ability to generate correct answers means the society will advance, and likely out-compete other societies where less liberty is afforded.

A second important aspect of a society, in addition to openness, there must be objective means of determining the right answer from a group of behaviours. One very direct method of keeping a certain form of score has been the univeral acceptance of currency in human societies. The now ubiquitous use of currency is something which has only really become commonplace in the twentieth century. Another fairly direct method is clearly the opinion poll, to see how many have come to believe in a certain meme. Just as in comparing the fitness of a species to it's environment, one can chart changes its range and make deductions about its adaptedness to a particular niche. Similarly societal solutions can take the form of movements, be they politico-ideological (political parties, movements, and probably religions), commercial (corporations, consortia, companies of all sizes), technological (open source development methods are technological without being commercial),

A word of caution. These comparisons are fraught with variables that we cannot control for, and are very difficult to experiment with. Our confidence in any hypothesis should be directly proportional to the amount of evidence to support it. There is not a lot of reproducible experiment behind these ideas, although they seem to fit the data rather nicely so far. Confidence in these formulations must be tempered by humility before our true level of ignorance. Still, it is helpful to form a coherent view on which to build predictive experiments.

So we don't know what behaviours will improve things for society, and need to be careful to give people the maximum scope for variation in behaviour. On the other hand, there are some behaviours which we are pretty sure are destructive. When they are destructive to others, such as criminal behaviour, we need methods of limiting the damage to society as a whole. This is just a matter of extending the tit-for-tat behaviour discussed in "Do unto others" into proxies (police) who try to take care of the tat, given someone who engaged in tit. That every society has such enforcement proxies is a clear indication of an evolutionarily stable behavioural innovation (reducing the burden on individuals by handing defense off to proxies, allowing greater specialization in individuals.)

There is clearly an inherent tension between this use of proxy defense, and consequent enforcement of limits on behaviour, and the need to encourage maximum scope of behaviour to encourage innovation. That is the fundamental balance which a society needs to address carefully, to ensure it's competitive development. Too much regimentation reduces the ability to innovate, too much chaos also reduces the freedom to innovate. Too little innovation means other societies will compete better.

There is a goldilocks problem here. In light of this formulation it becomes unsurprising that societies, over time oscillate around the correct answer occasionally being too stiff, and occasionally too loose. Exactly the same principle applies in science: Keep your mind open enough to accept new ideas, but not so open that your brain falls out. The key to making a more competitive (more quickly advancing) society is to reduce the stroke of that pendulum to get closer to the ideal balance on a consistent basis.

Further reading:

• http://www.ernaparis.com/works/enddays.htm -- Tolerance, Tyranny, and the expulsion of the Jews from Spain. Shows one entire swing of the pendulum in one instance in history.
  
• The Story of Spain Mark Williams, 1990, a readable, reasonably concise overview of Spanish history, show the nascent local democracy which was effectively suppressed and replaced by centralized totalitarianim by the end of the reconquest.
  

Afghanistan Unveiled. (PBS Independent Lens)

Documentary about the treatment of women, by some women journalists who went to many parts of the country. It was absolutely heartbreaking. How little has changed. so much is left to do. Wives of addicts who cannot work because of how Sharia is understood in certain parts of the country. Much of the basis of the oppression is superficially religious. The journalists were also muslim, and disagreed completely with the practices in the rural parts of the country. Who can say what is the correct answer on matters of islam? Every person can claim their interpretation is correct. Where does that leave the argument?

Such is the folly of any religion. Yes, there is a written law. In valuable commercial contracts the pirouettes of intentional misunderstandings or omissions to consider, which enable bidders to meet the letter of the stated requirement is sometimes breathtaking, but absolutely natural. Why should one expect anything different with any other written work ? How can we transcend what is written to express what is intended leaving room for the flexibility required to apply it to new circumstances, without being so free as to permit terrible distortion?

Modesty, Humility.

But what is this urge not only to write, but to publish one's work? Besides the pleasure of being praised, there is the thought of communicating with other souls capable of understanding one's own, and thus of one's work becoming a meeting place for the souls of men.

"The very people who believe that everything has already been discovered and everything said, will greet your work as something new, and will close the door behind you, repeating once more that nothing remains to be said. ... Newness is in the mind of the artist who creates, and not in the object he portrays.
-- Eugene Delacroix, 14 may 1824.

everything that can be discovered, has been discovered.-- 1899, Charles Duell, head of the US patent office, suggested that his office be abolished.

Just because we know a lot more than we used to, doesn't mean that we know anything resembling all there is to know. We cannot start with raw inorganic material and build a worm, much less a human, so clearly there is a great deal that we do not know about biology. Physicists have not yet figured out what gravity is. Dieticians change their recommendations in light of new research every couple of years. Nuclear power was to provide power too cheap to meter, and IBM in the early 50's forecast the market for computers would be about half a dozen machines. Chaos theory didn't exist 30 years ago, and neither did anomalocaris (or at least, neither had been discovered.) We still have precious little insight into how a brain works.

We need to observe and wonder at all the knowledge we have so far acquired through scientific method, the disciplined application of reason to the natural world, and accept, with humility, there there is so much more out there that we just don't know. Humility serves us well. Nuclear power seemed like a great idea until the problem of nuclear waste remained unsolved. Genetic engineering seems like a great idea, except no-one can predict what will happen to the new life forms when they interact with the natural world. Even if we do ten years of studies on new prescription drugs before we prescribe them to people, it is pretty hard to know what the drugs will do. Drug testing does not magically confer omniscience on the experimenter.

There is no better way to find out what a drug does than to unleash it on millions of people and watch for effects. Strangely, that is the opposite of what we do. We test very carefully on a small number of people, then issue a general release, to make it available to millions, with only very moderate supervision, and that is mostly done by the manufacturer (hmm...) We have too much confidence in the definitive nature of the testing of a product that can be done before launch. Tests are rarely definitive, and often fail to capture real world conditions.

There are people out there who, on hearing about the results of a single scientific study, swear off eating salmon. If one followed all the studies, dietary choices available would rapidly approach zero. You cannot depend on single results, or even results of a few years research. When figuring out what "Science" tells us, you need to completely avoid what scientists are talking about.

What? Look at things that have stayed consistent over the long term. Ideas that have been well supported and become uncontroversial (within the specialist realms) If scientists are talking about it, then it is still controversial, if they are publishing about minutae, then it the basics are well established.
Figure out what they stopped talking about twenty years ago. If it is still uncontroversial now, then there is probably good reason to think that it is the best guess we can get.

Unfortunately, no-one goes about collecting what people agree on. It's extremely boring, you won't get any drama. But that's what useful scientific information for plain folk is.

Are eggs good for us? I frankly have no idea. They used to be good, then they were bad, then they added Omega3, and I don't know anymore. What is the rational position to take in the face of a constant barrage of new evidence? We need to face results with conservative humility, understand that we don't know much, not take it too seriously, and go with common sense until it gets sorted out. Eat a balanced diet, balance your poisons by eating a wide variety of foods. When folks agree on something, it will be obvious. You've heard about relativity? pretty solid, Evolution? pretty solid. String Theory? oh... wait a bit, we're not sure about that one just yet.

When the latest scientific results come out, ignore them, unless you are interested in intellectual conversations and trivia. They have no more significance than sports scores. All that being said, you can ignore them, but that doesn't mean you reject them. Modesty and humility means that you let every result stand or fall on it's own. It is up to everyone interested to look at the data and decide for themselves, but that doesn't mean you bet the farm on the latest sports scores.

Relying on science is the only hope for improvement in the human condition. That doesn't mean twitching about following every fad and latest result. Pay attention, be open to wonder, but conservative in what you accept.


Bibliography:

• http://www.bioteach.ubc.ca/Bioethics/PreimplantationGeneticDiagnosisAndOurFuture/
  
• http://www.constable.net/arthistory/glo-delacroix.html
  
• http://www.aloha.net/~smgon/ordersoftrilobites.htm
  
• http://www.geocities.com/goniagnostus/anohome.html
  

General Influences:

• The Demon-Haunted World Carl Sagan
  
• Darwin Adrian Desmond and James Moore
  
• Why People Believe Weird Things Michael Shermer
  
• All of Isaac Asimov's fiction. The dedication to logic and consistency was terribly infective.
  

Do unto others

Remember, my son, that these are God's kingdoms, God who gives and takes away at his leisure... Be just to all men, equally to the poor and the rich, for injustice is the road to ruin; at the same time be gentle and merciful with those who are dependent upon you, for they are all creatures of God. Trust government of the provinces to wise, experienced men and punish without pity those ministers who oppress the people. Treat soldiers with gentle firmness so that they remain the defenders of the state and not its destroyers. Encourage and protect the cultivators, for it is they who provide us with our sustenance.... Never cease to merit the affection of your people; in their good will is the security of the state, in their anger there is anger, and in their hatred certain ruin. And rule so that the people bless you, so that they live happily in the shadow of your protection; for in that is the glory and joy of a king.

Abdur Rahman I, advising his son Hisham, at the declaration of royal succession of the kingdom of Al andalus (Arab Southern Spain) in 787 C.E.
(Source: "The End of Days", Erna Paris, http://www.ernaparis.com/works/enddays.htm)

It is a common claim among North American Christians, and likely other religious groups, that without Jesus, there is no point in being good, and no frame of reference for morals. As King Abdur Rahman's admonitions to his son clearly show, this is not a uniquely christian view. In fact,

there is near unanimity of opinion among almost all religions, ethical systems and philosophies that each person should treat others in a decent manner. Almost all of these groups have passages in their holy texts, or writings of their leaders, which promote this Ethic of Reciprocity. The most commonly known version in North America is the Golden Rule of Christianity. It is often expressed as "Do onto others as you would wish them do onto you."

(from: http://www.religioustolerance.org/reciproc.htm)

Any behaviour will only occur in a population if that behaviour confers survival value. Let´s review some conclusions from previous posts. From Dogs Are People Too, recall that the only big difference between animals and people is that we develop technology. Some technology is mental (belief in sprits or gods, culture, not eating pork, belief in the succession of the seasons), and some is physically instantiated (flint cutting tools, hammers, screwdrivers) From Principle: Survival of the Fittest Answer: we can say that the system which generates the most changes in technology (right or wrong), and allows robust and objective valuation, will be the system which advances most quickly, regardless of the problem domain. This amounts to saying that evolution works on people's culture.

In any ecosystem, the fiercest competition individuals of most species have to contend with comes from other individuals in the same species because they tend to occupy the same niche. Humans compete with each other by building bigger groups, held together by better thought technology (a better sete of memes), and physical technology (better tools.) in order to enhance the individuals' and the ability to feed themselves and have children (metabolism and reproduction.) Society arises as a competition strategy used by individuals within the species.

So if building a circle of allies is unarguably good, then what behaviours will that select for in human individuals? Well, there is a lot of early game theoretic results on iterated prisoner's dilemmas. In a prisoner's dillema, there is a payoff table:

PlayerB PlayerA

cooperate

defect

cooperate
1
2


defect
2
0



In each round of play, each player can choose to cooperate or defect. You don't know the number of rounds of play will be played. Computer algorithms were written to play the roles of A and B in this game. Tournaments were run, and for thirty years, a very simple strategy "Tit for tat" was the champion. The Tit for tat strategy can be simply summarized: cooperate. If the other guy defects, then defect on the following turn, if he cooperates, then go back to cooperating. The "tit for tat" strategy remained the champion for twenty years until just recently. Significantly, the strategy that defeated tit for tat was not an individual strategy at all, but one that used multiple types of players, some of whom altruistically sacrifice themselves for the good of the group. Only a culture can defeat an individual which excercises the golden rule.

Based on the success of tit for tat, I'll claim that for most individuals, the meme to be honest (so that communications will be simplest for others to understand, and therefore most effective) and "do unto others as you would have done unto you", is an evolutionarily stable and successful strategy, which should rapidly permeate any human population.

• Prisoner's Dilemma, William Poundstone, Doubleday 1992 ( A biography of John Von Neumann, with a lot of introductory material about Game Theory) ISBN 0-385-41580-X
• http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,65317,00.html -- 20th anniversary Prisoners dilemma tournament. Where the team strategy defeated tit for tat.

Dogs are People Too

Social structure and memory have huge competitive advantages. When one can watch the other guy get mauled by a lion, it helps the survival of the group to know that lions are dangerous, and to be able to pass that knowledge down to descendants. "Education" in early societies would have rested primarily on observation and imitation. But dogs do that, so do deer, and prairie dogs. So that isn't particularly human.

The ability to remember and learn from others mistakes is something which brings you above the the realm of reptiles, and into league with mammals and birds. Look at humans and canines. Dogs' sensory world is completely different from ours, being based primarily on scent, secondly on hearing, and only thirdly on vision. Humans are vision oriented, and much higher above the ground. Humans have hands, where dogs are stuck using their snouts for carrying and investigation. We clearly come from very different places in terms of species survival strategy.

I love my dog, and dogs are great creatures to study for figuring out what is human, because they are clearly a case of convergent evolution. Both dogs and humans are pack hunters, and the social/emotional equipment to deal with pack life is obviously similar in both species. Dog societies are probably very similar to that of very early hominids, before spoken language developed. There is a rudimentary language, via posture and sounds, with the ability to communicate rank, and a wide variety of emotions: affection, excitement, sympathy, fear, subservience, dominance, frustration, desperation, stubbornness, jealousy, aggression are all clearly observable in any pet dog. From the point of view of having an awareness of self, feelings that can be hurt, or egos that can be flattered, dogs are people too.

However, dogs do not experiment when attached by a chain to a post, to determine how to unravel it to get back to full length. They have achieved the level of observation and imitation, they also have all the social emotions required for living in a pack, but they don't construct a world view with abstraction.

Thought experiment: Place a bowl of food beyond a grating. the dog can smell the food. The smell of the food is strongest near the grating. On one side of the grating, there is a perpendicular wall. It proceeds a six to eight feet backward, but on the other side of that wall, there is no grating. So if the dog were to go far enough back from the grating, it would be able to go around the wall and get the food.

Place the dog in front of the grating. Prediction: A pet dog will smell the food, and sit in front of the grating because it expects the human to solve the problem for him. Try a wolf. Will the wolf sit in front of the grating and gnaw at it interminably, or will it search to find an alternate route to the food? A wolf might have better problem solving skills for not having been domesticated.

Repeat the experiment (with other subjects), have the subject observe another dog find the solution (say, by being given hints, or being led). Prediction: dogs and wolves will learn the solution readily. Canines have mastered imitation and learning, but problem solving is very limited and direct. They will gnaw at a problem with great intent, but without much abstraction or comprehension.

Repeat the initial experiment months later, with the dogs who know the answer. Will they still know the answer? Prediction is that most higher mammals have pretty well developed memory, especially where food is concerned, and they will solve the problem if they have seen the solution before.

It is credible to suppose that early hominids started hunting game in packs. The bigger packs of homids were able to tackle bigger game. The bigger packs were harder to control using traditional tactile grooming much like dog language. To scale to bigger packs, language was essential for the ability to groom and determine rank in a more energy economical way. There would also be natural pressue to select for abstraction to better understand and predict what other pack members or prey are going to do.

I can find no documentation on language or communication used by wolves during the hunt. I know of no species other than humans, that communicate intent during a hunt. It would appear that individuals in a dog pack learn by observing other pack members hunt, and adopt logical positions around prey, but there is little to indicate a dominant pack member communicating any change in strategy during a hunt.
It would be interesting to see if the ability to communicate while stalking is uniquely human. It would be a natural application of the need for language to manage larger groups of humans. This would be a very simple application of the language ability pre-adapted for living in larger groups, toward another sort of problem that would explain a good part of why language in humans got more complex than it is in wolves.

So complicated language evolved to allow large packs and more effective hunting. Another thing that happenned to differentiate us from dogs was that we started using tools. Chimpanzees use tools too. They're social too. So tools have likely always been around, but it was the brain development, the increased abstraction, and the ability to experiment based on those abstractions that lead us to better and better tools. So we were evolved better brains to cope with language needed to live in bigger groups that could hunt bigger game, and tool use trailed along as an existing minor trait. Eventually, the packs got big enough that we can start calling them tribes, and tool use developed enough, that we can see specialization happening in societies. When the language becomes sufficiently complicated, we see evolution begin to act on memes rather than physical traits (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme) and then the whole evolutionary process is accellerated many fold, but was still essentially a natural selection process. In the period of 16th and 17th century or so, the enlightenment started, and the explicit description of how to experiment (scientific method) took hold, so we began able to artificially select memes for survival value, and the rate of our ability to understand and modify natural objects has advanced in leaps and bounds since then.

So pretty much the only things which differentiate us from dogs are that we share and develop physical and mental technology in large groups. To do science is to be human.

Principle: Survival of the Fittest Answer

In Science, the goal is to explain nature. Someone (even a patent clerk) can submit a paper to a scientific publication. What is supposed to be important is not who says it, but for experts in that area to criticise it as witheringly as possible. To figure out whether the ideas, methods, and results presented are any good. Once a paper is published, other researchers read it, and the more papers others are inspired to write based on the paper, the more successful the paper is deemed to be. If the ideas in the original are confirmed by all the follow up work of others, that adds to our confidence in those ideas. It is crucially important that a paper that proves to be entirely wrong can still be very successful if it inspires people to do further research. Threats to scientific method are anything that constrains a field of inquiry (usually, political interference, censorship, unwise legislation.) Evidence here is a coherent weaving together of an explanation for some set of physical phenomena or artifacts.

Democracy is exactly the same thing, but the idea is not to solve objective problems, but to convince as many people as possible to take care of their government. Ideas have to be aired in public, and subject to withering criticism. The media are key in both these roles. Freedom of Speech, ability to investigate unfettered, even when things are un-popular, is central to Democracy. Threats to democracy are anything that stifle criticism. (dictatorship, censorship) evidence are ideas and votes.

Capitalism is exactly the same thing, but the purpose is to optimize production (in biology speak, optimize metabolism, and gain maximum resources for successful reproduction) People buy into technologies and companies, either as stock holders, customers, or both. Threats to capitalism are anything that stifle the free flow of information about companies, and anything that allows monopolies to develop. A monopoly is a failure of competition to produce an effective market. Evidence here is expressed in monetary value. A key role of society is to regulate natural monopolies for the greater good.

Free Software is exactly the same thing, but the purpose is to develop software. Immature software is released, and gradually improved upon, by the critique of other developers. The key accellerator of this is the free exchange of source code. The chief threat is anything that reduces the choices of software developers. evidence here is expressed in terms of source code, developer and user base.

All of these domains of problem solving share common characteristics: A solution is proposed in public, open to any and all criticism. An improvement can be suggested, or proposed as an alternative, and there is an objectively identifiable means of figuring out which solution wins. Any winner is not definitive. A new upstart solution can arise at any time and knock the current winner off of it's podium. There is a competition of ideas/ways/means. In order to get a right answer, there has to be a competition.

People are pretty bad at getting the right idea. If you look back at the history of invention, we generally tried absolutely every possiblity, and one lucky sod tried something that actually worked. Often most of humanity is on the wrong side at first, and folks sort of generally come around after a while. Airplanes, automobiles, heliocentrism, television, evolution are examples. Friction isn't resistance to new ideas in the sense of criticism. Criticism itself is not a problem. Friction is only important when it shuts off areas of research either by eliminating needed funding, or by persecution of researchers (such as classifying cryptographic technologies as weapons, making any cryptanalyst an arms dealer)

The best system for getting answers is the one that generates the largest number of answers, with the least amount of friction (and in the shortest amount of time.) The fittest answers will survive.

Preview: Evidence Based Morality

Most of what I really need to know about how to live, and what to do, and how to be, I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top the graduate school mountain, but there in the sand box at nursery school.

These are the things I learned. Share everything. Play fair. Don't hit people. Put things back where you found them. Clean up your own mess. Don't take things that aren't yours. Say you are sorry when you hurt somebody. Wash your hands before you eat. Flush. Warm cookies and cold milk are food for you. Live a balanced life. Learn some and think some and draw some and paint and sing and dance and play and work everyday.

Take a nap every afternoon. When you go out in the world, watch for traffic, hold hands, and stick together. Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the plastic cup? The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why. We are like that.

And then remember that book about Dick and Jane and the first word you learned, the biggest word of all: LOOK! Everything you need to know is there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation, ecology, and politics and the sane living.

Think of what a better world it would be if we all, the whole world, had cookies and milk about 3 o'clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankets for a nap. Or we had a basic policy in our nation and other nations to always put thing back where we found them and clean up our own messes. And it is still true, no matter how old you are, when you go out in the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.
from "All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten : Uncommon Thoughts on Common Things" by Robert Fulghum.

What Robert Fulghum says feels right, it seems like it ought to be true. For another a longer look at how to behave morally well, a view of Ptah-Hotep's instructions is also enlightening.

http://nefertiti.iwebland.com/texts/precepts_of_ptahhotep.htm

We need someplace to start, so rather than starting from nothing, I will take what I can find from the past as the starting point, and apply evidence and reason to confirm or deny. Then look at what Micheal Shermer has to say today ...

If there were one thing skeptics, scientists, philosophers, and humanists could do to address the overall problem of belief in weird things, constructing a meaningful and satisfying system of morality and meaning would be a good place to start. Micheal Shermer, Why People Believe Weird Things, P.278.

... and take the challenge by connecting the dots between them. Most people are pretty sure about what we ought to do to be good, and have a moral compass. The question to resolve is: where does it come from. How can knowing where it comes from help guide us when we are not sure about a moral stance? Here goes...

The purpose of life is what biology class in eight grade taught: metabolism & reproduction. A lot of people see that as reductionist. It isn't. One just has to look deeply enough to see how powerfully explanatory the concept is when taken together with the rest of scientific thinking.

I subscribe to the brights movement, and the words used today in nontheist circles would call me... a "strong atheist". A lot of plain folk seem to honestly believe that christianity in particular, and religionists in general have some kind of monopoly on morality. This is not justifiable. I am not in any way lacking in moral fibre for my deeply held beliefs. We need to fix these perceptions. Have to lay some ground work...

Scientific Method rules. It is the only way to get to the bottom of any question. If you cannot apply scientific method to a question, then the art of being a scientist is to figure out how to re-phrase the question so that it can be applied. The method is really just the application of brute force reason to problems. It is painfully slow, very cumbersome, and extremely difficult to get right. No one person ever does get it right. The mad scientist alone in his castle has always been a myth. The real picture is the mad scientist going to half a dozen conferences a year, and madly exchanging letters with peers. Science advances through conversation. Conversation only happens when people are comfortable talking to each other (not worried about getting turned in for talking about a taboo topic, or accused of espionage, or jailed for one´s ethnicity) When you propose an idea, the way to judge how effective it is is to match it against existing real data (sometimes that is hard to find.) The more facts & phenomena the idea explains, the better the hypothesis is deemed to be. You don't judge your own ideas, your rivals and successors, who have every interest in tearing your ideas down to make a name for themselves, do. If you can convince them, there is a pretty good chance that the ideas are sound.

This blog is a series of essays which proposes hypotheses to try to explain moral questions. I do not have the resources to perform the experimentation required to confirm or refute these hypotheses. I just see them as self-evidently true, subject to further evidence. I will make a good effort to cite sources as possible, but I am not a "real scientist". I don't have the background or time to pursue this as it needs to be pursued. My hope is just to inspire others with the elegance and simplicity of this world view.

People need to see that there are comprehensive world views that produce morally upstanding people without recourse to the supernatural. This will be a vast subject, my main problem is that it is so huge, that it will be very hard just to survey the landscape. So these essays will be a series of pickets, marking off where the foundations should eventually go for a study of morality based on the disciplined application of scientific method.

Medicine, in response to the pollution of the term "Scientific" by all manner of quacks from Naturopaths, to chiro, to herbalists, to... the list goes on, have had to come up with some way of defining rigorous medical research. The term in vogue now seems to be "Evidence based medecine." So I'm trying to figure out what "Evidence-based Morality" will look like. This is way too big... Help me out.

Some web sites that are important to me:

• http://www.the-brights.net
• http://www.skeptic.com
• http://www.religioustolerance.org
• http://slashdot.org (even though it's readers are often over the top)
• http://www.sciam.com
• Thanks to Jeepyjay @ the-brights.net for the ptah-hotep reference.