The Pearl Harbor Meme

A friend is visiting this weekend and told us about an Internet meme that’s gone somewhat viral: that the the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor never happened. It strikes me that blaming this phenomenon (and there are many exemplars) on social media software is inadequate. To me there is something more subtle at work: the slow erosion of the dichotomy between facts and strongly held opinions. And I blame a lot of this on K-20 education, where outside the realm of STEM, there is no longer a canon, but rather something entirely more squishy. Historical fact (like Pearl Harbor) then becomes something post-modernized. If this happened in STEM, the facts of say quantum mechanics, the Periodic Chart and germ theory would quickly enforce inconvenient truth on political opinion.

How do we fix this? I’m not sure. It may simply be that our education system has become somewhat of a lousy product for its student customers. And that’s a product of perverse incentives that are a result of an outdated business model. But in any case, the outcome is Pearl Harbor as hoax.

My ‘Mars’ class for Spring 2023

Photo by RODNAE Productions on Pexels.com

I’m teaching a new course next semester for advanced undergraduates in Mason’s Schar School. At at abstract level, it’s about how humans might go about constructing new government systems (polities) if they were freed from most of the constraints of history and contingency. At a practical level, it’s about the idea of human colonies on Mars along the lines of Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy and made realistic by SpaceX’s recent accomplishments. Obviously, such colonies would be practically beyond the immediate Earth-bound geopolitical drivers at some point. How might they decide to organize themselves? How might concepts like rule of law and private property manifest when organized (de jury or de facto) de novo? The course will be completely on-line and will be pretty demanding on the reading side.

And, I’m going to ‘legalize’ the use of ChatGTP! Still working out how that might work (I have about three weeks left).

My take on ChatGTP…

I’ve been putting it through its paces in the life sciences. Overall, it’s quite good at hypothesis generation and being insightful in cell biology. In neuroscience, it’s got great verbiage, but it’s often dead wrong (factually). If it were a qualifying exam, I’d have to flunk it. In plant biology it’s at the level of a very smart undergraduate major.

The problem with biology…

Sam Rodriquez’s take here. He’s actually pretty spot on. If we could get really good at digital twins, it probably would help on the regulatory side.

Mathematician speculates on mind…

Michael Harris speculates on mind being separate from brain, here. Key concept: “you don’t bring along a PET scanner for your first date”.

Cover up at McMurdo?

Jeff Mervis’ devastating article here. Makes NSF and Leidos look really bad. The allegations of chronic sexual harassment deserve a thorough oversight from NSB and Congress.

Making O2 on Mars…really, right now

Link is here. Kudos to NASA.

ARPA-H gets its first head…

The link from the Whitehouse is here. The President chose well. Let’s see whether ARPA-H under Dr. Wegrzyn can change biomedical research for the better.

Fragile Ecosystems…

A freshwater pond on Fogo Island off Newfoundland

I took this photo a while back while on a hike in one of Canada’s more remote locations. It was early in the short boreal summer and I was struck by both the high biodiversity and the enormous spurt of primary productivity that, out of necessity occupies a very narrow time window. These remote parts of Earth’s biosphere are encountering climate disruption more intensely than most of the planet. How they will fare is unknown, but it’s a good bet they will be challenged because they are inherently fragile.

Humans affect the trajectory of our home planet’s ecosystems. But we can’t accurately predict how those dynamics will feedback upon us. We are coupled complex adaptive systems.