Attention to Detail

A lot of things sound good as generalizations, but when you start applying them to the real world, it gets complicated.

Consider paying attention to detail. Being a detail-oriented person is usually a plus when applying for a job. When there are flaws in products we buy, or when a service is inadequate, we fault a lack of attention to detail. We don't like sloppy. Most of us try to not be sloppy. The point is most of us have to try to pay attention to detail. In repetitive jobs that can become mind-numbing.

There are people who just naturally pay a lot of attention to detail. But if they go too far in that direction, we label them as obsessive-compulsive. These people may be good or not so good at doing things, depending on exactly what kinds of things need that level of detail.

Consider the practice of retail stores known as "fronting." If you are one of the rare citizens who has never worked retail, fronting is the process of lining up the products, cans or boxes or whatever, in neat rows at the front of the shelf. Apparently this encourages people to buy things. When an item, or store aisle, is not fronted, it gives a store a run-down look. So clerks spend considerable time fronting the products, in addition to restocking.

For fronting purposes there are three types of employees: messy employees who front badly (and often nevertheless slowly), good employees who front well and reasonably rapidly, and employees who pay too much attention to detail.

Perfect fronting is the natural goal of those obsessing on details. Have the items been lined up to within a millimeter of perfection? Well, why not shoot for a tenth of a millimeter? Why not a hundredth? Are they perfect? Why not start the whole process all over again, just to be sure? In the meantime, all the other things needing to be done in a store, including fronting all the other shelves, don't get done.

At some point in the real world you have to decide on an acceptable error rate. Otherwise everything takes too long to be practical. Acceptable error rates vary greatly across and within industries, and even within items. No one wants an obvious scratch on the exterior paint or glass of a new car. But no one cares if the muffler got scratched when it was installed.

Most kids get this intuitively when struggling with parental expectations for school grades. Spend all your time studying and you might get an A+, but by dropping down to an A- or a B or C, you can have time for other things.

Failure to pay attention to detail can have dire consequences. In the rush to provide medical care, failure to review records can lead to tragic consequences. In cars we know that failure to get the details right on ignition keys, brakes and airbag systems can lead to deaths. On highways we are highly dependent on everyone else paying attention, at least enough to stay within the lines when hurling past us at combined speeds of 120 mph and more.

Business experience, of workers, managers, and owners, is largely a matter of learning how much attention to detail need to be paid to different aspects of the business.

There is another thing to worry about, even when paying attention to detail is in the helpful to harmless range. It should not impinge too much on attention to strategy, priorities, and the bigger questions of life. The obsessive-compulsive computer programmer may be working on a project, or an aspect of a project, that is useless. The big picture is important. The resources of the world are limited.

Also, while you are just following orders, trying to pay enough attention to detail and yet work fast enough to keep your job, someone else is plotting to grab your share of the pie, if they have not already.

In our highly class stratified society workers are told to pay attention to detail and let the bosses (political and economic) worry about the big picture.That is why we are in such trouble today. During the heyday of American imperialism (roughly 1940 to 1970) most workers who did what they were told for 8 hours a day, five days a week, had enough money to enjoy the rest of their time. That is no longer true. So after perhaps a hundred years of struggle before 1940, and 30 years of prosperity, we now live in an era of precarious existence.

In this era the circus never stops, so the owners don't even have to throw more than crumbs of bread to the working class. The intellectual worker has become an increasingly rare thing in the 21st century. Enough propaganda is thrown into the Internet &TV entertainment mix to keep most workers from seeing the big picture.

Details can add up to big pictures. Charles Darwin was a detail-oriented guy, and the details pointed him to the fact that life is ancient and evolved over time. But in America apparently half the population wants to engage in wishful thinking, and ignores the vast store of details that prove evolution by natural selection is the right big picture to work within.

So do pay attention to detail, to the degree appropriate to the task at hand. But also use some free time to make sure you are not living your life based on false big-picture ideas.

Terraforming Earth

One of the favorite topics of classic science fiction was terraforming. Mars, it was thought, might some day have an atmosphere and climate enough like earth's to allow humans to wander around happily without spacesuits. More grandiose space-operas envisioned this process being taken to planets scattered across our galaxy.

Meanwhile, more or less by accident, we have been reverse-terraforming earth. Generalizing the term to mean any major global changes in a planet, we have been terraforming earth.

And we don't need spacesuits. Not yet. Global temperatures have risen, but mostly that just means more t-shirt weather and the annoying expansion of insect populations.

We were once well down the path to destroying the ozone layer, but scientists convinced politicians to put a halt to that process. Unfortunately part of the terraforming process seems to be the gradual but obvious decrease in intelligence and ethical capacities of politicians. Two decades ago a politician who denied Darwin and other basic science was quaint. Now denying Darwin is a requirement to head science appropriation committees.

The great thing about terraforming is that it is a lot like home decorating: you can go a lot of ways with it. Back before ozone destruction and global warming were well-recognized designer motifs there was nuclear winter. Scientists calculated that if enough atomic bombs went off more or less at once we would not have to worry too much about death by background radiation (presuming we were among those not vaporized by the initial blasts). Instead so much dust and water vapor would be sent up into the stratosphere that the sun's radiation would be reflected back into space. The whole planet would freeze. A few people might survive for a while huddled around nuclear reactors or petroleum depots, but with no sunlight there would also be no agriculture, no food, and eventually not even a satirist left to comment on the stupidity of it all.

By way of terraforming, many plans have been suggested for keeping global warming from becoming too much of a reality. After all, if it ever hits 135 degrees in New York City and the air conditioners on Wall Street break down, the politicians are really going to get an earful. To prevent this we could put up artificial shade, like big umbrellas in orbit, or just purposefully put just the right amount of dust up into the stratosphere. Some global climate change denialists even believe that temperatures will be self correcting because more heat causes more water to vaporize, which forms more cloud cover, which in turn reflects sunlight. Mugginess is the worst case scenario if they are right.

In addition to designing a new room temperature, there are a lot of knickknacks beginning to clutter up old Terra. Canals that cut across continents and shipping both allow species mixing between formerly separate bodies of water. All kinds of cute insects and plants and such are finding new homes that are free of their traditional enemies. This can result in whole forests dying, which is the opposite of trying to get trees to grow on Mars, but which is impressive for a species that likes to think it does great things on purpose.

Asphalt too has a nice way of absorbing sunlight and baking up organic life forms in summer. Factory farming can turn whole states into monocultures just waiting for the right disease or weed to arrive to flip productive farmland into desert.

The earth's ecosystem is large and resiliant. It has survived about a million years of human pranks. Despite the carnage in species, there are still millions of species fighting it out over living space.

For most of those millennia, however, there just were not that many people around. No one was actually counting back then, but likely the human population of earth remained under a billion until around 1900. Now its seven billion or so, and everyone wants a cell phone, centralized heating and air-conditioning, and medical services guaranteed to keep them alive forever.

Maybe we really should think about terraforming Mars. I'd be willing to pay a few extra tax dollars to ship Paul Ryan there to be its first President, along with maybe 80 million Tea Party Republicans to help him get started.

Get Down Moses, With the U.S. Constitution

When the U.S. Constitution was forced on the American people in 1788 religion was not very different than it is today. There were no Mormons yet, but most of the major Christian sects had made an appearance. The educated ruling class studied the Greek and Roman classics, meaning they were exposed to both pagan beliefs and skepticism. Many Americans, possibly a majority were agnostics, atheists, materialists, or deists.

Politics was already a highly developed art and craft. So was its camp follower, corruption. I would argue that the first Congress under the new Constitution was the most corrupt in American history, but then there is a lot of competition, and records of corruption are incomplete, so I can't be sure. The U.S. Constitution was largely based on the British Constitution, but also borrowed from the Iroquois confederation, ancient Greek and Roman forms, and the various states, notably the State of Virginia.

Science, on the other hand, was just beginning its climb up Mount Sinai. Isaac Newton had invented calculus and outlined what is now called classical physics; he had died in 1727. But electricity was still something created by friction or lightning. Charles Darwin would not be born until 1809. Atoms would remain basically undifferentiated blobs until the 1890's.

For a document designed to centralize the power of the ruling elite, with just enough democracy included to keep the rabble from revolting too often, the U.S. Constitution is a pretty good basis for government. Its most obvious flaws, like the structure of the Senate, are a result of political compromise, not planning or wisdom. Amendments have, on the whole, improved it over the centuries. Most importantly, even the early ruling elite had their moments of working for the public good.

Largely because of Tea Party agitation, many Americans are taking a good look at their Constitution. Like any complex object, it can be looked at from many different angles. A citizen might like one part and dislike another. Throw in the often-mythologized stories about the (white) men who wrote the damned thing, and you have a lot of room for principled disagreements. Need more room, and you can just desert principles, which is a rather common (and often successful) political strategy.

Religious people, I mean the truly religious, project their religion into almost everything. It is almost a truism in certain circles that the U.S. Constitution was written by God. Now you and I know that is not true: God writes in Latin, not English. But the God-smitten won't have it any other way.

Which creates its own issues. Were Amendments to the Constitution written by God, or just the Original Constitution? Did God also write the Articles of Confederation? Why exactly did God give Congress the power to "promote the progress of science" [Article I, Section VIII, paragraph 8]?

You know why. He was preparing the way for his greatest prophets. Charles Darwin, James Clerk Maxwell, Max Planck, Albert Einstein, and Francis Crick, among others.

Natural Liberation Perspective

No matter where my mind wanders to, I come back to this basic thought: natural liberation philosophy is the essential forward path for the human race and our earth-species cohorts.

Natural Liberation of necessity uses abstractions, but it is by no means an abstract philosophy. It is a philosophy of concrete knowledge and a basis for intelligent and ethical action.

Call it by other names if you will. My philosophy has certainly been influenced by the works and thoughts of millions of people. Even philosophies and religions I mainly disagree with in their present forms, such as Buddhism, Christianity, Fascism, Islam, Deconstructionism, Leninism, etc., have provided, particularly in their historical application, much food for thought. More positive influences include Deep Ecology, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Charles Darwin and biologists generally, class and national liberation movements, Albert Einstein, anarchism, secular humanism, the Ten Key Values of the Green Party, etc.

Change in human behavior on a massive scale is needed if we do not want to perish, more or less, in a tidal wave of ecological destruction. Change tends to come in one of two forms. Some times practices change, and mental changes follow. This happens with the introduction of new technologies and imposed social organizations. Thus capitalists in the United States and communists in Russia both industrialized their nations, making them predominantly urban rather than agricultural. Minds adapted per force. Change also can come when minds change first and then try to apply the new way of thinking to actions. The spread of a religion, philosophy, or knowledge of an economic or political paradigm change are all good examples (the results can be good or bad, depending on the change).

Natural Liberation philosophy has been bubbling about in human culture since at least the great era of biological discovery that started in the 1600's. I can only hope to clarify it, to help it spread faster before it is too late for people to act. That said, it is actually too late to take the best actions. We have missed many opportunities, mainly because of greed and cultural inertia. But there are still choices to be made, and some very bad ones are still being made by individuals, corporations, and governments around the world today.

I hope to do a series of Plutarch (Lives of Great Men) style essays comparing Charles Darwin with figures like Jesus, the Prophet Mohammed, the Buddha, Karl Marx, etc. The idea is not to glorify Darwin, who, even if he was a prophet of sorts, was just a human being, but to delineate just what we should expect of cultural leaders, knowing what we now know.

I also hope to move to the organizational stage soon. This would first involve working closely with a small group of people who want to make developing and spreading natural liberation theology a center of their lives. Organizations are tricky. I have come to believe that a nucleus of high-functioning individuals is critical to launching an organization that is mentally and culturally healthy, yet dynamic enough to grow. Contact me if you are interested.

Such an organization cannot long remain primarily educational in nature. Real world projects need to be undertaken. Feedback from the world is crucial to human knowledge. Since real world projects are needed, and feedback is needed, taking action will be critical to making the project work.

Randomness, Chance, and Two Darwins

We have the usual missionary cult groups in rural Mendocino County, California, near Point Arena: Mormons, Seventh Day Adventists, and Jehovah's Witnesses. In general they seem to be pretty nice people. I don't mind them visiting their neighbors. They'll talk if you want to talk, and go away politely if you don't want to talk. It is interesting to see their opening talk lines.

A few month's ago Paul (not his real name), an earnest young man (younger than me, anyway, no big feat these days) from one of these groups, asked me, "You don't believe all of this is due to chance, do you?" His sweeping arms indicated my bishop pines, eucalyptus, the people present, the sky and the universe.

"Yes, I do," I said. That threw him. He acted as if they forgot to put that in the recruitment play book. We talked a bit more, and they left (they always seem to come in pairs, which is good, because you can offer them a beer and they'll say No).

Yesterday I read about the difference between the randomness of classical physics and the randomness of quantum physics in Inward Bound by Abraham Pais. It reminded me of how much trouble I have had accepting the nature of reality at the quantum level, of how most people are even more confused by randomness than I am, and the conversation with the earnest Christian.

I knew Paul was referring to the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection. No, for things to be as snafu as they are in this world, you need a Central Planning Intelligence, a sort of cosmic CIA, God's designer intervention team.

Because even trained scientists have difficulty with issues of causation and randomness, you can bet (or lay odds) that religious recruiters are going to use people's confusion to lay out their own highly improbably, but very simple, causal story: God created things (and he speaks directly to the leaders of my religion, the only true religion).

Natural liberation involves understanding nature's randomness and causality. That means understanding their respective roles in the world. You need to remind yourself some times that words like chance, randomness, planning, and causality are used by humans to lump together a wide variety of natural phenomena.

It is said that some Roman soldiers worshipped Chance (Fortuna) as a god. Plato, on the other hand, did not like randomness, and preferred unseen causes to explain the otherwise inexplicable world. There are also the related ancient ideas of Fate and Free Will. Some people don't like causality because it seems to take away free will, but most people accept some causality in the "outside" world while reserving free will for people's decision making process.

A lot of this is illuminated by understanding the difference between the randomness of genetics and evolution, the randomness of classical physics, and the randomness of quantum physics.

Classical physical randomness is the best starting point. Think about dice or better still, a card game. The cards in poker are supposed to be dealt randomly, and for practical purposes we don't think about that when playing poker unless we think the dealer is cheating. But we know that each physical card maintains its physical identity from hand to hand; shuffling cards is a causal process that gives the card order a sort of practical randomness.

The classical physics problem that is solved with this sort of randomness is calculating the energy, specific heat or temperature of some matter. It is easiest with certain "ideal" gasses (ideal because the theory works out!). In classical physics everything is causal. The gas molecules all have locations, masses, and velocities. They bounce off each other in a causal manner similar to colliding marbles. But there are two many of them to use ordinary calculus to keep track of, much less calculate the temperature. By treating the molecules as having random velocities and directions, scientists could group them. The properties of the groups, fit into the right equations, give good answers. Even then this is complicated enough that scientists (notably Ludwig Boltzmann) did not get this essentially right until the late 1800's.

The point to be noticed is that in classical physics, there is no inherent randomness in matter or energy. Randomness is at the macro level, or the level of human perception. It arises out of microscopic events that are too difficult for us to keep track of. When we roll dice, they obey all of Newton's laws of physics, we just can't keep track. Nature, presumably, does keep track.

Charles Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection is covered under this classical randomness theory. Darwin did not know about chromosomes or DNA. We now know that the DNA of two parents is randomly mixed and selected for each child. This is an example of classical physical randomness: causal laws are at work on the cell level, but we can't follow them, we can only see the results. Survival until reproduction of the next generation involves both events that we classify as causal (quicker, and so escaped a predator) and random (standing in wrong place, wiped out by a flood).

I knew I was technically wrong to say, to Paul that I believe "all this" was a result of chance. There is chance involved, but evolution is really best described as causal. Its randomness is classical, a matter of humans using statistics to describe complex large scale events that are causal at a microscopic letter.

A second scientist Darwin (or fourth, if you want to include Erasmus Darwin and George Howard Darwin), Charles Galton Darwin, a grandson of Charles, was one of the many scientists who contributed to the creation of quantum physics. Coincidence, or caused by his high level of intelligence, education, and a family tradition of breaking new ground?

In quantum physics, very early on, it appeared there were truly random processes in nature. Radioactivity was the first example. Atoms of radioactive elements appear to decay randomly. So of course all the bright guys of the era set out to show that there were underlying causes for the decays. That would have set their classical physics world to right. But they could not find any underlying, classical mechanism for the randomness. In the 1920's some younger physicists started accepting this quantum randomness as just inherent in the universe. Today there is still no causal theory that explains quantum randomness. It is an simply a human observation about nature at the quantum level.

The philosophic and religious interpretations of this facet of natural reality tend to simply be used to reinforce prior prejudices. Some say quantum randomness proves there is free will. Some say it means there must be a multiverse. Many project the randomness into scales well beyond quantum physics. In fact, randomness averages out very quickly, even quantum randomness. Put a few atoms together in a molecule, and quantum randomness tones way down. By the time you have anything worth worrying about, say a few hundred molecules of gold in a lump, quantum randomness has no effect on causality. Classical physics works better.

Scientists and technicians have produce clever ways to bring quantum randomness into the world of objects that humans can see, but this is an engineering trick. Electronics parts may use quantum randomness (as in quantum tunneling), but they are themselves very predictable.

It takes a lot of study to gain even a basic understanding of quantum physics. Even the Bible is an easier read than an introduction to quantum physics text book, not to mention the mathematical prerequisites required to comprehend the equations in it. Pop quantum physics is about as useful as Bible quotes taken out of context.

Nevertheless, here's a recipe:

Two Darwins Quantum Piety

"Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do. And they parted his raiment, and cast lots [for it]." The Bible, Luke 23:34 [See also similar Matthew 27:35]

Thus is was that lots were cast at the most sacred event of the Christian religion, the Crucifixion [if it is not just a myth]. It was recorded because Fortuna wanted people to know that She does roll dice, both in the classical and quantum sense.

Charles Darwin Was God's Prophet

Charles Darwin is hated by fundamentalist Christians. To accept Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selectiona as true, to them, means having to abandon their belief in the literal truth of the King James translation of the biblical books into what is now archaic English.

As a writer I have to appreciate the idea that one of God's principle activities was writing a book, and of course I am impressed by the fact that it is a best seller and the strongest backlist title in history. Also, it is encouraging, because my own writings have not sold well so far, and neither did God's early on. Bible sales did not really take off until the time of Martin Luther.

And if God is a writer, and had a successful book, don't you think he would want to do a bit more writing?

I think the concept of God is confusing [See God: A Confusing Concept]. Some people, however, have made an identity between God and Nature, and for educational purposes I'll go with that dual-natured god in this essay.

Let us suppose that God or Nature has prophets. These human beings get the truth about something or other from God and make it known to the rest of us. The Old Testament Jews had prophets, but so did the far-more-ancient Egyptians. Jesus is accepted as a prophet by many people who do not believe he is God. Mohammed declared that he was a prophet, and that worshipping him as the Christians worshipped Jesus Christ would be blasphemy.

But when you think about it, what these people revealed was good, but just a tiny bit of what God could reveal. I am a big fan of ethics, whether you want to take them from practical experience or from some higher authority. Predicting war or revolution or droughts or plagues is also all good and fine. Prophet is an honorary title I am willing to bestow when appropriate.

What Charles Darwin revealed was the fundamental order of nature, or at least of plant and animal life. True, he spent his life in careful study, observation, and experimentation. He thought a lot. He delayed publication of The Origin of Species because he knew it would upset a lot of people.

Charles Darwin himself was part of nature, part of creation. He claimed no supernatural powers. If you believe God creates everything, then God created Charles Darwin. If God inspires everything, then God inspired Charles Darwin.

Not remarkably, God's second book, the Origin of Species, (unless you count the New Testament as his second book) is much better written that his first book, the Bible. It documents the facts pointing to evolution by natural selection in a compelling manner. The contradictions in edicts we find in the Bible are largely eliminated. A big picture is painted out of small details. Troubling questions are asked and answered. Homely examples from the breeding of dogs and pigeons are given. Anyone with an open mind can understant it.

Having unveiled the true basis of life, and of the modern science of biology, God inspired mankind to get about the business of extending our knowledge of Nature. The science of genetics was worked out. The molecular basis of inheritance, DNA, was discovered. Now we have wonder medicines starting to be produced for ailments that were previously incurable. All because God revealed the Truth to the Prophet Darwin.

The Catholic Church, if it had any sense, would discover that Darwin was a saint. Many, many medical miracles have occured from people subscribing to the theory of evolution. We know the Church recast a number of pagan gods as saints; why not Charles Darwin?

The earth is not such a big place any more. It is crowded with people. It exists in the context of a Universe so large that even scientists cannot tell us exactly how large it is. Many of God's creations are being destroyed because of human overpopulation and its attendant polution and destruction of natural habitat. God has given warnings. Nature has made the consequences of continuing on our current path clear. Natural disasters and the toppling of evil and incompetent governments are upon us.

It is too bad Charles Darwin was not an American. I think the American fundamentalists would have a lot more trouble attacking God's True Prophet if it were unpatriotic to do so. The people of Great Britain should be proud to have produced such a man. But America has its Prophets of Nature too. John Muir, for instance. We should be proud of them.