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Most people who think about astronomy and related themes would agree that the American humourist Woody Allen posed the essential question: “Is anybody out there? And do they have ray guns?” The physicist Enrico Fermi (1901-1954) raised this essential paradox: the abundance of planets and star systems in the universe raises a high probability of the existence of intelligent life. And there is no evidence of this intelligent life whatsoever, none. So where have all the Alien Civilisations gone?

One very plausible scenario is that they have self- destructed, probably with the aid of weapons of mass destruction, such as nuclear bombs or biological agents. The rapid evolution of technology equips evolving societies with these weapons, which their biological impulses of aggression then impel them to use.

There can be little doubt that tribal aggression is deeply wired into our own species. In her masterly book Political Tribes, Amy Chua provides a tour de force summary of the effect of tribalism and the wars of destruction which it has unleashed throughout history. Perhaps her most telling quote is

The great Enlightenment principles of modernity, liberalism, secularism, rationality and equality do not provide the kind of tribal identity that most humans crave.

The Enlightenment may be OK for the elite one per cent of the population. Of what happened when the American part of that elite tried to apply them in Iraq, she is scathing:

(Bush and his advisors believed) that ethnic, tribal and sectarian divisions would dissipate in the face of democracy and market generated wealth…..

Holiday in Iraq, anyone? It’s the mark of a good author that she gathers evidence of more and more cases , explaining the true causes of American failures in Vietnam and Afghanistan. The latter is a key exemplar of how Marxist solutions break down in the face of tribalism, as students of the late Soviet Union will confirm. The recent consequences of this tribalism in western societies is well discussed by Professor Kaufman in Whiteshift.

For those who want good evidence of the psychological and biological roots of tribalism, the literature is vast. To get you started, we shall point to the famous Robbers Cave experiments , which we link below. The essential point here is that researchers were shocked at how easy it was to initiate inter- tribal aggression, and how hard to dissipate it subsequently.

And where might it now express itself at an International Level? Current flashpoints are not hard to find: tensions between Russia and NATO in the Baltic States; Israel and Iran; India and Pakistan- all are areas where hostile tribes confront each other with weapons of unimaginable power. Perhaps the most worrying of all is Asia, where a declining United States seeks to maintain its interests and alliances in the face of a rising China. Anyone who has attended a football match, or the pubs around one, knows how quickly reckless uncontrolled violence can be unleashed by the most trivial slights. Both football supporters and national security councils are made up of humans.

So far, we are still here; and the aliens are not. They must have evolved from the same sorts aggressive biological ancestors that we did. Are we programmed to repeat their fate?

Amy Chua Political Tribes Bloomsbury

Eric Kaufman Whiteshift Penguin

https://www.thoughtco.com/robbers-cave-experiment-4774987

#tribalism #politicaltribes #whiteshift #nuclearwar

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To Mr Lluís Bussé of Catalonia, who is now following us on LSS.

We have particularly happy memories of his homeland, Catalonia. We recommend Tarragona, Barcelona and the beautiful countryside to all visitors-when the lockdown ends! The railway journey from Barcelona to Calafell , as the train winds in and out of tunnels along sandy coves and blue seas, is as exciting as any in Europe.

I have owned two shirts pertaining to FC Barcelona in my time, in order to help with my Iberian and Hispanic studies. Unfortunately one was a fake. Which proves: don’t buy a football shirt from a market, especially when you come out of a bar.

As the man said at the time “ay,senor inglese emborrachada, quieres comprar una camisa del barca, muy barrato? Gracias! I think it may have been a quote from Lope de Vega.

Here are Lluis’ details

http://en.gravatar.com/lluisbusse

Gravatar allows you to manage all of your online identities in one place on the web.

#catalonia #lluisbusse #fcbarcelona

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One of our aims at Learning, Science and Society is to advance the cause of women in science and education. The systematic denial of opportunities to them, as a direct result of ignorance and prejudice, has impoverished all humankind. Never forget-any system of prejudice will mean second rate people in first rate jobs at sometime, somewhere. Imagine where the United States of America would be now if Hillary Clinton had won the 2016 presidential election!

We’re going to take opportunities to highlight the progress of women in the fields of Learning, Science, and even Society (how’s that for a plug?) and today we are proud to start with: May 12th, Celebrating Women in Mathematics. There are going to be over 100 world wide events, many online of course, looking at the problems and opportunities for women in mathematics. And is there a problem to solve! Laura Moreno Iraola of El Pais gives us an excellent summary of it for Spain, which is fairly representative of more advanced countries. Get this: only 35% of trained researchers in maths are women, and in the higher reaches, representation is down to 15%. Hmmnn- isn’t the proportion of women in the population nearer 50%, or have we got that wrong? And here’s another little problem, according to Laura: only 5% of citations in science are from women researchers, and a miserable 1% in technology. No wonder girls don’t go into it-they’re invisible!

If we’re going to solve the problems of the world, we need to unlock all that hidden talent-it will make all of us richer in the long run. Progress ids being made in many countries, and we post Laura’s article below: for the few of you who don’t speak Spanish, get your Google Translators on to it. Anyway, she does it much better than we could, so it’s worth a peek.

-Coda: Why May 12th? well it’s been chosen for the birthday of Iranian mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani, the only woman in a hundred years to win the Fields Medal, which is like a Nobel Prize for mathematics. It is sad to record that she died in 2017.

-Coda to the Coda: we, the editorial board of LSS, were hopeless at maths, truly dire & dreadful.

https://elpais.com/ciencia/2020-05-12/por-que-necesitamos-un-dia-de-las-mujeres-matematicas.html

#womeninmathematics #elpais maryammirzakhani lauramorenoiraola

apologies for repeat post-it wouldn’t let me access facebook or twitter last time

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One of our aims at Learning, Science and Society is to advance the cause of women in science and education. The systematic denial of opportunities to them, as a direct result of ignorance and prejudice, has impoverished all humankind. Never forget-any system of prejudice will mean second rate people in first rate jobs at sometime, somewhere. Imagine where the United States of America would be now if Hillary Clinton had won the 2016 presidential election!

We’re going to take opportunities to highlight the progress of women in the fields of Learning, Science, and even Society (how’s that for a plug?) and today we are proud to start with: May 12th, Celebrating Women in Mathematics. There are going to be over 100 world wide events, many online of course, looking at the problems and opportunities for women in mathematics. And is there a problem to solve! Laura Moreno Iraola of El Pais gives us an excellent summary of it for Spain, which is fairly representative of more advanced countries. Get this: only 35% of trained researchers in maths are women, and in the higher reaches, representation is down to 15%. Hmmnn- isn’t the proportion of women in the population nearer 50%, or have we got that wrong? And here’s another little problem, according to Laura: only 5% of citations in science are from women researchers, and a miserable 1% in technology. No wonder girls don’t go into it-they’re invisible!

If we’re going to solve the problems of the world, we need to unlock all that hidden talent-it will make all of us richer in the long run. Progress ids being made in many countries, and we post Laura’s article below: for the few of you who don’t speak Spanish, get your Google Translators on to it. Anyway, she does it much better than we could, so it’s worth a peek.

-Coda: Why May 12th? well it’s been chosen for the birthday of Iranian mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani, the only woman in a hundred years to win the Fields Medal, which is like a Nobel Prize for mathematics. It is sad to record that she died in 2017.

-Coda to the Coda: we, the editorial board of LSS, were hopeless at maths, truly dire & dreadful.

https://elpais.com/ciencia/2020-05-12/por-que-necesitamos-un-dia-de-las-mujeres-matematicas.html

#womeninmathematics #elpais #maryammirzakhani

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We would like to thank Counselor Brandon for following our little blog. If we have missed other followers, thank you very much, nevertheless. Put our omissions down to our own IT incompetence, which is legendary among family, friends and work colleagues

We link to his website below, and take pleasure in seeing his delightful cats.

Home

#counsellorbrandon

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We have to applaud the way that the UK Government tries to take questions from its citizens as part of its response to the Covid-19 pandemic. No taxation without consultation, one might say.

The question was “Will the UK Government fund research into Artificial Intelligence algorithms, thereby helping it to predict the next mutation in the SARS-CoV-2 virus?

Alright, they take a lot of questions, and we didn’t make the cut! But for those who missed our last outing on this theme (LSS; 28April; Using AI …..) here is a brief summary of our ideas.

All genomes, that is to say the nucleic acids strands in our cells, have hotspots. These are places where the normal rate of mutation seems to speed up. According to Patricia Frost in Science Daily the mutations are 18 times more likely in DNA sequences where the same chemical letter, such as A, G, C, or T is repeated multiple times. They are 12 times more likely where you find repeated triplets, e.g, TTT or AAA.

Now, we know more astute readers will protest that coronaviruses code in RNA. Yet this is where the fun starts. RNA viruses are more prone to mutation, as they are dependent on certain error-prone enzymes, and have less in built correction mechanisms, than more advanced DNA -based organisms.

In theory, it should be possible to produce a model of the viral genome, and to map its mutation hotspots. More importantly, the possible mutational pathways of the virus should be predictable.

Work to analyse viral mutations is already been undertaken for influenza, though we don’t know what computational techniques the authors used (see link below)

A simple survey of Wikipedia demonstrates the enormous power and range of AI applications, though we could not resist adding a post from fellow blogger Aayushi Johari. Why not now deploy this power on an urgent and pressing problem, instead of designing tired old games, that frankly, everyone has seen before? A success here would be national prestige indeed.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4274636/

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/07/180730132924.htm

https://www.edureka.co/blog/artificial-intelligence-applications/#

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Applications_of_artificial_intelligence

#sarscov2 #covid19 #borisjohnson #genome #mutation #artificialintelligence

The Wealth of Nations(1776) was the seminal text of Adam Smith, in which he outlined his vision of the best way of ensuring a prosperous economy, and with it, the optimal levels of human happiness.

Its central prescriptions -of free trade, unfettered markets, freedom of information and expression-are too well known to be expurgated again here. On the whole, his notions have stood the test of time better than that of rivals such as Marxism or religious theocracy. As with any creed, the problem came with believers who took it too seriously, whose logic and zeal out runs their reason.

So if taxes are bad, they say, why not abolish them altogether?(at least for rich people) If the state can be a drag, why not get rid of it altogether? Surely any government activity is evil, and should be avoided religiously. It is interesting how the most perfervid expressions of these beliefs come in novels, not works of fact.

Yet in a crisis, the state can create wealth. Does in fact, in ways that a pure free market can neither facilitate nor measure. No one can doubt that a society with antibiotics is infinitely richer than one without. Yet one cannot measure that in the way one can for a cup off latte macchiatto, a mobile phone, or a tube of lipstick.

Below we reference two articles from the website of the charity AntibioticsResearchUK. In which Vicki Joughin describes the partnerships which created Penicillin, the first designer antibiotic. For us, the key quote is:

The story of the mass production of penicillin to help the Allied Forces win World War II is a remarkable one. It was brought about by an unparalleled collaboration between governments, industrial giants and renowned scientific establishments who had a common goal – which was not a financial one.

Advocates of low taxes and weak states must always make an exception for strong armies and police; can biological threats be excluded?

https://www.antibioticresearch.org.uk/from-fighting-for-freedom-to-fighting-drug-resistance-to-save-modern-medicine-part-one/

https://www.antibioticresearch.org.uk/from-fighting-for-freedom-to-fighting-drug-resistance-to-save-modern-medicine-part-two/

#antibioticsresearchuk #penicillin #worldwartwo #vickijoughin

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We at LSS have always hoped to act as a gathering place where intelligent and informed people can meet to exchange ideas. To come on this blog, we suspect you to have two considerations in mind: that learning comes from experience; and that wisdom from careful thought.

To this end we present our new section called “what the readers saw”. A gathering of ideas from intelligent people who think YOU should know about things which they think are important to us all.

And so we have the privilege of presenting the snippets they have pulled from this weeks media, in no particular order.

Should we be printing more money? Mr John Read, a businessman from Henley on Thames, draws our attention to a sky news article about top Irish economist David McWilliams, who says that governments and banks should be showering “helicopter money” on ordinary citizens, to get the economy moving after the virus peak has passed. A good idea? Judge for yourself:

https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-top-economist-says-central-banks-should-give-away-free-money-11985517

We cannot resist telling you that John moonlights as both manager and lead singer of an excellent band called The Covered, whom we have seen perform live on two occasions. Available now for weddings, club dinners and all other conceivable social occasions!

Care Homes and the CoronaVirus: We do not doubt the good intentions of the UK Government, whatever mistakes they may have made. But did an overemphasis on hospital safety leave care homes at risk? Mr Lindsay Charlton, whom some will already recall as a broadcaster and entrepreneur of some note, recommends this well-researched piece from Reuters:

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/health-coronavirus-britain-elderly/

Is there Life On Mars? We have always been fascinated and frustrated by the ambivalent findings of the Viking Mars probes in 1976. Growing evidence suggests that the red planet may once have contained many of the preconditions for a working biosphere. Mr Peter Seymour, an expert in the care of vulnerable people in his day job, draws our attention to the remarkable findings by a team of scientists investigating the famous Allan Hills Martian Meteorite, reported here by Apple News. It seems to contain a curious mix of nitrogen compounds which may yet be precursors to the more complex bio-molecules upon which life depends:

https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/g5pxx4/a-piece-of-mars-that-fell-in-antarctica-contains-ingredient-for-life-scientists-discover

Tagging-the scourge of Facebook. We had seen this word used in our time hanging around the Facebook site, but have not fully understood what it meant. Now Mr Gary Herbert, famous for his many sheds and haunted outbuildings, has explained that it means two things. It can be a simple way of noting the presence of a friend in a photograph, perhaps at a wedding or something like that. But he counsels that it can also be a vexatious method for those one has “cut off” to yet intrude their baleful presence into one’s own little corner of cyberspace. (spoiler alert: we still don’t exactly understand how, but Gary is frightfully clever, and has set us up with more bits of tech than you can subroutine an algorithm with, so he must be right) It is further example of the abuse of the privilege of communication, and we hope Facebook may find a way to stop it.

Do you have any snippets you want to discuss, or think that the Intelligent Community needs to know about? If so , contact us here at Learning, Science and Society. And now we can all go off for our Saturday Night glass of cold beer. Enjoy!

#Helicoptermoney #tagging #AllanHills84001 #coronavirus #carehomes

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If the covid-19 outbreak has taught us anything, it is the fearful vulnerability of our cyberspace to the postings of every crank, fool and sinister manipulator who has a keyboard, and the difficulty of separating their lies and hidden agendas from honest error, rightful emotion- and tiny fragments of genuine truth. It will not go away after covid-19. It is also a problem in politics, economics. health and other fields which have a direct bearing on human life.

We do not advocate the abolition of a universal Right to Post, nor do we call to the restriction of discourse to those with proven expertise in a given field. But advocates of the Free Speech Defence should recall that the freedom granted by a driving licence is not the same as the freedom to drive fast down the wrong carriageway of major trunk roads, nor to ignore red traffic lights.

Until a happier day when these dilemmas might be resolved, we have pleasure in advocating this checklist compiled by Graham Lawton of New Scientist on how you can recognise studies that might be poor, misleading-or worse.

Study is published on a blog, preprint server, or social media

It hasn’t been peer reviewed by other experts yet. Two heads are better than one .All the best science goes through a long process whereby other experts in the field look at it. In science this is called peer review. In marriage, it is called health and safety. How would you get on if you blew the family savings on a new Rolls Royce without telling your wife first?

Study only has one author

It’s probably very early research, and very tentative. Once again, two heads are better than one.

The researchers are from a surprising field of study

Perhaps they are geologists talking about viruses. Why would they suddenly do that, who’s paying them? Would you take advice from a cricketer about how to play poker? Maybe- but a poker player might be better.

The analysis is very fast

It’s never a good idea to go too fast in science and engineering. Older readers will remember the Comet airliner, which should have been a world beater, but kept crashing because it was rushed into service too quickly

The study is very small

This is common sense- but Graham’s rule of thumb is that any medical study with less than 50 participants is highly questionable-and we agree. Any football team can win one match. Champions are proved by a whole season

The trial has no placebo group

If you test a drug you give samples of it to a group of 100 people. You also give pills that look and taste exactly like the drug to a second group called the placebo group. Only this way can you be sure your drug is doing anything at all. If there is no placebo group, then the researchers are on very shaky ground indeed

The study reports a correlation or association

We did this ! Correlation is not proof-remember the sharks and ice cream?(Learning, Science and Society 23 April) It’s often telling you something, but it may not be what you think it is. So be advised.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24632813-000-how-the-covid-19-pandemic-has-led-to-a-flood-of-misleading-science/

#newscientist #grahamlawton

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The most depressing experience of the current outbreak of COVID-19 has been the proliferation of armchair virologists, epidemiologists and population geneticists, most of whom seem to have had no training in these disciplines whatsoever. Nor in any science. Nor indeed in even the rudiments of logic, most of which have been available since the Middle Ages. it is a point which we tried to address in our post If you are not a virologist, just shut up...[sic] on 1st May.

Now the Editor of New Scientist* has said it much, much better. We therefore take the awful liberty of posting direct from their leader article from 9 May 2020

The covid-19 pandemic has upended many of the things that we once took for granted, but perhaps the most insidious is what it is doing to our ability to detect fact from fiction.

Science remains the best tool we have f-though by no means a perfect one -for creating reliable knowledge………………………it is becoming hard at times to sort good science from bad, and worthwhile hypotheses from conjecture, hyperbole and nonsense.

The editorial expands on this gloomy theme, then links to a detailed article by Graham Lawton* called “Science in Crisis” in the print version, which we link below.

Graham’s article is so very good that we shall extract his “suspect science” checklist and discuss it in a blog to follow shortly

https://www.newscientist.com/

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24632813-000-how-the-covid-19-pandemic-has-led-to-a-flood-of-misleading-science/

#newscientist #coronavirus #covid19 #grahamlawton #hydroxychloroquine