Why Are We Such Pushovers for the Dubious Narratives of Mainstream Authorities?

We are suckers for narratives told by mainstream authorities. A large fraction of us will tend to believe any nonsense they pitch, whenever we keep hearing the same story told over and over again.

Let us imagine an alternate history in which suspected presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald was not killed by Jack Ruby. Imagine that most of the TV shows and newspapers began telling us the same story: that Lee Harvey Oswald was an innocent patsy set up by some dark conspiracy to assassinate president John Kennedy. Imagine if Lee Harvey Oswald became a popular celebrity, who went on lots of television talk shows, talking about how he had been framed for the murder of John Kennedy. Imagine if the mainstream media had nothing but nice things to say about Lee Harvey Oswald.

Then on one dark and rainy night, you might open the door of your house, and see on your porch Lee Harvey Oswald pointing at you a Mannlicher–Carcano rifle. What would you say? Given all the media brainwashing you had been exposed to, there's a significant chance you would say something like this:

Hi, Lee! Oh, I see you bought me a rifle as a gift. How nice of you! Come in out of the rain, and have a cup of coffee.

Our tendency to believe any nonsense that is spouted by revered authorities was shown in the prelude to the American invasion of Iraq in March 2013. The government began telling us silly scare stories that were false. President George W. Bush asserted again and again that Iraq had terrifying weapons of mass destruction. A study found that Bush made 232 false statements about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, along with 28 false statements about Iraqi links to Al Qaeda. Some of the claims were absurd, such as his February 6, 2003 statement making it sound as if there was a threat of Iraq releasing aerial drones that would spray biological weapons on the United States. The claim was utterly laughable, because at the time the United States had the mightiest air force in the world, and Iraq's air force was almost nonexistent.

Bush's claims on Iraq's weapons were false, and some of his scare stories were downright ridiculous. But the American people were pushovers for the endless narrative repetition. By the time the war was launched, the White House had persuaded most Americans that the toothless Iraq was a terrifying threat. It was further evidence that large fractions of the population will believe false or absurd statements as long as they are dogmatically proclaimed by respected authorities.

It is amazing that most of the American people fell “hook, line and sinker” for the government's false claims about Iraq weapons of mass destruction. We should have learned a lesson from the experience of the Vietnam war, during which administrations (both Democratic and Republican) fed us a steady stream of outrageous lies for more than 8 years. From such an experience we should have learned to have been more distrustful of authorities in high places.

It is interesting to imagine an alternate reality in which astrologers were in charge of astronomy departments at universities. Astrology is a belief system based on the idea that the stars and planets exert some occult mystical influence on human affairs. You might think that if the departments of astronomy at colleges and universities were all controlled by astrologers, that most of us would shake our heads and ask: what has gone wrong with our astronomy departments?

But here is how things would probably work. Having abundant government and university funding, the astrologer professors of astronomy would be able to produce lots of papers trying to back up their claims. Such astrologers would use expensive computers to examine historical data, looking for particular events that were consistent with what astrology predicted on such a date. Having all of human history to search through, and tons of time to spend looking for matches, the professors would no doubt find some matches. Such matches between historical facts and astrological predictions would be described in scientific papers published by the astrologer professors. Such professors would triumphantly describe such evidence as decisive proof of the claims of astrology, that the stars and planets exert a mystical influence on human affairs. Almost any group with enthusiastic adherents and large amounts of funding can produce superficially persuasive evidence to back up its favored doctrines.

If such astrologists controlled the astronomy departments at our colleges and universities, and they were to get all their papers published in the scientific journals, and the mainstream media reported extensively on such papers, then probably most of the American people would believe in astrology. We would be captives of the endlessly repeated official narrative. Similarly, most Americans would believe in homeopathy if homepathy enthusiasts controlled the medical colleges.

When a mainstream authority holds the levers of powers and influence, it can effectively use various ad hominem techniques to marginalize the critics who point out gaps in the logic or evidence presented by that authority. So during the run-up to the start of the Iraq war in 2003, there was a great chorus of establishment voices denouncing critics of the unprovoked invasion as “peaceniks,” “pacifists,” "anti-American," "appeasers,” and “unpatriotic.” Similar tactics are used by modern authorities who try to paint as “enemies of science” anyone who questions some weakly established truth claim of a scientist.

It seems that almost any nonsensical doctrine could achieve large-scale acceptance just as long as it won large funding to push its message and got its adherents to sit in positions of power and influence. If the authorities today told us (as they did around 1500) that witches were a grave peril causing all kinds of social problems, then many an average Joe would now be arguing: hey, let's solve more of our problems, by burning more witches.

Mainstream authorities help to cast a spell on us by talking in dense jargon that may sound very impressive and learned, even if it states ideas that are poorly substantiated. But almost any nonsensical idea may sound impressive if it is stated in very technical language filled with jargon. A scientist would probably convince many that there is a secret world of life inside a hollow planet Earth, if the scientist stated the idea in a paper filled with dense jargon, twelve-letter words, and esoteric mathematical equations.

Authorities prod the sheeple to parrot the official line

Two classic psychology experiments have shown how prone we are to conform with authority, “tow the line” and go with the herd, even when doing such a thing makes no sense or contradicts the evidence of our own eyes. One such experiment is the Asch experiment. In that experiment a group of nine people were asked to judge which of the three lines in a rectangle on the right was a match for the single line in the rectangle on the left.

The Asch Experiment ( credit: Wikipedia Commons)

 The first eight people would always give the same wrong answer, because they were confederates of the experimenter, and had been told beforehand to give such an answer. The only person really being tested was the last of the nine to be asked about which line on the right rectangle matched the line on the left rectangle. Even though it was quite obvious to the eye that the answer by the eight was wrong, about one-third of the participants (the ninth person to be asked) gave the wrong answer, conforming to the other eight. In the control group, in which only a single person was asked without the other 8 present, less than 1% gave the wrong answer. The lesson of the experiment: large fractions of us may judge or state illogically when we feel social pressure to conform to some majority or authoritative opinion.  

Another relevant experiment was the famous Milgram experiment. Participants were told to deliver electric shocks to an unseen person in another room, whenever the person failed at some verbal task he was given. The participants were told by a scientist figure in a white coat to deliver progressively more dangerous electric shocks to the unseen person in another room. If the participants objected to delivering such shocks, they were simply told something like, “Please continue” or “It is absolutely essential that you continue” or “You have no other choice but to continue.” Two-thirds (65%) of the participants delivered what they thought was a 450-volt shock to the person in another room, even though on the machinery they were using, that level was marked “Danger – severe shock.” The person in the other room wasn't actually being shocked, and the experiment was purely to test the obedience level of the person who thought he was delivering shocks.

The Milgram experiment is usually described as if it was only dealing with obedience, but it also can be interpreted as telling us that most people are pushovers who will believe something illogical when some scientific authority asserts it. Those who delivered what they thought was a 450-volt shock were apparently thinking things like, “I don't have any choice but to continue,” or “Even the severe shock won't hurt the person,” even though such beliefs made no sense given the circumstances and the labels on the machinery. People who heard about the Milgram experiment thought to themselves things like, “So if there's ever some evil Nazi-like scientist who wants me to do bad things, I shouldn't listen to him.” They should have been making a much more general conclusion, such as, “People are way too trustful of scientific authorities – we should question their claims, and accept nothing on the basis of authority.”

Some may say: but once something gets very popular in the universities and colleges, then surely it is something we can believe in. But that's not necessarily so. The 2016 book Imbeciles by Adam Cohen tells the story of the forced government sterilization of Carrie Buck. Carrie Buck was a woman of normal intelligence who was forcibly sterilized by the government in 1927, on the claimed grounds that she was “feeble-minded.” This was done under a Virginia law passed when eugenics was extremely popular in colleges and universities. Advocates of eugenics argued on Darwinian grounds that those with inferior genes should be sterilized to preserve the survival of the fittest. The book says this on page 4: “Eugenics was taught at 376 universities and colleges, including Harvard, Columbia, Berkeley, and Cornell.” The book notes that many professors were ardent supporters of eugenics, which went out of style after its ideas reached a climax under the Nazis.

The case of Carrie Buck went before the United States Supreme Court, which ruled 8-1 in 1927 that Carrie Buck (a woman of normal intelligence) should be forcibly sterilized. Citing eugenics with approval, the distinguished justice Oliver Wendell Homes Jr. wrote in favor of the decision, in a decision that was quoted by a Nazi in the Nuremberg trial, who cited it as a kind of legal inspiration. Thousands were forcibly sterilized under the Virginia law, and the forced sterilizations continued until 1972. The Buck case shows how there can be diverse layers of authority that all are infected with the same false idea (something also shown by the 2003 WMD-lies fiasco, where diverse types of authorities kept feeding us the same falsehoods).

The reason why we should not trust a doctrine purely because it is taught extensively in colleges and universities is that our academic ivory towers are very prone to become ideological enclaves, where sociological effects, tribal enthusiasms and groupthink may cause some dubious doctrine to become enshrined as some “darling of the tribe.” That's what happened with eugenics for decades, and the same thing has happened to quite a few dubious doctrines that continue to enjoy undeserved popularity in academic circles.

Part of the problem is what I might call the “pinnacle perspective.” A person using this perspective will regard our current state as being the pinnacle of human progress. He may think: we can't be too far wrong, because we're at the pinnacle of human progress. The problem with such a perspective is that you could have thought in exactly such a way 500 years ago or 200 years ago. We can imagine someone during the witch-burning craze around 1500 reasoning: we can't be too far off the mark, because we're at the pinnacle of human progress. Such a person would have been very wrong indeed. To help cure yourself of the pinnacle perspective, imagine some human civilization 100,000 years in the future. What will they think about our current ideas about morality, life, and Mind? They will probably think that our ideas are largely primitive foolishness. After taking such a perspective, you may apply the proper scrutiny to the dogmatic claims of today's authorities.

Do not believe anything merely because a president, a preacher or a professor proclaimed it, but subject all of their claims to critical scrutiny.

Cosmic Inflation Clique Defends Its Tribal Folklore

Around about 1978, cosmologists (the scientists who study the universe as a whole) were puzzled by a problem of fine-tuning. They had figured out that the expansion rate of the very early universe (at the time of the Big Bang) must have been incredibly fine-tuned, apparently to one part in ten to the sixtieth power. This dilemma was known as the flatness problem.

Around then Alan Guth (an MIT professor) proposed a way to solve the flatness problem. Guth proposed that for a tiny fraction of its first second (for less than a trillionth of a trillionth of a second), the universe expanded at an exponential rate. The universe is not expanding at any such rate, but Guth proposed that after a very brief instant of exponential expansion, the universe switched back to the normal, linear expansion that it now has.

Even though there was no evidence for it, and the idea was very far-fetched from the beginning, Guth's idea became very popular among the small tribe of cosmologists. We can call this idea Guthism, and we can call the small tribe of cosmologists who adopted it Guthists. Guthism can also be called the cosmic inflation theory, although Guthism may be better term, to avoid confusion with the broader concept of the expansion of the universe (which does not require the idea of primordial cosmic inflation).

In January of 2017 Scientific American published an article attacking Guthism. The article was written by Princeton professor Paul Steinhardt and Harvard professor Abraham Loeb, along with Anna Iijas. The trio methodically dismantled the Guthist idea of primordial cosmic inflation.

Commenting on a Planck satellite data release that was proclaimed as being in support of Guthism, the article states, “If anything, the Planck data disfavored the simplest inflation models and exacerbated long-standing foundational problems with the theory, providing new reasons to consider competing ideas about the origin and evolution of the universe.”

Here is a quote from the paper:

Two improbable criteria have to be satisfied for inflation to start. First, shortly after the big bang, there has to be a patch of space where the quantum fluctuations of spacetime have died down and the space is well described by Einstein’s classical equations of general relativity; second, the patch of space must be flat enough and have a smooth enough distribution of energy that the inflationary energy can grow to dominate all other forms of energy. Several theoretical estimates of the probability of finding a patch with these characteristics just after the big bang suggest that it is more difficult than finding a snowy mountain equipped with a ski lift and well-maintained ski slopes in the middle of a desert.

A stunning statement – that a theory paraded around as a standard of cosmology is really more implausible than “finding a snowy mountain equipped with a ski lift and well-maintained ski slopes in the middle of a desert.”

The paper then goes on to explain why Guthism is basically worthless in terms of helping to explain the flatness problem. The authors state this:

More important, if it were easy to find a patch emerging from the big bang that is flat and smooth enough to start inflation, then inflation would not be needed in the first place. Recall that the entire motivation for introducing it was to explain how the visible universe came to have these properties; if starting inflation requires those same properties, with the only difference being that a smaller patch of space is needed, that is hardly progress.

The scientists also tell us, “Not only does inflation require starting conditions that are difficult to obtain, it also impossible to stop inflation once it gets going.” They are referring to the “graceful exit” problem. Appealing to an “inflaton field” that has never been discovered, Guthism tells the tale that exponential cosmic inflation lasted for less than a trillionth of a second, and that it both started and stopped during the universe's first second. But getting the stopping to occur requires fine-tuning and vastly improbable circumstances similar to the fine-tuning and vastly improbable circumstances needed to get this exponential cosmic inflation beginning in the first place. It's like trying to explain an elephant appearing out of nowhere and then disappearing in less than a second.

The three scientists suggest a “bouncing universe” theory as an alternative to Guthism, but there are powerful reasons (discussed here) for rejecting such a theory. Our three scientists have done a fine job at showing the low credibility of Guthism, but have not succeeded in presenting some viable alternative. But that's okay, because we can simply say that we do not understand the universe's beginning, rather than pretending to understand primordial mysteries beyond our comprehension and knowledge. Kudos to anyone who shows the weaknesses of a prevailing theory, even if they don't succeed in presenting a viable replacement for such a theory.

What do you call a theory that tells a “once upon a time” story describing unproven and unbelievable narrative details of the universe's first second – a theory hanging around because it has become a verbal story tradition of a little clique of scientists? The best term I can think of is: tribal folklore.

Darwinists have constantly been telling us, “Nature does not make leaps.” But the cosmic inflation theorists want you to believe that nature made two gigantic leaps in its first second. According to them, the first of the leaps when was this exponential period of cosmic inflation started; and the second leap, a fraction of a second later, was when this exponential period of cosmic inflation ended (with the universe returning to the normal, linear expansion rate we now observe).

Is there any chance that this folk tale will ever be verified? No, because we can never hope to look back to the beginning and see what happened. The cosmic density preceding the “recombination era” scattered photons from the very beginning of the Big Bang, and prevents us from looking back to a time earlier than about 380,000 years after the Big Bang.

If you do a Google search for “cosmic inflation,” you will find quite a few web links proclaiming that observations have confirmed the theory. No such thing has happened. The web links date from 2014, when the BICEP2 team announced observations which it claimed found something (primordial b-modes) that the cosmic inflation theory had predicted. But later in the year, a consensus emerged that the team had done no such thing, and that the observations were just as likely to have been the result of ordinary dust. This was all a great big embarrassment to modern cosmology, since a giant false alarm had been raised. At a time in the spring of 2014 when most major scientific web sites were toasting the supposed glorious success of BICEP2, this blog was one of only a handful of web sites raising doubts about the claim (my 2014 posts on the topic are here). By the end of the year, things had reversed, and the scientific world was pretty much saying this about BICEP2: “Never mind.”

The Scientific American article by the three scientists has provoked an unusual response. The main supporters of Guthism (including Alan Guth and Andrei Linde) along with about 30 other cosmologists have published a rebuttal article called “A Cosmic Controversy.” It is kind of an authoritarian power play, designed to impress the reader by listing authorship by some of the top names in cosmology. The list of authors is very impressive, but the reasoning of the rebuttal is very unimpressive.

The core of the rebuttal is the claim that cosmic inflation theory (Guthism) has made several predictions that have proven true. The predictions listed are that the universe is geometrically flat, that ripples in the cosmic background radiation should be nearly “scale invariant,” that these ripples should be “adiabatic,” and that these ripples should be “Gaussian.”

Let me explain why such things cannot be cited as good evidence that Guthism is correct. First, we must recognize that many a false theory may make a true prediction. Some person may have a false theory that the Freemasons are secretly plotting to take over the world. That theory may predict (among other things) that interest rates will rise, that the stock market will go down, and that real estate prices will not change much. If it then happens that each of these three things happens, it does nothing to prove that such a theory of a Freemason conspiracy is correct. There would be about 1 chance in 10 of such predictions being right accidentally, and a 1 in 10 coincidence is not an impressive one.

In physics the theories of gravitation, electromagnetism, and quantum mechanics are regarded very highly because they make very precise predictions that turn out to be exactly correct. For example, a theory of gravitation may predict that a particular small asteroid will crash into the moon at exactly 10:35 PM EST on January 23, 2025. When such exact predictions turn out to be precisely true, it is very impressive, because it's hard to see how the theory could be so precisely right if it were not true. If the theory were not true, such a prediction would seem to require perhaps a 1 in a billion coincidence.

Conversely, there is nothing impressive about a theory being correct with a few predictions that may be coincidentally correct with a likelihood of about 1 in 2 or 1 in 3. The overall unlikelihood of such a level success is only about 1 in 6 or 1 in 9, which is not very unlikely at all.

In the case of the predictions of Guthism (primordial cosmic inflation), the items mentioned by the “A Cosmic Controversy” rebuttal are items that would have not been very unlikely for a false theory to have predicted. There are three possible geometries of space (flat, open, and closed), so you have 1 chance in 3 of being right if you pick one of those. If you guess that primordial ripples were Gaussian, you have about 1 chance in 2 of being correct. If you guess that primordial ripples were scale-invariant, you also have 1 chance in 2 of being correct. If you guess that fluctuations were adiabatic, you also have about 1 chance in 2 of being correct.

We may also note the fact that over the past 35 years there have been many hundreds of papers published presenting different versions of Guthist cosmic inflation theories. The predictions of these models have been “all over the map.” Typically a particular version of the theory will present a model consisting of equations, with lots of free parameters that can be plugged into the equations. A particular model (one version of the cosmic inflation theory) may predict a million different things, depending on what is chosen for the free parameters. And hundreds of such Guthist models have been published, each with slightly different equations.

So even the meager predictive successes mentioned in the “A Cosmic Controversy” rebuttal are not at all something that can be trotted out as some sign that “the predictions of cosmic inflation theory have been verified.” The few predictions mentioned are predictions cherry picked from a large family of models, which made predictions all over the map.

If I advanced some economic theory, and got disciples to grind out hundreds of different flavors of my theory, I would no doubt be able to find among some of these works some successful predictions that each had a chance probability of maybe 1 in 2 or 1 in 3 of being correct. But that would not be evidence that my theory was correct. Similarly, a few successful predictions (none very numerically exact) among the huge number of Guthist cosmic inflation models is not at all impressive, and something we might well expect to occur by chance.

The “successful predictions” cited in the “A Cosmic Controversy” rebuttal are also things that have been produced as the evidence was gradually coming in. It's not too hard to get successful predictions if you are predicting as the evidence is coming in. For example, if it's 2007 and the evidence is starting to come in that the housing market is collapsing, it's not hard to predict in that year that the housing market will collapse.

As Steinhardt, Loeb, and Iijas state in their rebuttal to the “Cosmic Controversy” rebuttal, “Any inflationary model gives an infinite diversity of outcomes with none preferred over any other.”

At this link Steinhardt, Loeb, and Iijas cite various Guthist cosmic inflation models over the years which have made false predictions, including some models predicting an open universe, some models predicting non-guassianity, some models predicting large tilt, some models predicting deviations from isotropy, some models predicting bumps and wiggles in the primordial spectrum, and some models that “predict B-modes with amplitudes that should have been detected by the WMAP and Planck satellites.”

It would actually be a gigantic project probably requiring years of work for someone to analyze whether the predictions of cosmic inflation models have been mainly successful or mainly unsuccessful. You would have to do something like put together an incredibly complex computer program that included thousands of equations that were extracted from more than 500 cosmic inflation papers published in the past 35 years. You would then have to vary the input parameters on all of these models, and see how well the results matched up with a large variety of cosmological observations. No one has ever done such a thing, partially because of the runaway complexity of such a project, which might be thousands of time more difficult than checking the accuracy of IPCC predictions on global warming.

In short, it is not right to claim that predictive successes show some likelihood that Guthist cosmic inflation actually occurred. We must also consider that the Cold Spot in the cosmic background radiation seems to be inconsistent with what such a theory predicts (as discussed here).

Imagine a salesman who knocks on your door and tells you he can make your kitchen look real nice if you spend only a few dollars to do some simple work. You let him in to do some work, thinking it will be a simple affair. Imagine the guy starts fiddling with the pipes and electricity, and then eventually tells you the job is going to cost you many thousands of dollars. You think to yourself: I never would have let this guy in if he had told me that at the beginning.

The tale of Guthism is a similar tale. It was originally pitched as something pretty simple. So cosmologists welcomed it. As time progressed, and the simplest versions kept failing, our Guthists eventually indicated that the theory required a whole multiverse (a huge collection of universes). The theory never would have been initially welcomed if this gargantuan requirement had been confessed at the very beginning. But by the time the multiverse requirements of Guthism had become apparent, the Guthist thought virus had infected so many cosmologists that they were reluctant to say, “This thing has got out of hand – we've been going in the wrong direction.” It's rather like a husband who takes the wrong turn trying to get from New York City to Philadelphia. If you point out his mistake the first few miles, he may turn around. But by the time he's gone a hundred miles down the wrong road, he may never admit he made a wrong turn. And even if he starts seeing signs saying, “Welcome to Massachusetts,” he may still swear he made the right turn. 

Postscript: Scientific American columnist John Horgan writes the following:

Almost 40 years after their inception, inflation and string theory are in worse shape than ever. The persistence of these unfalsifiable and hence unscientific theories is an embarrassment that risks damaging science’s reputation at a time when science can ill afford it. Isn’t it time to pull the plug? 

Here is a relevant previous post of mine, entitled "Let's Keep the Big Bang but Dump the Cosmic Inflation Theory."

Does Philosophical Materialism Tend to Indirectly Increase Global Warming?

There are two definitions of the word “materialism.” One refers to a lifestyle emphasis, and the other refers to a philosophical position. Materialism as a lifestyle emphasis means centering your life around the acquisition and enjoyment of material things. A person pursuing a materialistic lifestyle may organize his life around getting a bigger house, getting a bigger or faster car, buying fancy clothes and gadgets, and so forth.

A person's carbon footprint is the amount of carbon dioxide emitted as the result of a person's consumption activities. Assuming that what we are told is correct (that increased carbon footprints tend to increase global warming), it is rather clear that lifestyle materialism tends to increase global warming. If a person thinks that “happily ever after” means a 2000-square-foot home and two big gas-guzzling cars, along with frequent trips to luxury hotels in distant cities, he may well have a carbon footprint much greater than if he put little value on such things.

Philosophical materialism is something quite different from lifestyle materialism. Philosophical materialism is the position that matter (or mass-energy) is all that exists (with the possible exception of blind impersonal forces such as gravitation, or laws of nature). Not believing in any type of deity, spirits or souls, a philosophical materialist thinks that this earthly life is the only life a human will ever have, and that no one will have an afterlife.

You might think that whether a person is a philosophical materialist has no relevance to global warming. But this may not be true. There is a reason for thinking that philosophical materialists may be more likely to have higher carbon footprints, and do more of the activities that increase global warming. The reason has nothing to do with the philosophical materialist's lack of belief in a deity. The reason has to do with the philosophical materialist's lack of belief in an afterlife.

Let us imagine two people, one named Joe and another named Jane. Joe is a hard-boiled philosophical materialist. He believes that this earthly life is the only life he will ever live. But Jane believes rather vaguely in some type of afterlife. She thinks that when she dies she may continue to live on in some type of heaven. She also thinks that perhaps she will be reincarnated, and come back to our planet to live another life.

Joe's attitude is summarized by slogans such as “you only live once.” Believing that he will have no afterlife, Joe thinks that this earthly life is his only chance to see the world's wonders and enjoy various types of pleasure. So Joe may create in his mind a “bucket list” consisting of a list of items he wants to do before he “kicks the bucket.” These may be items like this:

1. See the view from the Eiffel Tower.
2. Walk on the Great Wall of China
3. Take a glass-bottom boat tour in the Great Barrier Reef
4. Climb to the top of the Uluru rock in Australia
5. Swim in some beautiful lagoon in Tahiti

A "bucket list" of places to see before you die

Doing all of these things and other items on Joe's “bucket list” will add to global warming. That's because Joe will have to buy lots of jet plane tickets, and jet planes dump lots of carbon dioxide high into the atmosphere. But Joe justifies this by saying to himself, “This is the only chance I'll ever get to see such things.”

Joe may also buy himself a big home with a high carbon footprint, reasoning, “This is the only chance I'll ever get to live well.” And he may buy himself some gas-guzzling car or recreational vehicle, reasoning, “This is the only chance I'll ever get to drive well,” or “This is the only chance I'll ever get to see the whole USA.” With such reasoning, Joe's carbon footprint gets higher and higher.

But now let us consider Jane. Jane does not assume that her pleasures will be limited to the pleasures she gets during her earthly life. Jane thinks she will have some kind of afterlife, and that such an afterlife may offer unlimited opportunities for different kinds of pleasure. Thinking that she may find herself in some magnificent heavenly realm that totally surpasses the splendor of the home of the richest billionaire, Jane doesn't think along the lines of, “This is the only chance I'll ever have to live in grand style.” Jane thinks that perhaps as a disembodied spirit she may be able to move around to any place on the planet she wants to go, or that perhaps she will be reincarnated and have additional opportunities for physical earthly experiences. So she doesn't engage in thinking along the lines of, “This earthly life is my one chance to see the Great Wall of China.”

When it comes to eating habits, there may also be a difference between Jane and Joe. Jane may believe or suspect that all animals have souls, and this may cause her to limit her meat eating or may cause her to become a vegetarian. Jane may reason that raising pigs and cows for food may cause suffering for animals with souls, and that we should therefore not eat such animals. But not believing in any types of souls, Joe may eat lots of meat. In fact, when he comes to a restaurant, Joe's attitude of “this life is my only chance for pleasure” may cause him to try some meat dish he has never tried before. This is relevant to global warming, because the raising of animals for meat is one of the biggest contributors to global warming.

Now, who is more likely to have a higher carbon footprint, Jane or Joe? It seems that Joe will be much more likely to have a higher carbon footprint. Joe's thinking may well lead him to engage in activities that increase global warming. But Jane's thinking may make her less likely to engage in a high-carbon-footprint lifestyle.

It is certainly true that we can imagine a rather austere philosophical materialist whose carbon footprint is low. The main driver of a high-carbon lifestyle is not any philosophical position but a consumerist culture which is constantly sending us silly messages implying that your success in life is proportional to the size of your house, the size or cost of your car, and the distance you travel in jet planes. But by encouraging the thinking that this earthly life is our only chance for satisfaction, philosophical materialism does nothing to put a check on such a consumerist culture. So compared to rival assumptions, philosophical materialism does a bad job at discouraging the high consumption that worsens global warming. Although philosophical materialism does not necessitate lifestyle materialism, philosophical materialism may tend to encourage lifestyle materialism, which tends to increase global warming.

The armchair considerations here don't prove anything, but a systematic scientific study could shed further light on such a topic. I suggest this as a topic for a scientific researcher looking for a topic for a scientific paper. I can imagine such a study being done at low cost. You simply submit question lists to a wide variety of age groups and income levels, asking people both about their philosophical and religious beliefs and also about their consumption practices and carbon footprints. Then you look to see whether there is any correlation between the two.

Will Complex Code Cause Our Collapse?

Our complex society increasingly depends on computer software code, and that code is growing ever more complex and unmanageable. It is already very common in large companies for there to exist large software systems that no single person understands very well. When you have a large software system with more than 100,000 lines of code, it will often be that one person knows certain aspects of the software system, and someone else knows other parts of it; but there is no person who understands the full system very well.

As demand for software functionality grows, software engineers sometimes resort to using code generators. These are software tools that can quickly generate many lines of code. But such code is often very hard to understand. By using a code generator, a software developer may quickly add 10,000 lines of new code to a software system. But he may not understand such code. A rough rule of thumb among programmers is: if I didn't write the code, I don't understand it.

Many advanced computer programs use what are called neural networks or deep learning. When such code is used, the software ends up being pretty incomprehensible to humans. Software decisions end up being driven by extremely complex data, often data that is distributed across many different layers. In complex cases of such implementations, the computer itself doesn't understand how the data determines the decision, and neither does a human. It's what programmers call a “black box.”

There is a strong possibility of a future complexity crisis in which humans find they have created software systems of unfathomable intricacy that they can no longer understand. We can imagine a certain level of complexity – call it Complexity Level 10 -- that is the most complex level that any human can understand. It is all too possible that humans might build their way up to Complexity Level 11 or Complexity Level 12 or some higher level. There would then be a possibility of an “overshoot and collapse” situation, in which computer systems around the world start to break down because they have become too complex for anyone to understand, maintain or fix.

You don't have to have lots of bugs for a complex system to fail. A space probe to Mars failed because of a single line of errant software code. In a case like that, it wasn't good enough that 99.999% of the code worked right.

On May 6, 2010 there occurred an event called the Flash Crash, in which the stock market underwent a trillion-dollar dip, dropping by 900 points at 2:32 PM. By the end of the day, the market had largely recovered. The dramatic dip of the Flash Crash was apparently caused by program trading, in which investment portfolios are controlled by extremely complicated computer programs. No one is exactly sure why the Flash Crash occurred. It seems to be an example of complex computer programs acting in an unpredictable manner. We can only wonder whether some future version of the Flash Crash may bring down the financial system, or perhaps the electrical grid.

Some people are not worried about such a possibility, because they think that super-intelligent computers will fill in the gap. The idea can be stated like this:

Sure, software code will become too complex for humans to understand; but that's no problem because our ever-more-brilliant computers will be able to understand that code. Our computers will probably take over the job of writing and maintaining their own software, freeing us humans from such burdens.

But I believe we should reject the idea that computers will become smart enough to understand their own software code. Computers process information, crunch numbers, and process information. But they do not currently understand a single thing. A computer may be able to tell us instantly when Abraham Lincoln was born, but no computer has any real understanding of what a birth is, what a day is, what a human is, or who Abraham Lincoln was. There is no reason to think that any future advances will somehow give computers the understanding they now lack. A computer that does not understand anything will not suddenly be able to understand a little bit if we add some more lines of software code or some more chips or processors. Thinking that a computer will one day have understanding once you add faster processors or more lines of code to its software seems to be like thinking that one day when you get a much better TV, you'll be able to have a child fathered by your favorite TV character.

It seems, then, that we will not be saved from a software complexity crisis by computers that understand software code that has progressed beyond human understanding. A software complexity crisis will be worsened by short-sighted programming managers who demand more and more features be added to software, regardless of how this makes the code more and more difficult to maintain. We can compare such figures to real estate developers who keep yelling, “Higher, higher, higher!” to their architects, without worrying about buildings in danger of collapse because they are built too high.

The risks from such a software complexity crisis are great. Imagine it is the year 2030, and you are a typical computer programmer. Computer systems around the world may be undergoing more and more breakdowns, and your job is to fix one of them. You take a look at the software code, and see before you an ocean of unfathomable intricacy, perhaps a million lines of hard-to-read code. You ask yourself: how on earth did something like this ever come into existence? It's like the tangled jungle of complexity that is the US Tax Code, but much worse. After looking at just a little of the software, you feel like some ordinary person reading a 50-page scientific paper on quantum mechanics. You know your choice: either admit to your boss that you are hopelessly over your head, or cross your fingers and try to make some “blind fix,” rather like a layman walking into a nuclear power plant, and trying to fix rising core temperatures by fiddling with some of the dials. 

The agony of code too complex for you to understand

Then imagine such a situation happening in 10,000 different offices, to 50,000 “over their head” programmers, and you have a taste of the software complexity crisis that may lie ahead. I mentioned the possibility of the financial system or the power grid failing because of such a crisis. Another possibility is that we may upgrade nuclear weapon systems so that they are centered around computer systems that become way too complex to maintain or understand. A single fault in such a system might cause a nuclear war. The movie Fail Safe depicted such a thing when a small electronic unit failed, but the same thing might happen because of a single errant line of software code. Will some nuclear holocaust one day occur because of some computer code that grew too complex to be manageable?