green growth

Today I came across the news that scientist have used bacteria to produce plastic in the lab. A similar test was run in 2004 using bacteria to convert toxins into usable plastic. This is a fascinating example of Green technology in action.


This sort of high-tech application of ecological principles shows how going Green is potentially the biggest growth industry for the future. The room for advancement, and thus return on investment, is enormous. Even perennial Globalist, Thomas Friedman, is now championing Green technology as "the kind of thing that can drive our technological foundation to a whole new level." It's this kind of innovation that will help rebuild our economy and create solutions to the problems facing us today.

debating fallacies

This morning I was reading a friend's blog and I noticed some interesting comments in a recent post about his reaction to Republican Vice Presidential Nominee Sarah Palin. The person commenting engaged in a classic logical fallacy: the red herring, also known in debating circles as ignoratio elenchi. Since just yesterday I wrote about separating good and bad ideas in a debate, I feel a bit vindicated. Such an ignorance of even the most basic precepts of logic implies a serious deficiency of critical thinking skills.

In an election year, with the presidential debates mere days away, it's a bit alarming that these sorts of mistakes aren't as well known as they might be. So as a public service, I'm posting a list of common logical fallacies used in debates. Credit goes to Michael Wong, who wrote this list for his website debunking creationism. His list has been abridged for length and to trim the less relevant references to religion but can be found in its original form and context on this page.

The "Strawman" Fallacy: this is where you build up a distorted "strawman" version of your opponent's argument in order to knock it down more easily. Virtually all creationist representations of evolutionary mechanisms distort the principle somehow, thus falling into this category.

The "Ad-Hominem" Fallacy: this is also known as "attacking the messenger, not the message". One of the most common forms of the ad-hominem fallacy in online debates is to poke fun at someone's spelling errors and then conclude that the person's points are wrong. In religious debates, the most common form of ad-hominem fallacy by far is to attack the morality of an irreligious opponent.

The "Appeal to Motive" Fallacy: this is where you attack the authors of an idea on a personal level by questioning the "hidden motives" behind their arguments, rather than addressing their arguments directly. For example, "you're just saying that vegetables are good for you because you're a vegetarian."

The "Red-Herring" Fallacy: this is where you introduce an irrelevant tangent to the debate. Most people aren't clumsy enough to completely change the subject, so they will pick something which is somewhat related to the general subject but not to the actual arguments being made. For example, "the capitalist theory of supply and demand is misleading because capitalism has been responsible for the systematic degradation of the working class, which produces all of the demand" (notice how it looks like it's related in some way, but despite its appearance it does not actually address or refute the theory of supply and demand at all).

The "False Dilemma" Fallacy: this is where you try to force your opponent to choose between two options when in fact three or more options are possible. For example, "you should invest that inheritance money in stocks, because the bond market is not healthy right now" (notice how it assumes that there are only two possible choices).

The "False Cause" Fallacy: this is where you assume that A caused B even though this is not necessarily the case. There are many specific forms of the false cause fallacy such as the "post hoc" fallacy where people assume that if A comes before B then A must have caused B, or the "complex cause" fallacy where people assume that something has just one cause when it may have several. For example, "it's too bad Lucy caught Bob watching pornography, because that led to their divorce" (marital failures are often much too complex to pin on a single cause like that) or ""the Nazis reintroduced school prayer when they gained power in pre-war Germany, and the Holocaust followed shortly afterwards, so school prayer caused the Holocaust" (as absurd as that sounds, remember that the removal of school prayer is routinely blamed for everything wrong with society, which is no less absurd).

The "Circular Logic" Fallacy: this is also known as "begging the question", and while few debaters will be clumsy enough to blatantly say something as obvious as "Marxism works because Marxism works", they will generally do so by rewording the same idea in two different ways. For example, "property rights are just as important as human rights because when you examine the human condition and the history of ethical philosophy, you will see that the right to property is one of the fundamentals, which means that it is a self-evident and inalienable right, just as much as the right to life" (notice how it's somewhat pompous but is nevertheless basically circular because its premise is just a reworded version of its conclusion).

recognizing good ideas

I've had a few conversations recently that centered around the idea of debate. We've all had those discussions about politics or religion or something else people are guaranteed to disagree on, where it moves past the basic "I don't agree" and becomes a bit of a debate. Now when I find myself in that kind of discussion, I use the same approach every time. Well, recently, I was told my approach is "bullying" because I expect somebody I'm having a debate with to understand basic logic. Essentially, this person's point was that it's unfair to expect people to have a baseline grasp of concepts like fallacies or valid inference.

It would seem to me that it's exactly that kind of thinking that gives carte blanche to the kind of irrational, instinct-driven discourse prevalent in our society. People are not, by nature, particularly reasonable. A psychological study in 1999 showed that "people who lack the knowledge or wisdom to perform well are often unaware of this fact. That is, the same incompetence that leads them to make wrong choices also deprives them of the savvy necessary to recognize competence, be it their own or anyone else's." This would seem like common sense, but the study also found that competent people overestimated the intelligence of their peers.

Basically, stupid people think they're smarter than most people and smart people think most people are as smart as them. This kind of environment has a built in advantage for incompetent people as they inflate the importance and validity of their ideas relative to others while competent people give them the benefit of the doubt. That kind of dynamic requires the application of logic and rational thinking to separate good ideas from bad; effective from ineffective. Only then can progress be made.

Good thoughts to keep in mind as the presidential debates loom.

no frog for this lilypad

Thanks to StumbleUpon, which semi-randomly jumps you around the web showing you pages it thinks you'll like, I've been seeing some very interesting ideas in Green architecture. I discussed one of these finds recently, but today this one really caught my eye:

It's called LilyPad. The concept is described as "a floating offshore ecopolis for climate refugees" by the designers, Vincent Callebaut Architectures. Each LilyPad is designed to be a self-sufficient mini-city using energy provided by a combination of solar power, wind turbines, and hydropower. What makes it especially interesting to me is the idea that these could provide housing for the millions that will be displaced by rising ocean levels over the next century. That's a problem that hasn't really been addressed and it shows a suprising and gratifying degree of forward-thinking by the architects that they've done so. The LilyPad exemplifies the kind of innovation that comes from thinking Green.

economies and possibilities

Like everyone else these days, I've been hearing a lot about our economic crisis. Living in New York, I've watched up-close as Wall Street turned into a shooting gallery and familiar names like Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, and Lehman Bros. went up against the wall. The nationalization of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and the federal bail-out of AIG are particularly striking after 20 years of frantic deregulation and privatization. Watching the slow-motion collapse, it makes one wonder if this is really the best we can do.



The basic assumption of laissez-faire capitalism is that human beings are rational agents acting in their own self-interest. This 18th century concept fails to consider subsequent discoveries in psychology and neuroscience. The truth is, human beings are not always rational and often the best we can manage is to act in our perceived self-interest. Besides, the concept of a completely free market is a myth. Markets concentrate wealth and wealth will always act to ensure its own growth, even if that means influencing government to act on its behalf within the market.

In the United States, discussions of this sort invariably bring up the specter of communism. People act as if there is only one alternative to free-market capitalism and that it was tried in the Soviet Union and failed spectacularly. The truth is, a centralized command economy as practiced by the USSR is only one alternative. Other alternatives include participatory economics, cooperative economics, workplace democracy, worker-ownership, and technocracy. The false choice between capitalism and communism obscures the true extent of possible economic systems and assumes a one-size-fits-all approach instead of far more effective mixed economic models.

The growing economic troubles in the United States should give us all pause about the system we take for granted. Instead of cynically accepting the status quo, we might take a more innovative approach and view our society as something perpetually improvable.

humanity, revised and edited

I was talking to a friend of mine recently about the idea of democracy; how the limits of a democracy are the limits of its people. This got me thinking about how mutable those limits can become in an increasingly technological society. We're living in a time where the idea of human enhancement is beginning to become feasible.


In a sense, human beings have been able to enhance their memory and knowledge base indirectly ever since the creation of writing. Using technology to extend human capabilities is hardly a new idea; indeed it's not even limited to humans.

What is changing, though, is our ability to internalize our technology and use it to transform ourselves. Genetic engineering and cybernetic modification have already become a reality. We're fast approaching a future of designer babies and brain-computer interface. Imagine being able to take a drug that will introduce an artificial retrovirus capable of reprogramming your DNA to remove inherited diseases or even add new abilities. Imagine getting 24-hour wireless internet access directly through an implanted modem connected to a network of artificial neurons overlaying your brain tissue.

How would this change the way we operate as a society? Could we vote directly through brain implants on every issue that affects us? What happens to the idea that "all men are created equal" when some of them have enhanced mental faculties and strength? Will these things only be the purview of the rich, allowing income disparity to become internalized in our own biology? Right now there are more questions than answers, but it's fascinating to speculate what these nascent technologies will bring in their maturity.

chinatown in the sky

Today I stumbled on this amazing design by the Chinese firm MAD Architects over at Inhabitat:

It's a floating building! Both Inhabitat and MAD are unclear on exactly how the thing works but I imagine it's filled with helium like a giant Zeppelin. The habitable part would be a small percentage of the total volume. The firm's website describes it as "a mobile Chinatown" and claims it would be completely self-sustaining and a model of Green architecture. It reminds me a bit of Superman's Fortress of Solitude. The architects envision these things traveling the world as a sort of ambassador of Chinese culture. Sure would be interesting to see it made.