Science,The Big Picture,and the Petri Dish

David P. AndersonUC Berkeley Space Sciences Lab

Earth as Petri dish

● Human activities– land clearing, logging, hunting, fishing– roads, dams, pollution

● Species extinction ● Global warming

animalsplants

microbes

animalsplants

microbes

animalsplants

microbes

atmosphere

ocean

ecosystems

Possible outcomes

● Everything somehow works out OK● Humans become sustainable

– but massive starvation, loss of many other species

● All large animals become extinct– plants/microbes survive and resume

evolution● Mars scenario

– atmosphere/water lost; total extinction

Bacterial thinking● Priorities:

– Consumption– Reproduction– Growth

● Selfishness (individual, group)● Small conceptual scale

– Temporal– Spatial

The Big Picture

Science as Truth detector

● Reproducibility● Experiment design● No power hierarchy● Constant questioning of assumptions● No ulterior motives

Theorymathematical/

statistical

evidence prediction

Orders of magnitude

10-17 meters = a quark10-14 meters = an atom10-9 meters = a molecule10-5 meters = a cell101 meter = a human being107 meters = the Earth1012 meters = the solar system1017 meters = the milky way galaxy (100,000 light-years)1025 meters = the universe (15 billion years light-years)

Occam's Razor and the Axiomatic method

Is there an analogous basis for ethics?

Zermelo-Frankel Set Theory:

Science respects Mystery

● Quantum mechanics● Chaos theory● Godel's incompleteness theorem

– no theory decides everything– the Continuum Hypothesis

False maybeundecidable

maybe True

Integers (1,2,...),rationals (n/m)

Real numbers(3.14159...)

??< <

The achievements of Science

● Understanding at wide range of scales● There is only one science● It has liberated humanity● It has empowered humanity (for better

or worse)

Science and nature

● The Earth is not the center of the universe

● Humans were not created separately from the rest of nature

● Humans are a part of the web of life, and depend on it for their survival

Our place in the Universe

● Our lifetime is extremely brief● The world is tiny, and we're stuck here● But we have intelligence and creativity

Carl Sagan:Intelligence is the universe's way of understanding itself.

Scientific government

● The War on Drugs– $1 Trillion spent since 1973– 10 times more drug addicts today than in

1973– 2.1 million people in prison, 25% for drugs– 10% of black males are currently in prison– Dutch drug policy (public-health based)

● drug use is 1/3 of U.S. (hard and soft)● incarceration rate is 11% of U.S.

● Sex education– ignorance doesn't work

Game TheoryThe mathematical study of conflict and cooperation.“Rational behavior” == bacterial thinking.Example: The Prisoner's Dilemma:

2, 2

1, 13, 0

0, 3prisoner 1

ffo

don't confess

prisoner 2

confess

confess

don'tconfess

“Nash equilibrium”

Anti-Science and bacterial thinking

● Religion– A society-stabilizing institution

● Chauvinism● Out-of-control Capitalism

● Science is relativistic and unemotional● Science doesn't try to be comforting● Science doesn't provide simple answers● The role of evolution

Why is Science losing?

What can we do?

● Articulate goals● Promote big-picture thinking

– improve education, teach skepticism– promote a scientific belief system– my contribution: volunteer computing

● or use game theory to achieve goals in spite of bacterial thinking