“… humans … are bogged down by their unique ability to rationalize and reason.”
Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Raghu Murtugudden, executive director of the Chesapeake Bay Forecasting System at the University of Maryland Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center (ESSIC), and a professor in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Science, believes that the ability of humans to think is a disadvantage, when responding to climate change.
According to Professor Murtugudden (comparing our response to climate change to finding cheese in a maze);
“… mice can sense the coming change. Before it’s too late, they run through the maze and find new cheese. The men, however, fail to notice the subtle collapse in the cheese supply until it’s nearly too late. Haw, the more proactive of the little men, realizes that the cheese has all but disappeared and sets out in the maze to find new cheese. He learns a number of lessons along the way and does manage to both find new cheese and enjoy it as much as the old. Hem, however, remains unconvinced that the cheese will disappear. He also concludes that even if the cheese were to disappear, he wouldn’t like the new cheese anyway.
The moral of the story is that even creatures like mice — with their simple brains — are biologically tuned to notice and rapidly respond to change, whereas humans — the most evolved life form — are bogged down by their unique ability to rationalize and reason. Some members of the species even resort to wholesale denial that change is well underway, even when said change is caused by their own actions.
The parallels to humans and climate change are rather obvious. Humans are constantly seeking more and more comforts, even at the cost of irreversibly damaging the planet.
Less fortunate humans may, in fact, be more in tune with environmental changes and quicker to adapt, even when the changes result from over-consumption by the rich. Some humans are more sensitive to changes, even if they are late in responding to them. Others may resort to complete denial of the change itself or deny the need for action to avert change, especially when the thermostat is being discreetly adjusted.”
http://news.yahoo.com/human-nature-may-seal-planets-warming-fate-op-183943535.html
Its difficult to know how to respond to that – I always thought our ability to reason is the asset which has facilitated our greatest achievements, a gift which has allowed humans to adapt to and thrive in an extraordinary range of climatic conditions.
Perhaps Professor Murtugudden should be more careful in future, about checking the use-by date on his cheese.
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Perhaps we “men mice” can sense that we in an artificial environment, look over the maze walls, determine how the cheese is delivered and plan to find the cheese source.
Excellent.
the most evolved life form — are bogged down by their unique ability to rationalize and reason.
=========
the good professor forgets imagination. Some folks can imagine that the cheese is moving even when it is sitting in front of their face. As a result they run off looking for new cheese where there is none, and insist that all the other mice believe the cheese is moving as well, so they won’t feel silly running off on their own.
another example of the power of imagination to deceive is people that look into the future with anxiety, and see that all the cheese that is sitting in front of them has been eaten. so rather than sit and eat the cheese, they run off looking for more cheese out of fear they will run out. and every time they find new cheese, they look to the future and also imagine a time that this new cheese will also be eaten, so rather than eat this cheese they again run off looking for new cheese out of fear they will run out. These people are called climate science policy makers. They want us all to share their anxiety for the future, and join their search for new cheese, leaving the cheese we already have in the ground for future mice to find.
1000 up Ferd
Not realising that the cheese source will return before they starve the mice conclude that the lack of supply is due to their presence in the maze – to preserve the remaining cheese they decide that suicide is the only route, thus solving both the dwindling supply and future supply of cheese – problem solved………….if there are no mice left to eat the cheese, in the mouse universe does cheese exist???
Oh by the way and just in case /sarc
If there are no mice left, does the mouse universe exist?
You have stumbled upon the goal of the left. We are the mice, they want complete control over the cheese. Problem solved!
So the argument is – we don’t belive in CAGW becasue we think. – Can’t argue with that.
Therefore that those who do believe in CAGW don’t think! – Can’t argue with that either.
QED
+10,000
+ 10,000
Ouch! Maybe they ‘sense’ things as opposed to thinking?
+1000000
Agreed.
The claim “… humans … are bogged down by their unique ability to rationalize and reason.”
seems to have been made by one not using his/her “unique ability to rationalize and reason”.
So they admit theirs is just a belief system without benefit of rational though and objective support. Weird the lengths they go to justify being irrational and mystic. Just weird!
Jimbo,
“Ouch! Maybe they ‘sense’ things as opposed to thinking?”
Sounds like you may have some familiarity with Myers Briggs profiling.
Perhaps the good professor’s MB designation is SITD.
Of course, one could also say a MB designation is simply a SFLA.
Extra Primo Good Mr. Mackey!
Best reply ever to a yet another anti human utterance that is little more that verbal diarrhoea
I would rewrite that to “believes that the ability of humans to think is a disadvantage, when responding to “policy based” climate change(propaganda).
?
That just works.
What he is saying is that in addition to the dumming down of the people They also must make an effort to reduce or inhibit the People’s ability to think. This sounds more and more like totalitarian religion of ideology?
This reminds me of a Pinky and the Brain episode where they are dropped into a maze by a scientist and as Pinky dances along jumping up to look over the walls for the cheese, the Brain slogs along hands behind his back, snarling about how stupid scientists are and how he plans to take over the world.
I see this whole absurdity as Gore et al’s “plan to take over the world” .
Professor Murtugudden may be right, his ability to rationalize and reason enabled him to become a Professor – now he has written this – he must be bogged down by something.
Trust me – rationalization and reason have nothing to do with becoming a University professor this day and age.
So Professor Murtugudden is also a behavioral psychologist .
A life long friend of mine IS actually a Behavioral Psychologist, (so’s his wife), and both of them would shriek with laughter at that nonsense that Raghu just spouted above.
Also a lot of those psychological maze running experiments these days are actually done using humans, instead of rats or mice. My buddy says that the best candidates for such experiments are typically lawyers.
Apparently there are just some things that rats won’t do !
PS izzat SF “Thinker” , the actual real one; or is it just a homogenized substitute ??
So where is the real one ??
He is barely holding back the Gates of Hell as it is.
http://www.wga.hu/art/r/rodin/1gates/1gates03.jpg
“Gates of Hell” by Auguste Rodin
“When the cerebral cortex is damaged, raw limbic emotions rage freely through human words and deeds, as we have seen in the literature on T[raumatic] B[rain] I[njury].
There is, in fact very convincing evidence that sociopaths and recidivist criminals have a shrunken or impaired frontal lobe. Lacking this ‘buffer’ of social evaluation and inner control, the sociopath is said to be ‘capable of anything.’
(Additional evidence suggests that one of the primary causes of frontal lobe underdevelopment is a lack of primary nurturance and a ‘normal’ family life.)”
~Stephen Larsen
A sociopath is someone with weak instincts when it comes to feeling empathy for the suffering of others . It could be genetic or due to injury. Early life experiences either teach the person to care anyway or to be even more selfish.
Not much different to
“Lacking this ‘buffer’ of social evaluation and inner control, the sociopath is said to be ‘capable of anything.”
but I’m not being paid to write academic drivel.
I’m not going to tar all academics because one did come up with this gem of a riddle.
A woman meets a man at a funeral of a relative. The two talk for hours and get along like a house on fire. Eventually they separate and she doesn’t find him again until the funeral is over and everyone has left. She then kills her sister. Why?
I tried to figure it out for about 5 minutes even though its a riddle that sociopaths find easy to solve. Eventually the person who told it to me blurted the answer out. Obvious answer but it felt like getting hit by a bus.
My buddy says that the best candidates for such experiments are typically lawyers.
================
How about the Climate Scientists that were pushing the house down the road. They were trying to jump start the furnace.
Murtugudden cheese???
The article appears to be a rip-off of “Who Moved My Cheese?”
Here is what WikiBible has to say on the subject:
The common retort to the message in the parable is that it is a “patronizing message for the proletariat to acquiesce.”[5].
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Moved_My_Cheese%3F
Nah that is prairie dogging, already done. Don’t give Prof Mouthful any more ideas.
Those “rats” would know when the CAGW gravy train is leaving the station.
We could say that the unthinking rats sense the good ship global warming is sinking and are looking for new sources of cheese (funding). The author of the above drivel should find new sources of cheddar.
Yet another “intellectual” who thinks he’s smarter than the rest of us.
I believe the disease is called “too smart by half”.
My dad used to refer to this type as an “overeducated fool”.
Perhaps the genius can explain what “climate response” actually means…
It means nationally/internationally more socialism and socialists solutions.
The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.
“mice can sense the coming change. Before it’s too late”
No, they’re animals and act on instinct. Mankind alone on this planet has a developed sense of, historical perspective, cause and effect and foresight. Some of us anyway.
The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!
Still thou are blest, compared wi’ me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But och! I backward cast my e’e,
On prospects drear!
An’ forward, tho’ I canna see,
I guess an’ fear!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_a_Mouse
No, Jim. The intellectual doesn’t think, he senses.
The intellectual FEELS. This very long and thick Bull Snake was tried to come home (my side of the Canal) in a sudden storm Nov. 2014. It froze into the ice of the Canal and was apparently picked up by a bird or two. So much for the fools theory that man in general is more foolish than a snake.
“Intellectual” definition:
Someone who has been educated past his capacity to actually understand things.
“Intellectual” definition:
Someone who has paid millions of dollars to be educated waaaay past his capacity to actually understand things by other educated people who have been repeated told they have been educated according to their ability to “know” more and more about less and less until everybody knows everything about nothing in the real world.
The more you know and understand the more you realize that there is even more that you don’t know or understand.
Best part is the fact that mice do not naturally live in mazes, and cheese is a man-made product. Classic example of “model” =/= “reality.
That statue is part of a a joke about Paddy and four statues…. Paddy names that one ” Who farted?”….
Professor Murtugudden should be more up to date on management self-help; his dilemma is a solved problem — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Moved_My_Cheese%3F
We don’t want you to think we want you to believe!
Precisely. As many of you know I have created the Axemaker Mind metaphor to describe precisely what K-12 education is to no longer feed. This actually goes back to a book Paul Ehrlich wrote with Robert Ornstein published in 1989 where they pushed ‘Newmindedness’ that was not tied to rational, logical analysis. Ehrlich’s colleague, John Holdren, now has the League of Innovative Schools and the Digital Promise intitiative reporting to him in his capacity as science czar. He is thus literally in a position to build that Arational mind that confuses virtual reality with actual reality and believes from created experiences instead of a store of factual knowledge.
This kind of pushed activities will not help either. http://urbanmilwaukee.com/2015/02/03/teaching-kids-how-to-be-green/
Just to really blow our minds, the OECD is doing research on how to best lock in these altered beliefs at a neuorobiological level. Showing Orwell may not have been satirical enough for the 21st Century parasitic change agents.
What’s Professor Murtugudden’s creditentials when he tries same fallacie as those proving Moon is a cheese made… People is allowed to be stupid. Bad show proving it.
An argument is valid if the conclusion must be true whenever the premises are true. In other words, an argument is valid if the truth of its premises guarantees the truth of its conclusion. Stating the conclusion explicitly is in some sense redundant, because the conclusion follows from the premises: it serves to draw our attention to the fact that that particular statement is one (of many) that must be true if the premises are true. An argument that is not valid is invalid or fallacious.
If an argument is valid and its premises are true, the argument is sound. If an argument is not sound it is unsound. An argument can be valid even if its premises are false—but such an argument is unsound. For instance, the following argument is valid but unsound:
Cheese more than a billion years old is stale. The Moon is made of cheese. The Moon is more than a billion years old. Therefore, the Moon is stale cheese.
If all three premises were true, the conclusion would have to be true. The argument is valid despite the fact that the Moon is not made of cheese, but the argument is unsound—because the Moon is not made of cheese. Chapter 16, Propositional Logic, discusses validity and soundness in more detail.
The logical form of the argument just above is (roughly):
For any x, if x is A and x is B then x is C. y is A. y is B. Therefore, y is C. [+]
Here, A is “made of cheese,” B is “more than a billion years old.” and C is “stale.” The symbol x is a free variable that can stand for anything; the symbol y stands for the Moon. Note that this example uses A, B, and C to represent properties of objects (categories, see Chapter 15, Categorical Logic), rather than to represent statements (whole sentences), as above.Reasoning and Fallacies, berkeley.edu page
My dad used to prove this in a syllogism: Would you rather have true happiness in life or a ham sandwich? The answer is a ham sandwich, because
Nothing is better than true happiness in life, and
A ham sandwich is better than nothing.
Here’s a syllogism from Raymond Smullyan.
Everyone is afraid of Dracula.
I’m afraid only of myself.
Therefore, I’m Dracula.
Well I have actually eaten cheese that was at the time 75 years old. That cheese is now about 130 years old (and I am quite certain that some of it is still in existence. It was actually buried in a volcanic eruption in 1883 / 6 (can’t remember); a whole barrel of it in the local “store” in a buried village.
Now a tourist site, there was a hole in the side of the wooden barrel, where a twig could get you a sample of the cheddar like cheese. Very tasty it was.
Probably still is.
g
Old Cheese might taste good. But how does it smell?
Btw. Did you know that the Norse Greenlanders exported(!) not only ivory and cod to Europe from mid 10’s Century up to second half 1400’s. Their cheese had so high quaility that it’s noted to have been exported in salt water at least from 12th century up to early 1400’s Early North American History part ; Norse American – Greenlandic – Norse History
They found writing on the wall of the maze.
THE CHEESE IS A LIE
(;
Wow, his argument is completely logically flawed. Rational thinking would lead one to investiagte the source of the missing cheese and search for new cheese. Irrational thinking that has no basis on fact but is based on emotional hypothesising would lead to staying with the dwindling supply.
The logical principles here prove the opposite of his argument. he’s using false equivalency, the ‘irrational’ with ‘dwindling supplies’ to attempt to claim that ‘not recognising change’ equates to irrationality when in actual fact the principle at work here is not analysing the data and basing decisions on speculative hypothesising equates to irrationality.
The mice that refuse to see the declining cheese are the equivalent of the Alarmists who refuse to see the data, they think to themselves the data doesn’t mean anything and surely the new cheese is bound to be non-existent because their models or visions don’t predict it.
Skeptics would review the data and come to the decision that the cheese is declining, they would prefer to adapt to the situation and seek new cheese.
The heck with cheese. I’m going for the steak.
The sense the dear professor was referring to was hunger. It normally wouldn’t influence the mouse until the cheese has run out completely. They don’t sense a subtle change in cheese supply. Other animals might instinctively search for food to store once they have eaten enough but I don’t think that mice do that.
Of the animals that do store food, they do it instinctively regardless of what the food situation is. Such instincts have caused animals grief instead of benefited them, but we rarely see that. I wonder if the professor had ever heard of natural selection.
Basically, if we go with our gut instincts we could get it wrong and be wiped out. If we reason, then we can change before the population is reduced to the small number who had different instincts (or the ones who told the porkies).
What bilge! No surprise he is a university professor, the modern repository of imaginative drivel.
Repository or suppository?
Does that make the good doctor the aperture to the repository of the suppository?
Does this actually mean anything? I really think these people are going quite insane. Maybe they should come out of their dark little burrows and sniff the air – its not getting any hotter.
His argument is easily tested. Substitute other animals for mice – dogs : no, doesn’t work. Cows : no, doesn’t work. Earthworms : no, doesn’t work. Conclusion : his argument is wrong.
Come to think of it, it never worked for mice anyway.
The moral of the story is that he would prefer that we were all mice in a maze doing his bidding because he’s oh so much more clever than the rest of us.
Two things.
“…even at the cost of irreversibly damaging the planet”. Seriously, look at the history of our planet and look at how it has recovered from far worse ‘irreversible damage’. Technically speaking it shouldn’t even be habitable now with that level of idiotic unscientific claim. And didn’t he just state that nature is far better at adapting to changes than us? Derp.
And secondly, mice don’t even like cheese.
Mice eat nearly everything.
True…. I’ve seen mice eat the wrappers off soap bars, then consume some of the soap.
I have read that in New Scientist I believe. Inanity at it’s finest. Meteorologist Larry Olson here…..
“when the thermostat is being discreetly adjusted.” – does he not more accurately mean, when the data is discretely adjusted?
Rex
One and the same. It would be one to have a calibrated adjustment and one that was made to skew the numbers…
Just goes to show the quality of people who are in scientific administration.
Academia as sheltered employment for the intellectually challenged. Seems to be getting worse ….
Eric Worrall
When I awoke this morning I was struck by the thought, “Am I a man or a mouse?”
After giving the matter several minutes of thought I decided to get out of bed and make myself a cheese sandwich.
Richard
Be sure to remove the green mould before consumption 😉
Well New Zealand Blue Vein Cheese is some of the finest tasting stinky stuff in the world.
It is beast if eaten just before it fully develops the means of walking off the dish by itself.
G
If in doubt, you can always ask your cat for an opinion.
Note to self: Must buy a cat.
Richard
H.L. Mencken once observed that you could take any moron, drag him though a university, even confer a P.h.D. upon him, but he would still be a moron. And today we have even more evidence that Mencken understood the situation.
Or to cite a Boileu aphorism:
“Study can make an unlearned man learned, but not a stupid man wise”
Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.
There are people who are in essence very evolved parrots. They can parrot back any information provided to them in a very efficient manner, dress it up in slightly different wording, and thereby earn a PHD. At the end of their PHD, they become a pedigreed parrot, unable to recognize critical thinking if it took the form of a bus and ran them over.
Murtugudden fails in his analysis, demonstrates a lack of common sense never mind critical thinking, provides a nonsensical argument, is stuck in climate doom group think and… is a Professor.
It is important to be able to demonstrate sound understanding of the historical and current state of your field. However, PHDs should never be given to individuals who do not demonstrate advanced analytic ability, critical thinking, sound argumentation and independent thought. Otherwise we have what we have now, parrots who can only teach how to be parrots.
See reference at 2mins
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xm75iy_wallace-and-gromit-a-grand-day-out_shortfilms
So much wrong with this. How many times have we run out of anything without finding an alternative? That might make him question his assumption that intelligence is an evolutionary disadvantage.
Presumably this guy is a fundamentalist who believes developing a solution to nakedness is an original badness and evolution never happens.
Of course, there is a reason we use mice in mazes. They are simple enough to study.
The real world and human minds are far more complex. If complexity is confusing it may be tempting to imagine it doesn’t exist.
Professor Murtugudden does seem to be at home with the simple.
“That might make him question his assumption that intelligence is an evolutionary disadvantage.” Aah, but you need to consider the ecosystem. In a university, it is.
Well so far we have the dinosaurs demonstrating that just being big and mean and ugly, easily beats out intelligence in the art of survival. They made it for 165 million years or so, and we have not yet seen our first million, and likely won’t.
g
M Courtney – “a reason we use mice in mazes. They are simple enough to study. The real world and human minds are far more complex.”
Problem is the simple may not truly identify the complex.
From – CARGO CULT SCIENCE by Richard Feynman
Adapted from the Caltech commencement address given in 1974.
All experiments in psychology are not of this type, however. For example, there have been many experiments running rats through all kinds of mazes, and so on–with little clear result. But in 1937 a man named Young did a very interesting one. He had a long corridor with doors all along one side where the rats came in, and doors along the other side where the food was. He wanted to see if he could train the rats to go in at the third door down from wherever he started them off. No. The rats went immediately to the door where the food had been the time before.
The question was, how did the rats know, because the corridor was so beautifully built and so uniform, that this was the same door as before? Obviously there was something about the door that was different from the other doors. So he painted the doors very carefully, arranging the textures on the faces of the doors exactly the same. Still the rats could tell. Then he thought maybe the rats were smelling the food, so he used chemicals to change the smell after each run. Still the rats could tell. Then he realized the rats might be able to tell by seeing the lights and the arrangement in the laboratory like any commonsense person. So he covered the corridor, and still the rats could tell.
He finally found that they could tell by the way the floor sounded when they ran over it. And he could only fix that by putting his corridor in sand. So he covered one after another of all possible clues and finally was able to fool the rats so that they had to learn to go in the third door. If he relaxed any of his conditions, the rats could tell.
Now, from a scientific standpoint, that is an A-number-one experiment. That is the experiment that makes rat-running experiments sensible, because it uncovers the clues that the rat is really using–not what you think it’s using. And that is the experiment that tells exactly what conditions you have to use in order to be careful and control everything in an experiment with rat-running.
I looked into the subsequent history of this research. The next experiment, and the one after that, never referred to Mr. Young. They never used any of his criteria of putting the corridor on sand, or being very careful. They just went right on running rats in the same old way, and paid no attention to the great discoveries of Mr. Young, and his papers are not referred to, because he didn’t discover anything about the rats. In fact, he discovered all the things you have to do to discover something about rats. But not paying attention to experiments like that is a characteristic of cargo cult science.
Quoting a long time resident of North Dakota during a winter blizzard, “Birds have itty-bitty brains, but they are smart enough to fly south for the winter.”
….but we have kept floating throughout the ice ages because of our unique ability to rationalise and reason!
Where is he coming from??
What does Professor Murtugudden think about the cat?
The “all cats have three tails fallacy”?
To those who do not know the fallacy.
Premise 1 One cat has one more tail than no cat
Premise 2 No cat has two tails
Ergo all cats have three tails
Premise 1 is false.
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/56/JapaneseBobtailBlueEyedMi-ke.JPG&imgrefurl=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_Bobtail&h=190&w=266&tbnid=ltt6DDxo6zw6gM:&zoom=1&tbnh=143&tbnw=200&usg=__5el4C8Q31dvCp4oVGY1mVQ_18a0=&docid=9HPx3gDvupG-0M&itg=1&ved=0CMABEMo3&ei=PRPSVP7JIszvoATti4KACg
How is one faulty? It is the same as saying one cat has one tail. It is the conclusion that is faulty. Besides, premise two is a non cogent and unknown assertion.
Basically the assertion is one cat has one tail, therefore all cats have three tails. (Sounds like the professor this post is about)
not all cats have tails… I have “rumpy” Manx his genetic make up means he was born with no tail at all. so this cat has the same number of tails as no cat. 🙂
Joe
How long will it take for the Warmunista Commentariat start responding with that ‘insight’?
Says Hem to Haw “what’s that you’re eating?”
“mouse, I’m bloody sick of cheese”
I think what the good prof is really trying to tell us that anyone who believes in CAGW is dumber than a sack of hammers. :-o)
I think the professor had a cranial run in with a sack of hammers.
Or even worse, dumber than Barbara Boxer.
Is that truly possible??