At the very least, use your enemies wisely.

Guns don't kill people. The boundary conditions of the universe kill people.

A friend of mine shared this image on Facebook, and it showed up in my feed. I have some things to say to all of you, pro-life and pro-choice alike, about it.

I feel like we're talking past each other. And by "we" I mean everyone. This image really bothers me, not because there are guns pointed at a fetus, or because I strongly support Planned Parenthood, but because it reinforces the misrepresentation of the pro-choice position as anti-life. This really is not so far from an image of pro-choicers eating babies.

If we want to make progress, we have to be willing to communicate and collaborate rather than antagonize, and that means making an honest effort to understand the beliefs and motives of those who disagree with us. The terms "pro-life" and "pro-choice" are already a huge barrier, because they frame the issue confusingly and counterproductively.

If I understand correctly, and I've made an honest effort to, people who support legislation that denies a women the right to kill a fetus, should one begin growing inside her body, do so because they believe fetuses are a type of child, and therefore a moral patient toward whom we are responsible as we would be any other person.There are variations, of course: Some believe fetuses have human souls, and that the same religious doctrines apply to them as to any other child of God. Some are concerned that since we can't currently be certain at what point a developing human becomes capable of suffering, we're obligated to behave as though even a zygote can suffer. But by and large, those who want to restrict reproductive rights in favor of the rights of fetuses believe that humans are people regardless of their age, be that three days, three months, or thirty years. The right of a person to live is more fundamental than the specific rights a person has over her body. Not only does this make good sense to me, but I agree on that final point, and I think you'd be hard pressed to find someone who doesn't.

But it is inane, petty, and intellectually dishonest to suggest that we can rightly conclude from knowledge of someone's anti-abortion beliefs that she therefore does not highly value women's reproductive rights. Let alone that she therefore hates women and wants the government to dictate everything that happens to her body.

The implicit claim of this image is similarly inane, petty, and dishonest. It suggests that if a person doesn't support legislation that limits women's access to medical procedures that kill fetuses, she therefore thinks such specific rights should be valued above the right of a person not to be killed. It shouldn't take more than five seconds to see the problem here. Perhaps one need be a monster to murder another person in cold blood, but that's not even in the ballpark of concluding that embryos don't have enough of the relevant properties to be thought of as people.

If we didn't childishly divide ourselves along these lines into the good people and the evil people, the humanists and the misogynists, the godly and the baby killers, both sides could make progress toward what they value at the same time. If we saw each other as people instead of as murderers who hold guns to the heads of unborn babies, we could join forces to decrease the number of unwanted pregnancies, to support mothers who do want children, to ease the burden of caring for an infant so the prospect of carrying to term isn't so devastating when things don't go as planned. And all the while, we could continue talking about the core issue, which is what a fetus really is and what rights it ought to have, and people will be a hell of a lot more willing to change their minds when recognizing the truth doesn't mean joining The Dark Side.

So regardless of your position on abortion, it is not in your interest, or the interest of those whose rights you want to protect, to promote hatred, misunderstanding, and the desire to Defeat the Enemy. Instead, promote kindness, promote understanding, and promote collaboration toward shared goals. Do not post this garbage. If you're on my feed or reading this blog, you're almost certainly above it.

Polyphasic Sleep: Reprise

(Original post on the polyphasic sleep experiment here.)

Welp, this got a little messy. The main culprit was Burning Man, though there were some other complications with data collection as well. Here are the basics of what went down.

Fourteen people participated in the main experiment. Most of them were from Leverage. There were a few stragglers from a distance, but communication with them was poor. 

We did some cognitive batteries beforehand, mostly through Quantified Mind. A few people had extensive baseline data, partially because many had been using Zeos for months, and partly because a few stuck to the two-week daily survey. Leverage members (not me) are processing the data, and they'll probably have more detailed info for us in three months(ish).

With respect to the adaptation itself, we basically followed the plan outlined in my last post. Day one no sleep, then Uberman-12, then cut back to Uberman-6, then Everyman-3.

Most people ended up switching very quickly to Uberman-6 (within the first two or three days), and most switched to Everyman-3 after about five to seven days on Uberman-6. Three people tried to hold the Uberman schedule indefinitely: One person continued Uberman-6 for two full weeks, and two held out for twenty-one days. Afterwards, all three transitioned to Everyman-3. 

During the originally planned one-month period, five people dropped out. Nine were on some form of polyphasic for the whole month. One returned to monophasic at the end of the official experiment with only partial adaptation achieved. 

Then Burning Man disrupted everybody's sleep schedule. Afterward, one person continued experimenting with less common variations of the Everyman schedule. Three went back to Everyman-3. One switched to Everyman-2. Two people have flexible schedules that include two hours less sleep per day. One person's schedule was disrupted by travel for a while after Burning Man, and they're now re-adapting.

Now that all is said and done, eight of the original fourteen are polyphasic.

I'll hold off on concluding very much from this until I see the results of the cognitive battery and such, plus the number who are still polyphasic after three months. In the mean time, I'll just stick with this: Some people are capable of going polyphasic and staying that way (probably?). Sleep is complicated and confusing. I don't know how it works. I don't think anyone else really does either. More research is desperately needed.

My next post, which will probably happen in the next two weeks, will discuss what I think we did poorly, what I think went really well, and how you and your friends can improve upon our work. In the mean time, here's a video of what zombie-Brienne is like during the really difficult stretches, and here is how she entertained herself when she could manage to do things besides pace. (I was one of the few who bailed out early :-p)

Polyphasic Sleep: Stand Back, I'm Going to Try Science.

A group of my friends (7 so far) will all be going polyphasic over the next month. By that, I mean we'll be adopting a sleep schedule that gets us 4 extra hours of productive work or play time per day, or two whole month per year (or a decade over 60 years). If you want to tell me all about why it's a bad idea, feel free to post comments. I don't plan to use this space to sell you on polyphasic sleep. That might be another post, depending on how this goes.

I'm going to be collecting some very simple data through this here form. I invite you to join us!

This will be hard. It will hurt. You'll probably need a buddy to follow you around and keep you awake. If you don't have a lot of self-discipline, I don't recommend even trying.

Still with me? If you're in by the time you're done reading this, email me at strohl89@gmail.com so I know who you are. Here's the plan.

1. Stop using caffeine RIGHT NOW. If you try to maintain a caffeine addition during this process, you will fail. I promise.
2. Data collection starts on July 10th. Fill out the form once every 24hrs (whenever it's convenient) until August 10th.
3. Pick a time to take a 20min nap each day from Monday, July 15th through Sunday, July 21st. You probably won't actually sleep during this time, but you can use it for mindfulness meditation if you stay awake. The goal is to practice napping. This is important.
4. On Monday, July 22nd, begin fasting immediately after lunch.
5. On the night of Monday, July 22nd, skip sleep. No naps, then an all-nighter. This is the official adaptation start date. The idea is to make you sleep deprived so your naps the next day are more likely to take.
6. Eat breakfast on the morning of Tuesday, July 23rd. This should be the first time you've eaten anything since Monday lunch.
7. Starting on the morning of Tuesday, July 23rd, take a 20min nap every 2hrs (for a total of 12 naps per day). DO NOT oversleep. Use an obnoxious alarm or whatever other means necessary. "Nap" counts as lying down trying to sleep; take your naps on a strict schedule regardless of how long you successfully sleep.
8. Start to cut your naps down toward 6 a day as quickly as you can without it hurting too much. Beginning to dream during your naps is a good indicator that you're ready for this part.
9. Once you're down to one nap every 4 hours, you're on what's known as the Uberman schedule.
10. Matt Fallshaw informs me that the next part is a little tricky.
1. If you managed to reach the Uberman feeling good, you'll probably start getting really tired again shortly thereafter. This flavor of tired will be different from what you've suffered for the past week, and by that flavor you will know that you have hit SWS deprivation. If this is what happens to you, the new kind of sleepy is your cue to transition straight to the Everyman 3 schedule, which means a 3 hour block of core sleep plus three 20 minute naps spaced evenly throughout the day. And that's it!
2. If you're unlucky, you'll not quite have reached Uberman in the space of a week--that is, you'll still be hanging on to some extra naps on July 30th. Then you'll be wolloped by a new bout of sleepiness. This flavor of tired will be different from the last. If it's is tolerable, drop straight to full Uberman and try to hold out for at least 24hrs, then convert to the Everyman 3. If the new flavor of tired is intolerable, convert to E3 as soon as the new tired hits, and expect the next week or so to be tougher on you than on the lucky ones.

Why are we doing this weird naptation adaptation plan thing instead of just going straight for the Everyman 3? Mostly because Matthew Fallshaw said to. If you know Matt, that's enough. In case you don't: It takes people about a month to adapt to the Everyman 3, but only about a week to adapt to the Uberman. The Uberman forces your body to learn to get its REM and SWS in those tiny 20 minute naps. If you're still giving it core sleep time, your body won't take the fullest possible advantage of naps right away.

If you think you can keep the Uberman schedule indefinitely, go for it! But keep me informed about it so I know what's up with my data.

***
You can read about how this panned out in my next post.

Check Out the Badassest Baby Book Ever. Baby.

What Makes a Baby, by Cory Silverberg, is an introduction to human reproduction written and illustrated for kids as young as 4. The awesomeness: It doesn't assume that the reader is biologically related to his (exactly) two parents, both of whom are cisgendered and straight, and both of whom are married and monogamous. It explains the plain facts of the biology in a way children can understand, and it otherwise leaves the narrative of how the reader came to her current family for the family to tell. Check it out!

"When an egg and a sperm meet, they swirl together in a special kind of dance. As they dance, they talk to each other. The egg tells the sperm all the stories it has to tell about the body it came from."

You can order a hard copy through Amazon, or read the Kindle version right now, and the 60 page accompanying reader's guide for adults is available as a free PDF.

But instead of just buying it, what I really want you to do is make sure your local library orders it if it hasn't already!

Instability of Values Over Self Modification: Why Babies Creep Me Out

(Inspired by "Schelling fences and slippery slopes" by Yvain.)

Dear everyone who keeps human larvae as pets,

I am sincerely happy if you've found a way to satisfy your central values and if your children make you happy. Honestly, there are central terms for the preferences and happiness of others in my utility function. So please only read the following in light of that. I am not criticizing you for choosing to spawn, and, indeed, your kids are adorable and I like watching videos on Facebook of them playing with puppies and eating cake with their entire faces, so keep it up.

Here's what's bothering me. When I look at the walls of my friends with children, almost every post involves the kid. This is perfectly understandable. I also post almost exclusively about the things that interest me most (namely rationality, dance, and math), and of course your kid is the most important thing in the entire world. If I had a kid, I'd almost certainly think the same thing about it. I would love it more than I knew I could love, and everything else would be at least second place.

And I find that ABSOLUTELY TERRIFYING. It means that there exists a parasite that can first implant itself in the lining of my uterus, with or without my consent, and use me as an incubator before torturing me for hours or days as it extricates itself from my body.

And that's not the scary part.

It can then begin to covertly re-write the foundations of my personality, undermining my adherence to beliefs about the significance of my own happiness, the happiness of my friends, self-optimization, world-optimization, and anything whatsoever not directly necessary for its own survival. In fact, it would make sure that I'd not even hesitate to die (or kill) protecting it, regardless of whether its continued existence would most likely help or hurt the other things I (used to) care about.

From my perspective, this strikes me as a completely insane thing to desire. It's like wanting to take a pill that won't satisfy your values, but will change your values such that current circumstances already satisfy them, never mind that it means replacing yourself with SOMEONE ELSE ENTIRELY.

How the hell do people just take that in stride???

The Powerful History of a Popular Hymn

You have definitely heard "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" at some point. It's the one with the chorus that goes "Glory, glory, halleluiah, etc., His truth is marching on." I heard the melody at a swing dance last night, and as all three lyrics of the chorus that I knew were playing incessantly through my head on the way home, I started to wonder what the rest of them might be. When I finally looked them up, I was shocked by how strange, powerful, and violent the verses really are. "He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword" is not something I generally expect to hear in an apparently upbeat popular song.

Until today, there's been no better way to put me to sleep than to start talking about American Civil War history. Boy has this changed things! I now feel an overwhelming pride to be the same species as the creatures who took part in creating this song--mixed, of course, with crushing disappointment that my American history classes failed so spectacularly. In case yours did too, here's why The Battle Hymn of the Republic is awesome.

Julia Howe

Just before the cold dawn of a November morning in 1861, poet and activist Julia Howe awoke from a dream. Beating against the cage of her skull were lyrics begging to be committed to paper. Stumbling in the dark for the nearest pen, frantically she wrote. Her verses were first published in Atlantic Monthly in February of 1862, about a year after the beginning of the Civil War.

The day before that dawn, she'd attended a public review of troops just outside Washington, DC. While the soldiers were gathered, they began to sing. They sang these words, to the tune of a snippet from an old campfire spiritual called "Canaan's Happy Shore", and Howe listened to their song.

John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave
John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave
John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave
But his soul keeps marching on

Who is this John Brown, 

and what has he to do with the meaning of Howe's song?

Some consider Brown a terrorist, others a hero. To the troops through which first "John Brown's Body" and then "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" shot light lightning, clearly he was a martyr.

Five years earlier, during the Bleeding Kansas border war, Brown distinguished himself from other abolitionists by insisting that passive resistance to southern slavery advocates would do nothing but protect the complacency of free northerners. If the Good Guys are to win, he thought, they'll have to actually do something. And he knew that it would have to involve violence.

His biographers say he believed he'd been sent to visit God's justice upon slaveholders and those who supported them. Whatever his motivation, he caused people to ask themselves, "How much do I care about what I believe? What will I do if I'm called to act? Would I fight for freedom? Would I kill? Would I die?"

In 1859, under Brown's command, some proved that the answer was "yes". His very own army set out to raid a federal armory in Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Their objective: Arm the local slaves for insurection. The raid was unsuccessful, and Brown was captured by the forces of Robert E. Lee.

In the following months, it became apparent that many more really would fight for freedom with their own hands. A year after John Brown's death, the song of his vision coursing through the northern air, half of a country went to war to save four million people they'd never even met.

This is the story Julia Howe immortalized when she wrote "The Battle Hymn of the Republic".

Why is this my new favorite song?

Because it means that when it matters enough, when a strong enough leader arises, sometimes--not always, but sometimes--humans will abandon personal comfort to fight for a better world.

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.

I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps,
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps:
His day is marching on.

I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel:
As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal;
Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel,
Since God is marching on.

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat:
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!
Our God is marching on.

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me.
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.

Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
His truth is marching on.

Reflections On Reflection

Note: A shorter version of this post will appear at A Moment Of Science very soon. If you're interested in my extra sciencey stuff, that's where to watch.

Alice peers through the looking glass.

When I was a little baby freshman philosopher, one of my very first professors asked me this question: Why do mirrors flip images left and right, but not up and down? 

At first, I didn't understand what this had to do with philosophy (not that I knew what philosophy was--which was exactly his point!). It sounded like physics to me, and answering surely required knowledge of optics that I didn't possess.

Today, I consider the process of working out the answer to this question one of the very best illustrations of philosophical methodology I've ever seen. This an ode to figuring things out.

Understanding the Question

First, let's make sure we know what the problem is.

Imagine that you're you. (This is either very easy or very difficult, but I'm not sure which.) Or go find an actual glove and just be you. Either way. Now put a glove on your left hand, leave your right hand bare, and stand in front of a mirror. What do you see? You see an image that looks just like you, except she’s wearing a glove on her right hand while her left hand is bare.

This is what we mean when we say that mirrors seem to flip images left and right. But if they flip left and right, why don’t they reverse up and down as well? Why isn't your mirror image standing on her head? How does the mirror know which way is “up”?

Guess

Let's try making a few guesses. Guessing give us something to work with.

1. Maybe it has to do with binocular vision. You can draw an imaginary line from one eye to the other, and that line is horizontal. Could that be responsible for the strange asymmetry?
2. Or maybe the molecules in the mirror somehow constantly re-orient themselves according to the nearest large source of gravity. If your last chemistry or physics class was in high school, this is a perfectly reasonable hypothesis. Maybe some feature of the molecular orientation causes the asymmetry. Mirrors would have to do it really quickly so that if you flip a mirror 180 degrees, the molecules will have already adjusted before you could see an upside-down image.
3. Or perhaps mirrors are made of thousands of long thin tiles laid side by side. Each one reflects light both up-down and left-right, but they’re so thin in the up-down flipping direction that the big combined reflection is only flipped left-right.

Check

We've got some guesses above, and we want to know if any of them is correct. Let's see how far we can get with just thinking before we have to turn the problem over to professional scientists.

1. Suppose it's true that mirrors do what they do because of binocular vision. What does that mean exactly? It means mirrors seem to know which way is "up" because our eyes are two points defining a line. A line can be an axis, and we think of this particular one as horizontal. If you have one axis, you can imagine another that's perpendicular to the first, and in this case we'd think of that one as vertical. Now we've got a reference frame for what is "left" vs. what is "up". The guess is that this reference frame determines our perception of our reflection in the mirror.
   
   What could we predict if we knew that were true? Well, we'd expect to be able to change what the mirror seems to count as "up" by changing the orientation of that horizontal axis defined by our eyes. So let's check.
   
   While standing in front of the mirror with the glove on your left hand, spread your arms and lean over so that your left hand is up in the air, your right hand is reaching toward the floor, and your head is tilted 90 degrees from to its usual position. What do you see?
   
   The mirror hasn’t fallen for your trick, has it? Your reflection is still wearing a glove on her right hand, which is reaching up--but her feet are exactly where they were before despite being to the “right” from the perspective of your head rather than “down”. So binocular vision can't be the answer.
2. Our second guess was that the molecules re-orient according to the location of the nearest large gravity well. This one's harder. To test this, it seems you’d either need a gravity well more massive than Earth (which I really hope you don’t have handy), or you’d need a rocket ship headed for the moon with a camera mounted on it filming a mirror as the Moon’s gravity took over. That’s not an impossible test, but it’s not a cheap one either. And it just doesn't quite feel right, does it? But that's not enough to dismiss the hypothesis.
   
   We've mostly escaped the realm of thought experiments at this point. But that doesn't mean it's time to stop thinking. Let’s assume, just for now, that this won’t give us the answer and try some other things first.
3. The third guess is that mirrors are made of zillions of long thin tiles. Each strip flips the image up/down as well as left/right, but they're so thin you don't see the up/down part. I'm pretty fuzzy on how zillions of thin tiles would end up making a single, cohesive, life-sized image. Perhaps that's a problem for another day. But let's take that for granted and see what happens.
   
   This is much easier to test. If the tile hypothesis is correct, you should be able to make an up-down flipping mirror by turning a left-right flipping mirror sideways. But that's not actually what happens, is it? So this can't be the answer either.

Time For a Closer Look

It’s looking even more now like the mirror somehow knows which way is “up”. As a general rule of problem solving, when you end up more sure that household items are conscious than you were when you began, it’s time to re-check your assumptions.

We assume two key things when we ask, “Why do mirrors flip images left and right, but not up and down?” First, we assume that mirrors flip images left and right. Second, we assume that mirrors don’t flip images up and down.

Let’s start with the second. What would it mean if you, out in the real world and not in mirror land, flipped yourself in the up/down direction? It would mean you were standing on your head. You’d have rotated yourself 180 degrees around the (horizontal) x axis. Mirror images don’t stand on their heads when we stand on our feet, so assumption two is correct. Mirrors really don’t flip images up and down.

But what would it mean if you flipped yourself left/right? If flipping up and down means rotating 180 degrees around the x axis, then flipping left and right must mean rotating 180 degrees around the (vertical) y axis. 

Rotating around the y axis is what we usually call “turning around”. Is that actually what mirrors do? Do they make turned-around pictures of us?

Imagine that you make a perfect, flesh-and-blood copy of yourself. She, too, is wearing a glove on her left hand. Place her in front of you so that you’re looking at her back. Now, while you stay perfectly still, rotate her 180 degrees around the y axis--that is, turn her around to face you.

Where is her glove? Why, it’s still on her left hand! To shake gloved hands, you’d have to reach across your body. If she were a mirror image, it would be on her right hand, not her left. So the first assumption must be wrong. Mirrors do not, in fact, flip images left-and-right.

So what’s really going on?

Mirrors don’t flip up and down, and it turns out that they don’t flip left and right either. But there’s some sort of flipping or reversing happening. Otherwise ambulances would just have “AMBULANCE” written on them instead of the odd backward version you can read normally in your rear-view mirror.

There’s only one obvious dimension left for flipping. If it’s not up and down, and it’s not left and right, then it must be back to front. But what would that mean?

Take off your glove, and hold it so the thumb is on your left and the palm is facing up. If you turn it upside down, the palm is facing down. If you turn it around from the starting position, the thumb is on your right.

Now, again from the starting position, turn the glove inside out without turning it in any other direction. The wrist part of the glove, which used to be closest to you, is now farthest away, while the the fingers are pointing toward you. It has not flipped upside down. It has not turned left or right. The glove has flipped front-to-back, and it now fits on your right hand instead of your left. 

If that’s what mirrors were doing, then what would you expect to see?

Suppose you’re looking at a mirror while facing North. The part of you that’s farthest South in reality, namely your bottom, would seem farthest North in the image--and, indeed, it does. The part that’s farthest North in reality, namely your nose, would seem farthest South in the image--and, indeed, it does.

You wouldn’t expect, however, to have to reach across your body to shake gloved hands, and you wouldn’t expect your image to do a headstand without your help.

That’s it, then! Mirrors don’t know which way is up after all. They just flip images front-to-back.

The Beauty Of Confusion

To review: 

• We asked a question. 
• We took some time to understand what was being asked. 
• We made a few guesses. 
• We tested them in our heads when we could, and pinned down how to go about testing them outside our heads when we couldn't. 
• When none of that gave us the answer, we doubled back to check our assumptions. 
• In the end, we solved the problem by dispelling a simple misunderstanding hidden in the question. 

Misunderstandings hide in questions all the time. If you're impatient and epistemically reckless, that's horribly frustrating, and it probably causes you to waste a lot of time trying to answer questions that don't make sense. This is much of why a healthy helping of philosophy is a tasty and nutritious side-dish even when science is your main course. If you're patient and rigorous, if you enjoy taking the time to simply think, you can learn all kinds of new things just by reflecting on them. 

Nifty, huh?

"Hang on a minute here, you're thinking. "At first we wanted to know why mirrors flip images left/right but not up/down. Turns out we were confused about that. But now I don't know why mirrors flip images front/back but not left/right or up/down!"

Impressive. Most impressive. But you are not a Jedi yet.

Learn More

• The law of reflection
• Why do mirrors seem to have depth?
• The Khan Academy series on waves and optics