Month: October 2008

Snails and ‘love darts’

The oddest thing I learned from Wikipedia recently is that when snails mate, they attempt to shoot one another in the head with a calcium ‘love dart.’ Snails are hermaphroditic, exchanging sperm with one another and later using it to fertilize their own eggs. In Helix aspersa, the darts are coated with chemicals that cause the ducts in the other snail to contract, possibly suppressing the function of sperm-digesting enzymes.

The whole process sounds rather perilous:

The darting can sometimes be so forceful that the dart ends up buried in the internal organs. Sometimes the darts pierce the body or head entirely, and protrude on the other side…

The dart is shot with some variation in force, and with considerable inaccuracy, such that one-third of the darts that are fired in Helix aspersa either fail to penetrate the skin, or miss the target altogether.

A photo accompanying the article shows edible snails (Helix pomatia) engaging in weird but surprisingly photogenic mollusc courtship.

Carbon capture research

Researchers at the University of Calgary say they have a machine that can extract carbon dioxide from the air at a reasonable cost and using relatively little energy. From what I can tell, the CO2 extracted would still need to be buried somewhere. Even so, if such technologies prove cost effective and scalable, they could potentially play a role in stabilizing climate.

More details are in this PDF. Apparently, the tower can capture 15 tonnes per year of CO2 per square metre and each tonne of capture requires 81 kilowatt-hours of electricity (about $4 worth). Estimated total costs per tonne (including capital) range between $12.80 and $43.80.

The death of libertarianism

There is a lot about the political philosophy of libertarianism that is appealing. The idea that one should be free to behave as one wishes – as long as it doesn’t harm others – seems to provide a decent balance between allowing people to pursue their own purposes and stopping that pursuit from harming the general interest. That being said, the degree to which libertarianism can be liberating is diminishing with time. This is basically because of both the growing fact of interconnectedness and because of our growing awareness of it.

One example is economic globalization. At one point in time, it would have been considered reasonable to argue that economic activity on one side of the world has no morally relevant effect on the other. Now that markets are more linked, products and capital flow, and awareness of linkages exist, that becomes very difficult to argue. Before, it is as though the chooser was alone in a room with a light switch. It is of no particular moral consequence whether they choose to have it on or not. Now, it is more as though that light switch also reduces the function of the equipment in a hospital across town when it is pulled. Whereas libertarianism previously permitted free choice, the inter-linked example includes a moral obligation to act in a certain way.

Climate change may be the ultimate force diminishing how liberating libertarianism can be. Not only do nearly all of our life and economic choices impact innocent third parties around the world, they also contribute to a problem that will have a huge long-term impact on future generations and the natural world. Arguably, this makes the doctrine of “do what you like but do no harm” impossible to follow in practice.

It is not clear if or how the appealing aspects of libertarianism can be maintained in a world full of important material interconnections. The most plausible answer seems to be a combination of working hard to create situations where multiple moral choices actually do exist (light switches that don’t shut down breathing machines) and accepting those situations where the tradeoffs are real and making a determined effort to choose the least harmful option.

Encouraging the president-elect to go to Poznan

Grist and 350.org have launched a campaign aimed at convincing the next president-elect of the United States to attend the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of Parties in Poznan, Poland this December. The meeting will help lay the groundwork for the negotiations in Copenhagen next year, where a successor to the Kyoto Protocol will hopefully be agreed.

It certainly seems as though the attendance of the next president would signal a big shift in the American approach. An agreement that can bring together the US, China, Japan, and Europe will have an excellent chance of being adopted by all crucial states. Such an agreement would help to drive the vital transition towards a low-carbon global economy.

Building a low-carbon political consensus

In order to begin a sustained transition to a low-carbon global economy, the following things need to occur:

  • Political parties and the public at large must accept that stabilizing climate means eventually eliminating net emissions.
  • They must understand what the on-the-ground ramifications of this are.
  • A price for carbon must be established, with mechanisms for international trading.
  • Climate policies must become more rigorous over time, regardless of who is in power.
  • Climatic stability must become an axiom of all political ideologies accepted by parties likely to gain power in major emitting states.
  • Emissions reductions must take place both during times of strong economic growth and during times of economic difficulty.

Getting to that point, and doing so fast enough to prevent more than 2°C of mean temperature change, will be very challenging indeed – even if the actual sensitivity of the climate to greenhouse gasses is at the low end of the probable range.

It will probably require the rout of the small but highly effective climate change denial industry. In addition, it will require a jump in public imagination to being able to imagine an attractive low-carbon future. Either alternative or in addition, it will also required increased awareness of just how bad climate change could be. The Meteorological Office of the United Kingdom predicts that a business-as-usual course of emissions until 2050 would lead to 5.5°C to 7.1°C of temperature increase by 2100. For context, the IPCC projects that a temperature rise of 3.5°C to 7.1°C would place 48% to 100% of all species at risk of extinction. My guess is that the upper bound doesn’t include microorganisms, but it would still be pretty frightening if it only included multi-cellular beings. For the same temperature range, the predicted likelihood of “initiating irreversible melt of the Greenland ice sheet” is 85% to 100% and the “percentage of mortality in tolerant coral species” is 90% to 100%.

Here’s hoping that political consensus comes together soon… The frequent refrain of ‘balancing’ economic growth with environmental protection becomes insane when these kinds of ecological consequences are possible.

Attacking encrypted bitmaps

Just because your photos are encrypted, it doesn’t seem that you can count on them to be totally unreadable to someone without the key. The attack only seems to work against bitmap images, so those secret JPGs, PNGs, and GIFs should be safe for now. This is because most types of files contain significantly more entropy than bitmaps. That is to say, there is a lot more redundant information in a BMP file than there is in something compressed. Even in the case of the vulnerable images, the technique can only produce “the outline of a high-contrast image.”

Once again, it proves the statement that ‘you can’t hide secrets from the future with math.’ Cryptographic attacks – and the resources available to attackers – will only keep increasing over time.

‘The ends justify the means’

When people criticize the idea that ‘the ends justify the means’, it seems to me that the real objection usually has to do with the distribution of outcomes between different agents, rather than the standard of assessing the morality of something according to the consequences it produces. Moral codes based on the outcomes of decisions are called ‘teleological’ whereas those based on rules about behaviour are called ‘deontological.’ Some have argued that a view based on consequences is likely to produce injustices, so it is more appropriate to base morality on set rules, such as the defence of individual rights. I don’t think it is necessary to make that jump. Indeed, I think the transition from an outcomes based view to a rights based view is likely to lead to less effective moral deliberation.

Consider some examples of ‘the ends justifying the means:’

  • A person infected with a contagious, lethal illness is killed to stop them from accidentally infecting others.
  • Reduced unemployment benefits drive 20% of those previously receiving benefits to get jobs, while making 5% poorer than before.

The relevant moral factors all seem to be based around consequences. How urgent was it to kill the infected person? How soon would they have died of the disease? What kind of jobs did the 20% get? Did they end up better off, all told? How much worse off did the 5% end up? In general, it seems that our objections to the ends justifying the means boil down to two kinds of objections: that the decision made undermined an important procedure or institution, or that those who were made to sacrifice welfare either gave up an excessive amount or were already badly off.

The procedural exception is certainly very important. Say a police officer is also a member of a drug gang and witnesses a fellow gang member killing someone. He is unwilling to testify to his involvement, so he plants false evidence leading to the man’s conviction. Here, we would legitimately object to the corruption of the police force and the impartial treatment of evidence. Even if doing so produced the ‘right’ outcome in this case – the conviction of a guilty person – the degree to which the means undermined the system made it unacceptable. Note that this is still an argument about consequences. If the police force operated in this way, we would expect future societal welfare to be lower than if the police behaved with integrity.

The exception based on the division of costs is similarly convincing, and similarly teleological in nature. Just think about the kind of justifications that could be employed in the case of the diseased person. Say they were about to board an airplane for a long flight, and the only way to prevent them from doing so would be lethal. Any argument would be about whether a more ‘cautious’ approach detrimental to the individual produces a better overall outcome than an approach that more aggressively asserts the larger interests of the group. The argument against excessive burdens on one individual or entity is similar. We recognize that forcing someone to sacrifice one of their last units of wealth is a greater imposition than making them give up one of their first units, since people pushed below a bare minimum level of subsistence suffer more than those pushed from greater to lesser affluence. We also recognize that the minimum moral action is of a higher magnitude when someone is in a truly desperate situation: we may not be morally obliged to provide aid to someone with the sniffles, but we may well be for someone who has just had a stroke or heart attack. Ultimately, those moral imperatives derive from the set of all outcomes associated with each choice.

In short, moving to a system based on rights forces us to adjudicate between them, and doing that necessarily brings us back into the realm of consequences. Say that I have the right to free speech and you have the right to privacy. How do we adjudicate between them? Using rules based on the consequences arising from different arrangements. It may be important to protect my right to criticize you if you are a public figure, for instance. It may also be especially important to protect the privacy of children and minors. Ultimately, rights just enumerate the moral issues that need to be considered. Consequentialist or teleological analyses give us our best insight into what is, or is not, moral.

Cyclists running red lights

A few minutes ago, while I was cycling east on Somerset in search of groceries, I came up behind another cyclist heading in the same direction. She was dressed in all black, wearing earmuffs, and not using any lights or reflectors. As we approached an intersection near the Umi Cafe, the light went red. She carried on for 1/3 of a block, went right through it, and carried on beyond there.

When I caught up with her in the next block, I stated bluntly that riding right through a red light is a crime, and that doing so when it is nearly completely dark, you aren’t illuminated, and when others may be about to make left turns is fairly dangerous as well. As cyclists, we cannot expect drivers to expect invisible, illegal moves on our part. We definitely bear primary responsibility for any accidents that result.

This being Somerset Street, I found myself stuck at the next red light, engaging in a very awkward (though not hostile) back-and forth-about the importance of illumination and following traffic rules. Less expectably, but more awkwardly, I ran into her again at the Herb & Spice checkout: she buying organic cranberries, me buying sun-dried tomatoes, red peppers, and hot sauce. To her credit, she was very courteous about the whole thing, and seemed to take my commenting as well-intentioned scolding rather than a maliciously motivated personal attack.

I do believe it’s very important for cyclists to make themselves visible and behave legally and predictably in traffic. A lot of drivers who are generally sympathetic to cyclists seem to consider the violation of traffic rules as the most objectionable thing about bikes. It is also sensible and efficient to require cyclists to follow minimum standards in terms of conduct and visibility: taking responsibility for those elements of their own safety they can actually control.

Despite her tactful responses, I hope I don’t run into her at a future dinner party, Ottawa event, etc.