Most Random Question Today/This Year

My phone rang just after 10:00am. What fol­lows is a rough tran­script of the ensu­ing con­ver­sa­tion.

Her: Hi, is this the right num­ber to call if I have a ques­tion about Chi Alpha?
Me: Yes, I’m Glen Davis, the direc­tor of the min­istry.
Her: This is prob­a­bly going to be the most ran­dom ques­tion you get today, but did you guys have a meet­ing last night?
Me: Yes we did.
Her: And were you sell­ing tacos there?
Me: No. Why do you ask?
Her: My friends told me that you were and I said that was stu­pid. You were a Chris­t­ian group and why would you be sell­ing tacos?
Me: Pre­cise­ly. There were no tacos for sale at our meet­ing.
Her: That’s what I thought.
Me: May I ask you a ques­tion in return?
Her: Sure.
Me: Were we doing any­thing to lead your friends to believe that we had tacos for sale?
Her: Not that I could see.
Me: That’s rea­sur­ring.
Her: Yeah, two guys had just made some total­ly inap­pro­pri­ate com­ment to me and my friends explained it by say­ing that your group was sell­ing tacos.
Me: *pause* Did these two gen­tle­men seem to be con­nect­ed with our min­istry?
Her: Oh no, def­i­nite­ly not.
Me: Okay.
Her: Any­way, thanks for help­ing!
Me: Sure thing. Feel free to call me if you have any more ques­tions.

How ran­dom was that?

The American Religious Impulse

I just read the most amaz­ing arti­cle by a Yale prof explain­ing the reli­gious impulse in Amer­i­can his­to­ry.

If you have any inter­est at all in pol­i­tics, inter­na­tion­al rela­tions, anti-Amer­i­can­ism, or the role of reli­gion in pub­lic life you real­ly ought to give this arti­cle a read: Americanism–And Its Ene­mies by David Gel­ern­ter (that’s his fac­ul­ty bio page, there’s a much more inter­est­ing pro­file here). If you want to have your mind blown wide-open, read Ama­zon’s sum­ma­ry of his sur­vival of an attack from the Unabomber.

Also, we have new pho­tos in the gallery.

College Humor

There’s a fas­ci­nat­ing arti­cle on the run­away hit CollegeHumor.com at the New York­er: Fun­ny Boys.

Two pas­sages that struck me:

A key to col­lege humor, the four have real­ized, is that stu­dents like to think they belong to a small in-crowd that under­stands the joke, while the pub­lic at large remains clue­less. Take the phrase “More Cow­bell,” which is a slo­gan appear­ing on one of the most pop­u­lar of the company’s Bust­ed Tees; it comes from an instruc­tion giv­en in a skit on “Sat­ur­day Night Live.” “Not every­one saw that episode, so the peo­ple who did see it think it is that much cool­er because nobody else knows,” Josh said.

and

Josh, of CollegeHumor.com, is hap­py to point out that his site has sur­passed The Onion in traf­fic, “though I can’t say we are bet­ter.” There is a cru­cial dif­fer­ence in con­tent between The Onion and CollegeHumor.com: while the suc­cess of the for­mer depends on the wit of its writ­ers, the appeal of the lat­ter is clos­er to that of “America’s Fun­ni­est Home Videos.” CollegeHumor.com offers found humor of the sort pio­neered by, among oth­ers, Steve Allen and David Let­ter­man. Yet CollegeHumor.com isn’t the expres­sion of a gov­ern­ing com­ic sen­si­bil­i­ty deter­mined to enter­tain an audi­ence with, say, Stu­pid Pet Tricks; rather, the audi­ence decides what is fun­ny, and enter­tains itself. CollegeHumor.com doesn’t just cater to the low­est com­mon denom­i­na­tor; it’s cooked and served by the low­est com­mon denom­i­na­tor, too.

The Best Question Ever

I just fin­ished read­ing The Best Ques­tion Ever by Andy Stan­ley in prepa­ra­tion for a mes­sage tomor­row night. The book is quite good.

In case you’re curi­ous, the ques­tion in ques­tion is sim­ply this: What is the wise thing to do?

I Sound Like Ron Luce

At the end of Col­lege Win­ter Retreat I was told by a stu­dent prepar­ing to dri­ve back to Ari­zona that I sound like Ron Luce… “only smarter.”

I had nev­er heard of Mr. Luce pri­or to this state­ment and don’t know what to think about it. Ques­tions loom in my mind:

  1. Do I phys­i­cal­ly sound like Ron Luce or did the per­son mean that we have sim­i­lar speak­ing styles?
  2. Is Mr. Luce gen­er­al­ly con­sid­ered to be “all heat and no light” or is he a lumi­nous genius whom I have some­how man­aged to sur­pass?

If any­one knows us both and has a frame­work for com­par­i­son, could you please com­ment? I’m intrigued.

Insights From Brilliant People

There’s an absolute­ly fas­ci­nat­ing series of respons­es by lead­ing sci­en­tists and intel­lec­tu­als to the ques­tion, “WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE IS TRUE EVEN THOUGH YOU CANNOT PROVE IT?”

Like this fun­ny dia­log by Stan­ford prof Leonard Susskind.

Con­ver­sa­tion With a Slow Stu­dent

Stu­dent: Hi Prof. I’ve got a prob­lem. I decid­ed to do a lit­tle prob­a­bil­i­ty experiment—you know, coin flipping—and check some of the stuff you taught us. But it did­n’t work.

Pro­fes­sor: Well I’m glad to hear that you’re inter­est­ed. What did you do?

Stu­dent: I flipped this coin 1,000 times. You remem­ber, you taught us that the prob­a­bil­i­ty to flip heads is one half. I fig­ured that meant that if I flip 1,000 times I ought to get 500 heads. But it did­n’t work. I got 513. What’s wrong?

Pro­fes­sor: Yeah, but you for­got about the mar­gin of error. If you flip a cer­tain num­ber of times then the mar­gin of error is about the square root of the num­ber of flips. For 1,000 flips the mar­gin of error is about 30. So you were with­in the mar­gin of error.

Stu­dent: Ah, now I get if. Every time I flip 1,000 times I will always get some­thing between 970 and 1,030 heads. Every sin­gle time! Wow, now that’s a fact I can count on.

Pro­fes­sor: No, no! What it means is that you will prob­a­bly get between 970 and 1,030.

Stu­dent: You mean I could get 200 heads? Or 850 heads? Or even all heads?

Pro­fes­sor: Prob­a­bly not.

Stu­dent: Maybe the prob­lem is that I did­n’t make enough flips. Should I go home and try it 1,000,000 times? Will it work bet­ter?

Pro­fes­sor: Prob­a­bly.

Stu­dent: Aw come on Prof. Tell me some­thing I can trust. You keep telling me what prob­a­bly means by giv­ing me more prob­a­blies. Tell me what prob­a­bil­i­ty means with­out using the word prob­a­bly.

Pro­fes­sor: Hmmm. Well how about this: It means I would be sur­prised if the answer were out­side the mar­gin of error.

Stu­dent: My god! You mean all that stuff you taught us about sta­tis­ti­cal mechan­ics and quan­tum mechan­ics and math­e­mat­i­cal prob­a­bil­i­ty: all it means is that you’d per­son­al­ly be sur­prised if it did­n’t work?

Pro­fes­sor: Well, uh…

Or the some­what more heady essay on the lim­it­ed util­i­ty of for­mal proofs by Stan­ford math­emeti­cian Kei­th Devlin

Before we can answer this ques­tion we need to agree what we mean by proof. (This is one of the rea­sons why its good to have math­e­mati­cians around. We like to begin by giv­ing pre­cise def­i­n­i­tions of what we are going to talk about, a pedan­tic ten­den­cy that some­times dri­ves our physi­cist and engi­neer­ing col­leagues crazy.) For instance, fol­low­ing Descartes, I can prove to myself that I exist, but I can’t prove it to any­one else. Even to those who know me well there is always the pos­si­bil­i­ty, how­ev­er remote, that I am mere­ly a fig­ment of their imag­i­na­tion. If it’s rock sol­id cer­tain­ty you want from a proof, there’s almost noth­ing beyond our own exis­tence (what­ev­er that means and what­ev­er we exist as) that we can prove to our­selves, and noth­ing at all we can prove to any­one else.

Math­e­mat­i­cal proof is gen­er­al­ly regard­ed as the most cer­tain form of proof there is, and in the days when Euclid was writ­ing his great geom­e­try text Ele­ments that was sure­ly true in an ide­al sense. But many of the proofs of geo­met­ric the­o­rems Euclid gave were sub­se­quent­ly found out to be incorrect—David Hilbert cor­rect­ed many of them in the late nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, after cen­turies of math­e­mati­cians had believed them and passed them on to their students—so even in the case of a ten line proof in geom­e­try it can be hard to tell right from wrong.

When you look at some of the proofs that have been devel­oped in the last fifty years or so, using incred­i­bly com­pli­cat­ed rea­son­ing that can stretch into hun­dreds of pages or more, cer­tain­ty is even hard­er to main­tain. Most math­e­mati­cians (includ­ing me) believe that Andrew Wiles proved Fer­mat’s Last The­o­rem in 1994, but did he real­ly? (I believe it because the experts in that branch of math­e­mat­ics tell me they do.)

In late 2002, the Russ­ian math­e­mati­cian Grig­ori Perel­man post­ed on the Inter­net what he claimed was an out­line for a proof of the Poin­care Con­jec­ture, a famous, cen­tu­ry old prob­lem of the branch of math­e­mat­ics known as topol­o­gy. After exam­in­ing the argu­ment for two years now, math­e­mati­cians are still unsure whether it is right or not. (They think it “prob­a­bly is.”)

Or con­sid­er Thomas Hales, who has been wait­ing for six years to hear if the math­e­mat­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty accepts his 1998 proof of astronomer Johannes Keplers 360-year-old con­jec­ture that the most effi­cient way to pack equal sized spheres (such as can­non­balls on a ship, which is how the ques­tion arose) is to stack them in the famil­iar pyra­mid-like fash­ion that green­gro­cers use to stack oranges on a counter. After exam­in­ing Hales’ argu­ment (part of which was car­ried out by com­put­er) for five years, in spring of 2003 a pan­el of world experts declared that, where­as they had not found any irrepara­ble error in the proof, they were still not sure it was cor­rect.

With the idea of proof so shaky—in practice—even in math­e­mat­ics, answer­ing this year’s Edge ques­tion becomes a tricky busi­ness. The best we can do is come up with some­thing that we believe but can­not prove to our own sat­is­fac­tion. Oth­ers will accept or reject what we say depend­ing on how much cre­dence they give us as a sci­en­tist, philoso­pher, or what­ev­er, gen­er­al­ly bas­ing that deci­sion on our sci­en­tif­ic rep­u­ta­tion and record of pre­vi­ous work. At times it can be hard to avoid the whole thing degen­er­at­ing into a slang­ing match. For instance, I hap­pen to believe, firm­ly, that sta­ples of pop­u­lar-sci­ence-books and breath­less TV-spe­cials such as ESP and mor­phic res­o­nance are com­plete non­sense, but I can’t prove they are false. (Nor, despite their repeat­ed claims to the con­trary, have the pro­po­nents of those crack­pot the­o­ries proved they are true, or even worth seri­ous study, and if they want the sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty to take them seri­ous­ly then the onus if very much on them to make a strong case, which they have so far failed to do.)

Once you rec­og­nize that proof is, in prac­ti­cal terms, an unachiev­able ide­al, even the old math­e­mati­cians stand­by of GÏdel’s Incom­plete­ness The­o­rem (which on first blush would allow me to answer the Edge ques­tion with a state­ment of my belief that arith­metic is free of inter­nal con­tra­dic­tions) is no longer avail­able. GÏdel’s the­o­rem showed that you can­not prove an axiomat­i­cal­ly based the­o­ry like arith­metic is free of con­tra­dic­tion with­in that the­o­ry itself. But that does­n’t mean you can’t prove it in some larg­er, rich­er the­o­ry. In fact, in the stan­dard axiomat­ic set the­o­ry, you can prove arith­metic is free of con­tra­dic­tions. And per­son­al­ly, I buy that proof. For me, as a liv­ing, human math­e­mati­cian, the con­sis­ten­cy of arith­metic has been proved—to my com­plete sat­is­fac­tion.

So to answer the Edge ques­tion, you have to take a com­mon sense approach to proof—in this case proof being, I sup­pose, an argu­ment that would con­vince the intel­li­gent, pro­fes­sion­al­ly skep­ti­cal, trained expert in the appro­pri­ate field. In that spir­it, I could give any num­ber of spe­cif­ic math­e­mat­i­cal prob­lems that I believe are true but can­not prove, start­ing with the famous Rie­mann Hypoth­e­sis. But I think I can be of more use by using my math­e­mati­cian’s per­spec­tive to point out the uncer­tain­ties in the idea of proof. Which I believe (but can­not prove) I have.

Or Seth Lloyd from MIT:

I can­not prove that elec­trons exist, but I believe fer­vent­ly in their exis­tence. And if you don’t believe in them, I have a high volt­age cat­tle prod I’m will­ing to apply as an argu­ment on their behalf. Elec­trons speak for them­selves.

And the appar­ent­ly lone the­ist, David Myers:

As a Chris­t­ian monothe­ist, I start with two unproven axioms:

1. There is a God.

2. It’s not me (and it’s also not you).

Togeth­er, these axioms imply my surest con­vic­tion: that some of my beliefs (and yours) con­tain error. We are, from dust to dust, finite and fal­li­ble. We have dig­ni­ty but not deity.

And that is why I fur­ther believe that we should

a) hold all our unproven beliefs with a cer­tain ten­ta­tive­ness (except for this one!),

b) assess oth­ers’ ideas with open-mind­ed skep­ti­cism, and

c) freely pur­sue truth aid­ed by obser­va­tion and exper­i­ment.

This mix of faith-based humil­i­ty and skep­ti­cism helped fuel the begin­nings of mod­ern sci­ence, and it has informed my own research and sci­ence writ­ing. The whole truth can­not be found mere­ly by search­ing our own minds, for there is not enough there. So we also put our ideas to the test. If they sur­vive, so much the bet­ter for them; if not, so much the worse.

With­in psy­chol­o­gy, this “ever-reform­ing” process has many times changed my mind, lead­ing me now to believe, for exam­ple, that new­borns are not so dumb, that elec­tro con­vul­sive ther­a­py often alle­vi­ates intractable depres­sion, that Amer­i­ca’s eco­nom­ic growth has not improved our morale, that the auto­mat­ic uncon­scious mind dwarfs the con­scious mind, that trau­mat­ic expe­ri­ences rarely get repressed, that most folks don’t suf­fer low self-esteem, and that sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion is not a choice.

Any­way, inter­est­ing stuff.

Tsunami Relief

Wel­come back to school.

Most of you have already decid­ed upon some com­pas­sion­ate response, but in case you haven’t we took an offer­ing at our Win­ter Retreat for tsuna­mi relief efforts and rout­ed our funds through AG Relief.

If you would like to assist in any way, please let me know either via email or at our on-cam­pus wor­ship meet­ing.

An Operational Definition of Objective Reality

Here’s a fas­ci­nat­ing lit­tle snap­shot of mod­ern sci­ence:

A team of US physi­cists has proved a the­o­rem that explains how our objec­tive, com­mon real­i­ty emerges from the sub­tle and sen­si­tive quan­tum world…

The Los Alam­os team define a prop­er­ty of a sys­tem as ‘objec­tive’, if that prop­er­ty is simul­ta­ne­ous­ly evi­dent to many observers who can find out about it with­out know­ing exact­ly what they are look­ing for and with­out agree­ing in advance how they’ll look for it.

The full arti­cle Nat­ur­al Selec­tion Acts On The Quan­tum world is just plain cool (and acces­si­ble to non-sci­en­tists).

A Most Peculiar Conference Precursor

As many of you are no doubt aware, I am coor­di­nat­ing Chi Alpha’s San Diego win­ter con­fer­ence.

Now it is vir­tu­al­ly axiomat­ic that every­thing goes crazy pri­or to a Chi Alpha con­fer­ence. For exam­ple, last year I got a tick­et for run­ning a stop sign as I was prepar­ing to head up to our Lake Tahoe win­ter con­fer­ence. For the record, I still dis­pute the legit­i­ma­cy of that tick­et. I think the cop was asleep and was star­tled into con­scious­ness by the vibrant hue of my car. But I digress…

This year things have been crazy as well. Let me high­light one thread of our con­fer­ence preparations–the wor­ship.

This year we part­ed with tra­di­tion and booked an out­side band instead of ask­ing one of our Chi Alpha groups to lead wor­ship. An unex­pect­ed con­se­quence was that unlike our Chi Alpha groups, the band does­n’t nor­mal­ly bring their own sound sys­tem with them.

Now as any­one who has min­is­tered to col­le­gians will attest, hav­ing a good sound sys­tem is fair­ly impor­tant. Most stu­dents are audio­philes or pre­tend to be, and so get­ting the right gear makes a dif­fer­ence.

It is also ridicu­lous­ly expen­sive. We found a com­pe­tent sound guy who also works with equip­ment rentals and he did some research and found us the low, low price of $4,500.

That’s more than our entire con­fer­ence bud­get (exclud­ing hous­ing).

So we went back to the draw­ing board.

I should men­tion that I was strand­ed in Louisiana with­out cell phone cov­er­age most of the time that we were try­ing to fix this. I seem to be aller­gic to the entire state of Lou­siana, because every time I go home I get major aller­gy attacks. So I’m grumpy from my aller­gies and unable to call any­one to make alter­nate plans for the sound equip­ment.

Even­tu­al­ly we got back home and I start­ed work­ing hard to find a back­up sound sys­tem. We accost­ed Chi Alpha min­istries, church­es, and ran­dom passer­by to no avail.

Final­ly my good friend Jeff Devoll came through for us. Jeff has got one of the nicest sound sys­tems I’ve ever seen and is also one of the nicest (and sharpest) guys I’ve ever met. So we were able to get an out­ra­geous­ly good sys­tem as a very rea­son­able price.

Now we had the prob­lem of trans­port­ing this sound sys­tem the 500 miles from Sacra­men­to down to San Diego.

Instant suc­cess–our min­istry in Sacra­men­to has a trail­er for trans­port­ing sound gear.

The heady swell of suc­cess was soon dashed on the hard rocks of real­i­ty. We had a trail­er but no means to haul it.

So we called every sin­gle Chi Alpha min­istry in north­ern Cal­i­for­nia to see who had a pick­up truck or an SUV or even a tow-capa­ble van.

No one. None of the staff and none of their stu­dents have any­thing suit­able.

This is in marked con­trast to my years of min­istry in Spring­field, MO. Find­ing tow vehi­cles was easy. Lim­it­ing myself to female acquain­tances alone I could have drummed up a truck in under five min­utes. But in this eco­topia no one seems to own any­thing sig­nif­i­cant­ly larg­er than a chip­munk.

At this point, I should men­tion that I’m still sick and unable to think as clear­ly as I would like. And the “this point” that I’m ref­er­enc­ing is Christ­mas day.

That’s right–I’m call­ing peo­ple on Christ­mas day to find a hauler. “Mer­ry Christ­mas! Do you have a truck I can bor­row?”

Alas, there were to be no tow-capa­ble Christ­mas gifts for me.

On the day after Christ­mas we decide we have no choice but to rent an exor­bi­tant­ly priced and uncom­fort­able mov­ing truck (we attempt­ed to rent a pick­up truck first, but no com­pa­ny was will­ing to rent us a pick­up to haul a trailer–I guess tow­ing is con­sid­ered a Bad Thing).

Now in order to rent a truck you need a dri­ver. I thought I had one lined up, but he did­n’t work out. I then thought I had a cou­ple lined up, but they did­n’t work out. I thought I had anoth­er guy lined up but he was head­ing to Tahoe to spend time with his fam­i­ly pri­or to con­fer­ence. I final­ly called my ace in the hole and he was dri­ving to Tahoe to spend time with his fiancee pri­ot to con­fer­ence.

What can I say? Tahoe is pop­u­lar.

To make things even more tumul­tuous, the kind­ly Mr. Devoll is in the midst of mov­ing and has left a cru­cial piece of sound equip­ment at his old place in Napa.

It is now Sun­day Decem­ber 26th and Paula and I are fly­ing out at 10:00am tomor­row. We need to get this tak­en care of pron­to.

To our hor­ror, we learn that all the rental places close at noon on Sun­day. Even if we find a dri­ver we’re hosed–we’ll be on a plane before we get a chance to rent a vehi­cle.

It’s around 1:00PM Sun­day after­noon, the equip­ment has to leave tomor­row, parts are still in Napa, we have no dri­ver, and we have no truck.

And then the mag­ic hap­pened.

Tahoe boy (with fiancee) is pass­ing right next to Napa on his way to Tahoe. So he and his fiancee dri­ve to Napa and rum­mage through Jef­f’s garage look­ing for a 24-chan­nel mix­er and a box of micro­phones and cables. I coach them through the process by look­ing at a Microsoft Word sketch of Jef­f’s house marked the like­ly loca­tion of the equip­ment which he sent me in the wee hours of the morn­ing. It takes a while but they final­ly find it.

And then we dis­cov­er that our sound guy (the $4,500 sound sys­tem guy) is going to be dri­ving a truck full of music instru­ments down to San Diego in a rental truck any­way and is hap­py to bring our sound sys­tem as well.

And then we dis­cov­er that the sound guy is going to be hang­ing out that night across the street from the Tahoe cou­ple who have the extra sound equip­ment, so the hand­off will be easy.

And that’s the way it always hap­pens. Every­thing goes nuts and then every­thing works out. To wrench 2 Corinthi­ans 4:8–9 from its con­text:

We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; per­plexed, but not in despair; per­se­cut­ed, but not aban­doned; struck down, but not destroyed.

Relieved, Paula and I turn to prepar­ing for our trip tomor­row morn­ing and dis­cov­er that we mis­booked our tick­ets and are leav­ing at 9pm instead of 9am, which mess­es up sev­er­al parts of our sched­ule down south.

Aargh!

To add insult to injury, I’m get­ting a promi­nent facial pim­ple in the first time in for­ev­er. That’s right–take anoth­er look at the pho­to on th e top right. See the blem­ish next to my nose?

Also, I’ve spent much time on my cell phone today that if cell phones real­ly do cause can­cer I’ll be grow­ing a blue rib­bon tumor out of my ear by tomor­row morn­ing.

At least I’m not sick any­more.

But things will work out–the mag­ic will hap­pen and the con­fer­ence will be a smash­ing suc­cess.

In fact, it’s a gen­er­al­ly accept­ed prin­ci­ple that the more hec­tic the pre-con­fer­ence brouha­ha is the bet­ter the con­fer­ence winds up being.

Based on our sound sys­tem prob­lems alone we’re expect­ing either glob­al revival to break out or the rap­ture to occur. We’re not sure which one, but be ready just in case either comes to pass next week.

Christmas Pictures of Dana Are Up

Some All of our Christ­mas pic­tures of Dana are up (the ones from my Dad’s cam­era). We’ll upload some more pic­tures lat­er today from our own cam­era.

Dana real­ly seemed to enjoy her first Christ­mas. She did­n’t under­stand any­thing, of course, but she does actu­al­ly enjoy play­ing with her gifts quite a bit.

I per­son­al­ly thought it was sil­ly to buy her toys on the the­o­ry that she’d be just as hap­py with the box­es and wrap­ping paper. Turns out I was very much mis­tak­en, and I’m quite glad to be. Watch­ing her play is FUN.