You didn't build that

In a recent NPR broadcast on the wonders of the human brain, we learned how researchers have been able to identify particular regions used for specific tasks and emotions. Such as the finding that people who are happy tend to have a larger precuneus, a structure also thought responsible for consciousness.

These are indeed miraculous times, that we can inspect our own brain and determine what makes us self-aware, what makes us feel happy, which regions might cause insomnia, and how we learn language. One scholar exclaimed of the mystery and power of a brain that is able to unlock its own secrets and understand itself.

After all, our brain is but a computer, composed of about 86 billion neurons. The African elephant has three times as many, but we rarely see scholarly articles published by elephants.

The secret, of course, is that we have evolved the ability to communicate, to both exchange and record complex thoughts. And that over time we have developed tools and technologies allowing us to delve into our physical world, to manipulate and understand its workings, including that of our own brain.

When a single researcher is bent on the task of fathoming the human brain, it is not only her brain focused on the task. She is benefiting from billions of fellow human brains that have, over many years, built a corpus of thought and research and tools and recorded knowledge. This is our unique human power.

Robinson Crusoe, stranded alone on his desert island, would have little chance of understanding the operation of his own brain.

In any human endeavor, it is the multiplication effect that makes our race so successful. Libraries full of research, universities training new generations, clever tools and machines and sensors probing our world, computers and networks facilitating communication, we amplify the power of our own measly 86 billion neurons.

In spite of the critical importance of this social infrastructure, individual brilliance is still crucial, cultivated, and revered. Albert Einstein, whose theory of ripples in the fabric of space-time was recently validated, stood on the shoulders of Copernicus and Planck and Maxwell. It’s as if this fabric of human knowledge and abilities forms a trampoline on which a brilliant, young, aspiring thinker might ascend to a new insight, a breakthrough, a flash of genius.

In this we observe the interaction and mutual interdependence of society and the individual.

“You didn’t build that” is a meme that has pervaded our recent politics. It is meant to diminish the significance, and hence the deserved remuneration, of individual contribution. Liberals use it as a justification for increasing the tax on success. Conservatives interpret it as an attack on the value of entrepreneurs and the free market.

In truth, both have a point. Tom Brady would not be fabulously wealthy without the social infrastructure that offers him a field of play. But we (at least those who are fans) would be the poorer for not seeing his brilliance on the field. Tom Brady is wealthy because we value the entertainment he provides.

Examples abound. Steve Jobs (rest his soul), was enormously wealthy but brought us our ubiquitous, dearly loved iPhones. Larry Page and Sergey Brin, each multi-billionaires, founded Google, an indispensable tool to billions of people every day. Mark Zuckerberg, another multi-billionaire, brought us the spectacle of silly cat videos and embarrassing spring break photos on our Facebook feeds. None of these folks “built that.” But “that” wouldn’t have been built, in this way, at this time, without them.

More quotidian examples surround us. For government employee, teacher, police, and fireman pension funds, those are invested in corporate America. The success of those companies, and the CEOs who lead them, is paramount to your retirement. Yet somehow it is fashionable to decry and punish that success.

Just as in science, society has evolved a commercial infrastructure upon which our entrepreneurs and business leaders create and implement their individual visions. It is true that trucking companies couldn’t be successful without public roads. But without trucking companies, the value of public roads would be diminished. And it’s also true that we must all contribute to the public fisc.

But we must never demean nor punish individual achievement, whether an Einstein, Zuckerberg, or Brady. Individuals need society, and the inverse is blindingly obvious. The trampoline is useless without the jumper.

You can die of a broken heart and other surprising science

"Everything that can be invented has been invented."

In 1899, the Commissioner of the US Patent Office, Charles H. Duell, is said to have exhorted that “everything that can be invented has been invented.” While possibly apocryphal, it was a common sentiment of the time. After all, electricity had been tamed, the light bulb had replaced whale oil lamps, powerful steam locomotives traversed the continent, and Herman Hollerith had developed the Census Tabulating Machine. Indeed, what else could possibly be left to invent?

In retrospect, we see how silly was that view. But that is the nature of scientific certitude. Science is an ongoing process. Things we hold to be true are only working models of reality, and reality is often more complex or strange than we think. When our models (theories) disagree with reality, we must quickly develop new theories.

Science, that is, our view of reality, changes all of the time. For instance, here are a handful of new theories published in just the last few months.

• You can literally die of a broken heart. Researchers in the U.K. studied 30,000 people whose spouses had died and found a significant (nearly double) risk of heart attack or stroke. This risk fades in subsequent months and is correlated with higher levels of inflammatory cells in the blood (which gradually return to normal). (JAMA Internal Medicine, April 2014)

• We may have company in other dimensions. Researchers using a sophisticated telescope in Antarctica have for the first time discovered primordial gravitational waves, thus buttressing the case for inflationary expansion. This theory posits that during the first trillionth of a trillionth of a second, the universe expanded from an invisible speck to near its current size. If true, our universe may be “one of many universes floating like bubbles in a glass of champagne.” (Scientific American, March 31, 2014). 

• Beans beat beef, but even then in temperance. Two recent studies support a theory that too much protein has negative effects on human health. The primary study found that people age 50-65, with a diet where protein is restricted to 10% of total calories, suffered cancer and diabetes at significantly lower rates. Those eating a moderate protein diet (up to 19%), were three times more likely to die from cancer. Oddly enough, the effect reversed after age 65, when a moderate protein diet seems slightly protective. In good news for vegetarians, vegetable protein was found to be more healthy than animal protein overall. (Cell Metabolism, March 2014)

• Dark skin is evolutionarily superior in the tropics. An English researcher studying 40 years of data found that albinos living in areas of high ultraviolet radiation (e.g., Africa, Central America) contract skin cancer and often die young before reproducing. Theorizing that early hominids were pale skinned and largely hairless (to control body temperature in tropical heat), he proposes that nonmelanoma skin cancers killed the lighter skinned and spared the darker skinned. This evolutionary force self-selected dark skin as a superior attribute for survival. (Proceedings of the Royal Society B, January 2014)

• Death rays may not be just science fiction. Physicists at the University of Maryland have demonstrated a one-two combo punch that opens the way for laser weapons. High power lasers tend to heat the atmosphere as they pass through it. The low-density air thus created acts like a lens, defocusing and weakening the beam. Instead, by pulsing a low-power laser several times over 7 billionths of a second, a “tunnel in the sky” is created through which a high energy blast could follow. In addition to death rays, such technology could be used to power high altitude aircraft. (Physical Review X, February 2014)

Science is constantly evolving, constantly surprising. To not be open to multiple possibilities is crippling to a scientist. A close-minded scientist is like a blind marksman; brilliant, perhaps, but unable to hit a moving target. That is why the most prized scientific quality is a finely honed sense of skepticism.

A major mistake for a serious scientist is to follow the herd, but it is oh so hard to resist. Usually grants and funding follow the herd; taking another path can lead to poverty. Disagreeing with the herd will also get you shunned, criticized, and sometimes demonized. For instance, Professor Lawrence Torcello seriously proposes jailing those who disagree with him on climate science.

Here’s a famous example. Dr. Barry Marshall and research partner Robin Warren were all alone in their thinking. The entire world’s scientific community ridiculed their theory, but they persevered. Peptic ulcers are caused by bacteria, not spicy foods or stress. Next time you get a simple antibiotic to cure one, won’t you be glad that they remained steadfast?

Knowledge is Power

Huge 3D printers will build houses.

In the 1961 film “The Errand Boy”, Jerry Lewis plays the part of a mailroom clerk serving a sprawling Hollywood studio. The movie depicts Lewis and his band of fellows as they deliver mail and scripts and revisions and memos between hundreds of offices. In typical Lewis fashion, there are lots of laughs as items are misdelivered and paper flies everywhere.

The mailroom was a classic entry opportunity into the business world. Mail clerks, if assiduous, could learn the business, gain knowledge, and begin to rise within the organization. The mailroom was a common feature of many businesses as disparate as banks, grocery chains, manufacturers, and hospitals. They all had in common the need to distribute information between knowledge workers in a variety of departments, a function the mailroom was designed to fulfill.

But the number of mailroom jobs is quickly dwindling and the culprit is obviously the rise of digital technologies. Email and text messages and a variety of other technologies have sharply reduced the need for human clerks to move physical representations of information from place to place. We now increasingly move information as bits over the internet, not physical pages made of atoms. Bits don’t require clerks as atoms do.

This is only the tip of the iceberg. The federal Bureau of Labor Statistics projects the fastest growing and most rapidly declining occupations over the next ten years.  Not really surprising, health care, computer, and construction jobs are ascendant. Equally not a shock is that apparel manufacturing, federal postal work, and sugar and confectionary production are on the decline.  A combination of dietary evangelism, technological shifts, and globalization has created winners and losers in the job market.

There is yet another technological revolution on the horizon which may wreak havoc with skilled machinists and a number of other occupations – 3D printing.

Everyone is familiar with the concept of metal working, where milling machine or lathes are used to manufacture precision parts. These parts are then combined with others, screwed, bolted or glued together to create a final product or component such as an airplane wing or an artificial limb.

3D printing turns this time honored approach on its head. The thing to be produced is first represented, in its entirely, as a  highly detailed computer file. This information is then processed by a machine which miraculously turns the description of the thing into the thing itself.

The machine, a three dimensional “printer,” is called such because the basic mechanism is reminiscent of the old dot matrix printer.  A dot matrix computer printer utilizes a print head which moves left and right across a page and deposits tiny dots of ink to create letters and numbers and graphics; patterns of dots which finally become your recipe for tomato soup or a letter to mom.

Now imagine a “print head” that can move in three dimensions – vertically as well as two horizontal directions – and instead of ink, exudes bits of material which harden on contact. Processing the detailed design file, the 3D printer patiently “paints” the thing itself, building up layers as it sweeps back and forth. It can take many hours, but an actual object, such as a coffee cup or piece of jewelry, finally emerges.

Long a curiosity of hobbyists, 3D printers were little more than expensive toys. But continued refinement has vastly improved their capabilities. For instance, Boeing now uses 3D printers to create certain airplane parts. Medical researchers are printing human body parts, such as kidneys and livers, and while this is still in the experimental stage, the prognosis is good.

A University of Southern California team is building a huge 3D printer designed to create buildings. Exuding concrete, this machine will be capable of creating houses or other structures, complete, from the ground up.

This technology is truly amazing and will revolutionize how we humans create objects in our world. But what does all this mean on the job front?

Like other disruptive technologies, it will destroy some occupations but create many others. It is difficult to precisely predict the job skills demanded in this new world. But for our children, a solid education including language and computers and mathematics seems a good bet. The successful worker of tomorrow will need to be literate in many ways.

As we were all taught, knowledge is, indeed, power.