Alif Wahid

Negative Absolute Temperatures

I’ve only gotten round to reading a Science journal article from a few months back that caused a lot of media buzz. It was about negative absolute temperatures, which sounds like presumably going below absolute zero (an impossibility in all senses of the word). Anyway, here’s the full-text PDF on arXiv.org for anyone interested. HIGHLY recommended reading, this is, since it’s a beautiful piece of experimental physics that will blow your mind!

As it turns out, it actually has nothing to do with going below absolute zero! Instead, it’s a symmetric matter of inverting the sign of temperature in Boltzmann factor so that more particles occupy higher energy states than lower energy states. In essence, it’s a question of how can more energy be packed into a thermodynamic system after it has reached infinite temperature? Because at that point every energy state is occupied with equal probability such that the same average number of particles would be found in every energy state. Hence, the total energy is finite despite the infinite temperature :\ My head hurts :’(

But this finite total energy is still not the maximum possible! So the theory then goes that if the probabilities can be pushed such that fewer particles occupy lower energy states and more particles occupy higher energy states, then the total energy will be larger than what it was before at infinite temperature! And the way to do this (in theory at least) is to invert the sign of Boltzman factor so that the probability distribution now exponentially grows, as opposed to exponentially decaying before. 

Anyway, what all of this means is that negative absolute temperatures are HOT because a system with negative temperature has humongous amount of energy stored inside (relatively speaking, of course). So the authors of this paper devised clever ways to trap bosons into a negative temperature zone so that they have greater probability of being in a higher energy state than in the relatively lower energy states. Thus the total energy is increased to more than what would be possible if one were to simply heat up the bosons (so to speak) until they reached infinite temperature the old fashioned way :P

It’s amazing to ponder the role of symmetry in all of physics (and consequently, all of nature). We didn’t evolve to grasp such beauty intuitively/quickly. It takes a lot of thinking to appreciate the shear simplicity with which the universe goes about its business. The idea that total energy can be finite despite a system having infinite temperature is mind blowing to say the least. And thanks to symmetry, the temperature can then turn around to be negative just so that the finite total energy still has a chance to increase further. In fact, the maximum energy obtainable in theory happens to be when this negative temperature rolls all the way around to absolute zero - from the other side :P

The Clarity of Doubt

I feel that the English language cannot accommodate a strange sort of logical consistency, which is implicit in what I can only label as the clarity of doubt. The premise on which this stands is that of a choice between not knowing the answer to an open question and believing in a manifestly wrong answer to said question. As a result, doubt is the necessary condition in order to reach sufficient scepticism that plays the decisive role in filtering out much of the ambient noise that one is immersed in. The seemingly antithetical nature of this conception is not new, since Descartes explained this a few centuries ago (not to mention the ancients before him). But he did not write in English.

My frustration lies in the subjective observation that virtually everyone I have ever come across in person, for whatever reason, prefers the illogical choice of believing in the wrong answer to an open question. What is worse is the stigma associated with and the peer pressure inflicted on anyone demonstrating the virtues of doubting, dithering, deferring, etc. I say virtues because these are the actions that give one the kind of clarity that leads to an honest admission of the full extent of one’s ignorance (regardless of whether it is guilty or blissful in nature). The boundary of one’s empirically falsifiable knowledge is all that demarcates the burden of belief within from the clarity of doubt beyond. Thus the logical choice of doubting over believing is deductively obvious to too few of us, sadly.

Peer review is incompatible with free speech

It occurs to me that the scientific principle of peer review is fundamentally incompatible with the democratic ideal of free speech. I have a suspicion that this is generally accepted but never publicly acknowledged. The problem is that this creates humongous mismatches in expectations when it comes to science communication and science training. Scientists are trained never to make unsubstantiated claims that have not been peer reviewed. But budding young scientists are typically brought up in a culture of curiosity and inquisition derived from the ideal of free speech, which doesn’t care much about the road block that is peer review. And similarly, journalists very rightly don’t care about any road blocks to the press’s freedom for scrutinising and criticising.

Unfortunately, the problem that I keep running into is that science communication is always misleading due to the lack of quality assurance that comes from road blocks like peer review. Furthermore, as a trainee scientist, I had to adjust my expectations of what it meant to have academic freedom, given that I was ultimately judged by my peers. It wasn’t so much that my curious and inquisitive nature had to be curtailed, but rather when it came to publications there was a certain grey area that always revolved around things like strategy, tactic, methodology etc. that were never driven by any kind of consensus among the community of researchers, since that’s what happens at the boundary of knowledge and in the uncharted territory of the unknown. Things like this are not taught at graduate schools (well, certainly not the two schools that I attended in two different countries).

On the one hand, I definitely don’t want to discard peer review. It’s really important to have a road block for quality assurance purposes only. That is indeed how much of engineering, medicine, representative government etc. function for the greater good of society. It’s all about having checks and balances to ensure that the sanctity of truth is never undermined. But that only sounds great in theory. In practice, however, things just don’t work so smoothly. Whenever a road block is instigated then it sadly becomes a seat of authority, which in turn leads to the unwanted side-effects of irrational human beings given authority over their fellow humans. Scientists are most definitely not immune from political machinations, nor are they resistant to egotistical spats that are a common place across all parts of society in every country.

On the other hand, I certainly don’t want to discard any aspect of the fundamental human right to free speech. I find it unthinkable as to how my being would function if my mouth was taped over in any way whatsoever, figuratively or literally. But it’s really hard to figure out the balance required in order to get adequate quality assurance without any authoritative side-effects that remove transparency/openness. I seriously think that society has not figured this out as yet, and much work is needed to explore the full range of possibilities that exists out there. It would certainly help, as a first step, if scientists didn’t just knowingly sweep this under the carpet! Whether we like it or not, peer review is incompatible with free speech. So, what are we going to do about it?

P.S. There are actually some reputable journal papers out there, discussing the nature of peer review and how to make it more open/transparent (i.e., compatible with free speech). Here are three articles from 2012 that Google Scholar returned (in chronological order).

1. Ulrich Poschl (July 2012), “Multi-Stage Open Peer Review: Scientific Evaluation Integrating the Strengths of Traditional Peer Review with the Virtues of Transparency and Self-Regulation”, Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience, volume 6. URL.
2. Grazia letto-Gillies (August 2012), “The evaluation of research papers in the XXI century. The Open Peer Discussion system of the World Economics Association”, Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience, volume 6. URL.
3. Nikolaus Kriegeskorte, Alexander Walther and Diana Deca (November 2012), “An emerging consensus for open evaluation: 18 visions for the future of scientific publishing”, Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience, volume 6. URL.

Reading about mirror neurons…

So, I randomly became interested in something called “mirror neurons”; discovered in Macaque monkeys over 20 years ago. As is often the case with such discoveries, people prematurely generalised the findings to the realm of human brains. Totally misleading! Read this article from couple of months ago about the lack of consensus in this field of research involving mirror neurons in monkeys and the presumed “mirror neuron system” in humans.

Now, I usually prefer to read peer reviewed articles in journals and conference proceedings whenever I can. And, moreover, I like to organise such reading/research tasks on a Trello board. Thus I’ve created a public board here for this current endeavour into the realm of Neuroscience (specifically mirror neurons). Feel free to browse and follow my progress through this infinitely fascinating field of research. Based on the journal articles that I’ve digested so far, two very clear observations stand out as follows.

First, there is no direct measurement of mirror neurons in normal humans since the procedure is surgically intrusive and possibly fatal for the subject concerned (epileptic patients have, however, been probed and do appear to have mirror neurons). Consequently, direct extensive measurements of the electrical activity of mirror neurons have only been conducted on Macaque monkeys (that were killed subsequently for histological verification of the probed neurons). Therefore, the terminology is crucial when it comes to differentiating hard evidence from nonsense. Normal humans are presumed to have a “mirror neuron system” based on noninvasive techniques like fMRI, TMS, MEP, EEG etc.

Second, the language used to hypothesise about the functional role of mirror neurons in monkeys is horribly ambiguous and imprecise. If concise language is paramount in any branch of science, then neuroscience is it! The primary hypothesis for interpreting the functional role of mirror neurons is that they “drive understanding of actions by others”. That could mean a whole range of things for such a specialised set of cells. In particular, what does one imply by the word “understanding”? The experimental evidence is that mirror neurons fire for specific motor-activites that are deemed “goal-oriented”, since they are not activated by pantomimes, spoofs etc. So the theory goes that “understanding” such “goal-oriented” motor-actions leads to all kinds of complex behavioural outcomes like learning via imitation, recognising the emotional intent behind facial expressions, and so on. But the broad nature of what is implied by “understanding” is not accounted for by the ambiguous language.

And so these two observations collectively have woken me up from my slumber, as in the faecal fudge from the lamestream media that I’ve been feasting on >.< Aarrgh!! There’s TOO MUCH unsubstantiated speculation floating around about how “empathy” in humans is driven by “mirror neurons” that underlie the pillars of civilisation :P Such speculation is propagated to the rest of humanity as fact, unfortunately. So, I suggest everyone educate yourselves on science and make journalists eat their own poop!

Eliot said it best

The extraordinary gift of T. S. Eliot was that his prose was as lucid as his verse was cryptic. I regularly read and re-read his critical essays for their luminous levity of exposition while being superbly scientific and sceptical in their examination. Here’s a passage from The Sacred Wood (1921) where he is discussing a lament by the 19th century British critic/poet Matthew Arnold.

Not only is the critic tempted outside of criticism. The criticism proper betrays such poverty of ideas and such atrophy of sensibility that men who ought to preserve their critical ability for the improvement of their own creative work are tempted into criticism. I do not intend from this the usually silly inference that the “Creative” gift is “higher” than the critical. When one creative mind is better than another, the reason often is that the better is the more critical. But the great bulk of the work of criticism could be done by minds of the second order, and it is just these minds of the second order that are difficult to find. They are necessary for the rapid circulation of ideas. The periodical press—the ideal literary periodical—is an instrument of transport; and the literary periodical press is dependent upon the existence of a sufficient number of second-order (I do not say “second-rate,” the word is too derogatory) minds to supply its material. These minds are necessary for that “current of ideas,” that “society permeated by fresh thought,” of which Arnold speaks.

And then he drops a piercing pearler in the following passage.

It is a perpetual heresy of English culture to believe that only the first-order mind, the Genius, the Great Man, matters; that he is solitary, and produced best in the least favourable environment, perhaps the Public School; and that it is most likely a sign of inferiority that Paris can show so many minds of the second order…It is part of the business of the critic to preserve tradition—where a good tradition exists. It is part of his business to see literature steadily and to see it whole; and this is eminently to see it not as consecrated by time, but to see it beyond time; to see the best work of our time and the best work of twenty-five hundred years ago with the same eyes. It is part of his business to help the poetaster to understand his own limitations. The poetaster who understands his own limitations will be one of our useful second-order minds; a good minor poet (something which is very rare) or another good critic. As for the first-order minds, when they happen, they will be none the worse off for a “current of ideas”; the solitude with which they will always and everywhere be invested is a very different thing from isolation, or a monarchy of death.

It goes without saying that the stature of his landmark modernist poetry was heightened by his ground breaking approach to literary criticism that married the sceptical scrutinising of science with the subtle sensibilities of art. His remark about the crucial role of the “second order” minds in propagating poetry is as undeniable today as it was in post-WWI Europe (particularly Britain). Moreover, it is as applicable to journalism (especially science journalism) as it is to poetry for the simple rationale that society needs to be informed by a “current of ideas” rather than be preached by a torrent of populist principles. The former can only invigorate us with all that is new and all that is possible. But the latter, rather sadly, can only blind us. 

It fascinates me endlessly to witness Eliot’s timeless remark failing to be falsified with each passing news cycle. The dysfunctional state of affairs in 21st century journalism is precisely stated by an appeal to Eliot’s “second order” minds (or the utter lack thereof). Journalists ought to be the best second order minds in society. They ought to inform the rest of society with the highest possible fidelity. They ought to conjure up the sceptical scrutiny needed for distinguishing fact from fiction, while at the same time having the subtle sensibilities to invent engaging narratives. And the one thing they absolutely ought not to do is apply a formula to the dissemination of news, particularly science news.

So with this peculiar set of biased expectations, thanks to Eliot, I watched the live webcast of a press conference held at CERN last night. Simultaneously, I followed a basket of newspaper websites and respective tweets to see what the corresponding journalists disseminated and propagated out to the rest of society. The major English language media companies were all present, i.e., News Corporation, Reuters, The Associated Press, BBC, The Guardian etc. along with their counterparts from other languages (Japan’s NHK were atypically vocal in their questioning). I was simply looking for two predictably formulaic phenomena in the journalistic output, which were as follows.

1. The use of incorrect metaphors and analogies to explain particle physics.
2. Simplification of something interesting into something non-existent.

I found too many of both predictions to list here exhaustively while I found absolutely no evidence to contradict such biased expectations on my part to at least provide a glimmer of vindication to the claim that journalists have something akin to primitive intelligence. Therefore, I remain steadfast in my belief that journalists in the 21st century have no intelligence whatsoever of discernible magnitude with respect to single celled organisms. That is to say that their brain activities are encapsulated by one neuron which is in charge of controlling their vocal chord and not much else (as is the case for rest of humanity). Allow me to elaborate further.

One journalist asked the panel of scientists from CERN at the press conference: what’s your most and least favourite metaphor to explain all of this? The stunningly witty answer from Rolf-Dieter Heuer (CERN’s Director General), after he took a few seconds to consult his colleagues to his right and to his left, was that the panel is “metaphorless”. It is witty in retrospect only. There was no laughter from the panel, and it rendered a smirk on the particular journalist’s face. There is a profundity in Heuer’s remark, not so much for its conciseness, but because he couldn’t state it any more emphatically that the populist principle of metaphorical meaning is fundamentally incorrect when applied to scientific concepts, and that journalists are simply confounding that error exponentially by preaching such nonsense to their curious audience.

There is nothing in this universe that remotely justifies the metaphor of a “god particle”. The same journalist made an unsubstantiated claim in justifying his question, as they all did at some point during the press conference, that this metaphor had captured the imagination of the public. Did he wave a census of the world population regarding their thoughts on the god particle metaphor? No. Did he wave a survey of a randomly selected sample (say 1000 people) of the world population regarding their thoughts on the god particle metaphor? No. Did he provide at least one piece of anecdotal evidence, lets say his child enquiring what is the god particle? No. Did he deprecate himself by admitting after the fact that his question was thoroughly stupid? Yes. Have I made any convincing point in this paragraph? No. Have I made it perfectly clear that this style of chaining questions (as it frequently appears in journalistic writing and reporting from press conferences) is a childishly uninformative narrative? Well, I shall leave that to rhetorically percolate in your mind.

As for the simplification of something interesting into non-existence, the most memorable example for me is the way in which statistical significance is being explained amongst all the reports of this discovery. The Guardian journalist Ian Sample is the most guilty out of the ones that I have come across (and yes, I am absolutely having a go at his surname given his inability to explain statistical significance). He must have a template somewhere and keeps on copy-pasting it to every article he writes regarding the Higgs boson, as per this current incarnation. Contrast Sample’s pontification with the precision from PHD Comics.

So I would very much likely to know where are the second order minds (not second rate) that are so essential for disseminating correct information? Where are the journalists with a belief in fidelity and a passion for informing? Where are the sceptical critics to replace the delirious celebrants? As in so much of what he said, Eliot said it best.

The vast accumulations of knowledge—or at least of information—deposited by the nineteenth century have been responsible for an equally vast ignorance. When there is so much to be known, when there are so many fields of knowledge in which the same words are used with different meanings, when every one knows a little about a great many things, it becomes increasingly difficult for anyone to know whether he knows what he is talking about or not. And when we do not know, or when we do not know enough, we tend always to substitute emotions for thoughts.