Pluto Should Never Have Been a Planet

I just finished reading Mike Brown's How I Killed Pluto and Why it had it Coming, and it was a fantastic read.  It got me thinking of so many things; scientific progress and history, how the public perceives scientific ideas, becoming entrenched in a way of thinking, distress over change, and how so much of education seems to be storing data in memory rather than learning algorithms (and man for some reason I've really been connecting with my inner computer scientist lately) are just some of the highlights.  It's amazing how much depth there is to the trivial or technical classification details of a rock out there past Neptune.  There's one more aspect of the book that I loved, Mike Brown's humanity in his love for his wife, his daughter, and the sky, but I think I'll write about that in detail later.

I remember when Pluto was reclassified.  Many jokingly consoled forlorn Pluto, kicked out of the planet club by the big boys.  After reading the book I find it odd, why did no one talk about Eris (the Kuiper belt object actually larger than Pluto which theoretically could have been the tenth planet)?  Why did no one bring up Charon, Pluto's moon which is almost as large as Pluto?  Why did no one discuss what exactly it meant to be a planet, and how exciting it was that we were learning more about our solar system in finding so much out there in a whole new asteroid belt out beyond the gas giants, the aforementioned Kuiper belt?

I've groused before on this blog about the dreadful way mathematics is taught, perhaps it's time to get some of that ire up for science as well.  One thing the book made clear is that we all learned that the planets are Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and (as we learned at least) Pluto.  Did any of us ever learn what a planet is?  I think the 'Pluto controversy' pretty clearly indicates no, we didn't.  If we had we would have always found Pluto's planethood a little odd.

Pluto's moon doesn't orbit around it, they orbit around each other.  Pluto's orbit is eccentric from the other planets.  Pluto is smaller than many planet's moons, including Earth's.  To kids and creatives that might make Pluto mysterious and fascinating (it did to Mike Brown as a child), but to scientists and logical thinkers it seems misplaced in the solar system.  And indeed it was.

But no one really seemed to feel that way.  We all sort of felt bad for Pluto, and some people might have even been upset.  I think there's two major components why.  The first is, as I alluded to, the way we learn science.  The next is our unwillingness to accept change.

Thinking about the Pluto controversy I am brought to worry that we are often taught 'the way things are'.  Mike Brown talks about trying to get students out of the mindset of, "Give me the answers I need to know for the test".  The unfortunate implication is that something gets them into this mindset in the first place.  Standardized testing is a convenient and popular target for modern problems in education, but I'd feel remiss if I didn't mention that of necessity it requires students to memorize and later regurgitate facts, and testing any deeper thought processes is at the very least much more difficult.

I read a NYT article that talked about why teaching the difference between fact and opinion like we currently do in schools is morally perilous, as well as simply fundamentally misguided.  It points out interesting ideas, like how teaching children that facts are provable and true causes them to equate truth with provability, even though they're very different things.  I think a focus on 'facts' in science class also carries a dogmatic implication for young students.  Science is always true because we collected evidence for our ideas.  Here's where the distress comes up; Pluto no longer being a planet means facts can change as our understanding does.

And that opens up a whole new can of worms in our minds.  It forces introspection and meta-cognition, in which sadly most of us are loath to participate.  It creates a crisis of certainty, because after all if Pluto being a planet isn't true what other tidbits we learned might not be true?  Doubt is, unfortunately, scary to many.  We're unwilling to change our thinking, to update our knowledge, to print retractions or errata for our memories.  This is why teachings of humility are so important.  They allow us to maintain our sense of self and identity even when we're forced to change our thinking, context, or experience.

A great idea that came together for me when I read The Island of Knowledge is that science must necessarily be the least sure of itself of all human endeavors or reservoirs of understanding.  It must be forever willing to except new evidence or observation which proves previous ideas wrong, and moreover perhaps must forever be seeking these out.  No less than the well known and liked Neil DeGrasse Tyson recently said in a podcast I listened to that the greatest problem is always dogmatism, because it ends a conversation and makes learning from others difficult or impossible.  Let's take this to heart, accept that Pluto should never have been a planet, and rejoice in the fascinating newly unfolding mysteries of that Kuiper belt.

Your Moral Earth's Magnetic Field

I've heard people talk about how important their moral compass is to them.  What this means can be something different to any different person, but one definition that I think matches most people's conception is, "a natural feeling that makes people know what is right and wrong and how they should behave."  Are the natural feelings we have really what should make us know what's right and wrong?

Doing what's natural may not be a terrible basis for morality, but it's not a good one either.  We have a number of pack animal and cooperative instincts that guide us toward some caring and concern for our fellow man (and remember man is gender neutral in this context).  These also create an aversion toward malice in many contexts, which is also good.  Our instincts don't stop with these, 'love your neighbor' drives though.

Being a pack animal leads to a set of instincts, and while some of those are positive like what's stated above others are decidedly negative.  It leads to a tribalism, probably due to competition with other packs.  We protect our own, but those who aren't are own are usually fair targets for whatever we can dish out.  This is why looking at history we only seem to have been fighting against racism, sexism, or similar discrimination for about a century or two, and to some even that's being quite generous.  There's also significant drives to personal status and individual gain.  We want the pack to be strong, but we also want to be the head of the pack (or at least be very secure about our position in it) and there's a good chance we're willing to trade the good of our group for a high position in it, too.  This is why children throw tantrums, politicians and important businessman are as willing to admit mistakes as they are to part with teeth, and people gossip about the shortcomings of acquaintances.

This leads me back to the idea of a moral compass.  Truthfully, I think it's a good analogy as long as we remember one thing: a compass doesn't operate in a vacuum.  A compass is a magnetized needle set on a spindle (or sometimes in other ways, such as suspended in a liquid).  It points to the north because it aligns itself with the Earth's magnetic field.  In morality, this leads to the question that might be much more important than how is your moral compass, but what is your moral Earth's magnetic field.

What things external to ourselves help us understand what is moral and what is not?  Is it divine scripture?  Public opinion and associated feelings of dignity or shame?  Articulate and interesting discussions on ethics?  All of these have flaws which must be examined and guarded against and all have certain merits as well.  Compasses can be disrupted by anything that produces strong magnetic fields, like high electrical current.  Precise navigation may also require an adjustment between magnetic north and 'true north' since the Earth's magnetic poles aren't perfectly aligned with her north and south poles.  Just like a compass will not point true in a lightning storm or around power lines we should learn where our moral compass may fail to point us true and why if we want to stay true to our moral north wherever we go.

What Makes a Great Debate?

The first presidential debate happened last night.  I've recently uncomfortably found myself to be a political junkie and have been catching up on it, reading the news about it, and in general enjoying the excitement.  There is one thing I'm noticing during all the hubbub; the current debate format isn't good.

I read one analysis that said the debate seemed undisciplined, and seemed to bemoan with Mr. Lehrer the loss of the final section for discussion.  This doesn't really bother me.  Perhaps it's because the nebulous sounding topic "governance" seems a little less interesting than the rest of the debate topics, but I feel it's because the discussion seemed fruitful and intelligent.  Cutting off the speakers to cram in some extra talking points would have diminished what the audience was able to glean.  The article I read also said the debate was too specific, with things like Simpson-Bowles plans and Dodd-Frank bills, but I disagree.  This disagreement actually has a very fundamental basis.

Politics often seems watered down to triviality these days.  Our "sound-byte society," short attention spans, and internet meme making abstracts out deeper understanding of complex issues, and issues like the role of government, economics, and law are deeply complex.  I'm glad the candidates got plenty of time to go back and forth in explaining their ideas, getting into details and nuances that usually get lost in "let's move on to the next topic."

The Lincoln-Douglas debates were three hours a piece, each candidate getting a total of 90 minutes (split into 60 and 30 minute periods for whoever went first).  Now, candidates typically have 2 minutes going back and forth until the moderator wants to move on to the next topic.  You can say a lot in two minutes, but I don't think you should have to.  There are many things which require some time to explain the nuance (and I've now used the word twice within as many paragraphs, but I just find it so appropriate that I'm OK with this generally inadvisable writing practice).

Perhaps I'm informed by a scientific background, how many scientific theories would have ever gotten off the ground if some theoretical Einstein Bohr debates had only allowed the scientists to speak for a few minutes at a time? None of the important mathematical formulations could have been presented, the evidence and experimental methods of testing would be reduced to barely challengeable data tossed into the fray, and ultimately the question of how our world works would be answered not by who had the most complete and consistent ideas but who was more pithy and charismatic.  I worry that's what's happening in how a great and powerful nation is being led.