Science commentary by Gregg Easterbrook
Posted by The Editors under
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Make … the pain … go away:
As TMQ always wonders about deep-space cosmology, why assume everything we are observing is natural? In the Iain Banks “The Culture” sci-fi novels, a utopian human society battles a monstrous biologically immortal (they never age, but can die by violence) alien race called the Idirans. As an ultimate weapon, The Culture learns how to destabilize stars and make them engulf planets; faced with destruction of their worlds, the Idirans yield. How do we know some distant advanced race has not learned to make stars like Eta Carinae unstable, and is using this knowledge in an apocalyptic war?
Indeed. How do we know that annoying aliens from Unibrau 7 haven’t sent a secret agent to Earth, planted him in a “science expert” “job” at Brookings, and used this position to disseminate bonghit philosophizing so unbelievably retarded that anyone who reads it wants to put their face in a blender? Talk about an ultimate weapon!
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October 23, 2008 at 6:13 pm
Interestingly enough, Iain Banks is a pissed-off, funny, left-wing Scot whose opinions of US foreign policy would probably cause Gregg Easterbrook to vibrate uncontrollably.
October 23, 2008 at 6:17 pm
Someone has substituted freeze-dried Editors for my regular Editors.
October 23, 2008 at 6:26 pm
Yeah, diss Easterbrook all you want, but not Iain Banks. He’s not just left-wing, he’s an anarcho-socialist, and I can only think that Easterbrook read his books just for the space-explodey parts.
October 23, 2008 at 6:31 pm
That’s an odd reason not to make fun of someone. Mind if I stick with not knowing who he is?
October 23, 2008 at 7:28 pm
Dude. Seriously, dude. Seriously. I mean, dude. Seriously. Why do you read anything on espn.com?
October 23, 2008 at 7:53 pm
“…bonghit philosophizing …”
a) As if there was any other kind
b) and not to be confused with bonghit particle scientology, which is indisputably valid and produces way cool vapor trails like this:
trails, dude
And this:
I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad trips sometimes.
Using cool stuff like this:
pre-tubular
October 23, 2008 at 8:07 pm
How do we know the mole people aren’t screwing themselves up through hell to feed John McCain more babies so he can get a super boost and win the election because he is obviously a Vampire?
It’s like when I told my doctor that I swallow pennies because I read somewhere that it prevents pregnancy, and he’s all like “pop science”, blah blah, whatever! These elites think they’re smarter then us because they receive specialized training and stuff. I believe in personal responsibility and not science.
There are no facts just choices! Yea!
October 23, 2008 at 8:07 pm
“Mind if I stick with not knowing who he is?”
I was going to pile on with a defense of Banks and the (pretty good) Culture novels, but OK. {kicks dirt, shuffles away dejectedly}
October 23, 2008 at 8:11 pm
“There are no facts just choices! Yea!”
That sounds dangerously postmodern there, Paco. There are no facts but what we can discern from careful study of the Bible and The 2nd Amendment and the films of Ronald Reagan. Choices not in accord with the received wisdom are forbidden.
October 23, 2008 at 8:15 pm
The Culture learns how to destabilize stars and make them engulf planets
Actually, it was the Idirans who were causing stars to nova (cf Look to Windward). Leave it to Easterbrook soil the name of one of my favorite writers, and the name of my favorite variable star, all in one excreble linguistic emesis.
October 23, 2008 at 8:29 pm
It’s a popular theme in science fiction, even good science fiction: Stanislaw Lem wrote a lot about this kind of possibility too, and Charlie Stross brought it up once or twice.
But if Easterbrook doesn’t understand why scientists (as opposed to science fiction writers) aren’t running with this possibility instead of seeking natural explanations first, it’s just the latest in a long string of indications that he has no idea how science operates.
Do we know that aliens aren’t messing with Eta Carinae? Of course not. But suppose you do think an alien civilization made something happen with super-tech beyond our knowledge: how do you get a testable hypothesis from that? How do you go about investigating it further? What good is it to go any distance down that road, if perfectly natural explanations are far from exhausted?
He seems to fall into the same trap in cases where you replace “aliens” with “God” or “the spiritual dimension”.
October 23, 2008 at 10:33 pm
“The Culture learns how to destabilize stars and make them engulf planets”
Hollywood does that to a lot of stars after first igniting them in thermonuclear life in the first place.
October 23, 2008 at 10:36 pm
God told me in a vision that Eta Carinae is like a giant traffic light for interstellar traffic, that runs at a speed limit of Warp F’s 10-12.
Any faster than that and Shakira’s ass gets way too jiggy with it.
October 23, 2008 at 10:48 pm
Bong hits are sometimes spot on:
“According to Easterbrook, the billions of dollars that a lunar colony might cost should instead be devoted to environmental research on the Earth; reducing the costs of access to space; exploring the solar system with space probes; space observatories; and protecting the Earth from near-Earth asteroids, priorities that he repeated in a 2007 Wired magazine article, “How NASA Screwed Up (And Four Ways to Fix It)”.”
I totally agree. A Lunar colony makes sense once we’ve devised economical means of climbing up the gravity well.
Expending literally astronomical amounts of energy to fling a few puny tons of payload (now there’s a word with a ka-ching to it) is OK for things like Hubble and satellites and space probes, but beyond that, any industry based on farting our way to infinity and beyond is full of hot air.
October 24, 2008 at 1:36 am
Yes, indeed. Easterbrook obviously has not read any Iain Banks, which means that he is totally unqualified to write on the subject. But then he doesn’t understand science and he writes on that, and he doesn’t understand politics and he writes on that, and he doesn’t understand “understand” and he writes on that.
If I had not been abducted by aliens and replaced by an infinitely dense dot of protoplasm, my head would explode.
October 24, 2008 at 1:48 am
How do we know that annoying aliens from Unibrau 7 haven’t sent a secret agent to Earth
That would certainly explain the existence of Belgians.
October 24, 2008 at 4:41 am
A great post.. thanks..
October 24, 2008 at 5:53 am
Yes, indeed. Easterbrook obviously has not read any Iain Banks, which means that he is totally unqualified to write on the subject. But then he doesn’t understand science and he writes on that, and he doesn’t understand politics and he writes on that, and he doesn’t understand “understand” and he writes on that.
Don’t forget football. He doesn’t understand that, but he writes about it, too.
October 24, 2008 at 7:15 am
“execrable linguistic emesis”?
WTF?
The Cthulhu *I* know doesn’t put on airs, nor try to emulate Greenspan, so who the hell are you?
October 24, 2008 at 7:16 am
I’m Old Gregg (Easterbrook)! I’ve got a mangina! Yes sir, thank you sir.
October 24, 2008 at 7:17 am
Dude, what if fire is the way to Heaven, and the “pain” we feel when we touch it is really enlightenment from God which only feels painful because we’re so used to being stupid?
And dude, dude, dude, what if C-A-T spelled “dog”. Woah!
October 24, 2008 at 7:23 am
The astronomers and astrophysicists I know (and the number is greater than zero) do red the stuff, whether it’s Doc Smith, Peter Mattingly or Iain Banks. They have a file of those ideas in their brains, and most of them wold like it just fine if they found a manipulated star, or a focused supernova. The difference is that they’ve worked out what levels of proof are needed to determine that that’s what it is.
The Dyson Sphere was not concocted by an SF writer.
October 24, 2008 at 7:57 am
Huh. It’s fine to make fun of Iain Banks for being an anarcho-socialist SF writer — fish in barrels have never been turned down as easy targets in these parts — I guess it’s just that Easterbrook seems to have gotten Banks so wrong that I wanted him to be made fun of for what he really was.
Never mind. The wingnuts have finally driven me crazy.
October 24, 2008 at 7:57 am
It’s like when I told my doctor that I swallow pennies because I read somewhere that it prevents pregnancy,
It has always worked for me! When I had two girlfriends (long time ago, dear) I used a dime, just to be safe. Hey! Nobody ever said that being a swinger was inexpensive.
October 24, 2008 at 7:58 am
How do we know some distant advanced race has not learned to make stars like Eta Carinae unstable, and is using this knowledge in an apocalyptic war?
This is precisely the kind of interstellar “test” we will face if we elect Hussein al-Obama. We can’t afford to take the risk of inviting this kind of attack.
McCain / Easterbrook ’08!
October 24, 2008 at 8:07 am
I’m with Bérubé and think that we need to launch a pre-emptive nuclear assault on any and all stars that might conceivably have intelligent life screwing with our sun. If there’s even a 1% chance that this might be happening, we must defend ourselves with all our might. We’ll start with Iran and work our way up.
October 24, 2008 at 8:10 am
We certainly cannot risk the chance that Obama would speak to space aliens without preconditions.
—-
Easterbrook could post a column a day like this and he still wouldn’t match teh stoopid which NRO publishes regularly.
October 24, 2008 at 8:12 am
Matt, Easterbrook is also a proponent of Intelligent Design:
http://www.beliefnet.com/News/2005/05/Can-Science-Explain-Everything.aspx
He’s making the same leap of logic with Eta Carinae, etc., that ID does with its “Designer.”
October 24, 2008 at 8:19 am
What if we’re just a tiny world trapped a shoe box full of tiny air holes sitting under some little boy’s bed?
October 24, 2008 at 8:23 am
He’s making the same leap of logic
A “leap” implies a starting point and a landing. Show me where he has ever touched the ground. He doesn’t leap, he hovers.
October 24, 2008 at 8:28 am
What if we’re just a tiny world trapped a shoe box full of tiny air holes sitting under some little boy’s bed?
That would explain the smell…
October 24, 2008 at 8:34 am
That’s Iain M. Banks, when discussing Culture (and his other science fiction) novels. If you want ‘mainstream’ novels, then look for what he writes as Iain Banks. It will be worth your time.
I cannot find reference to it online right now, but some years back a short story concerned an astronomer that spotted what he was convinced was a sublight spaceship in deep space. He was further convinced it exploded. Other astronomers, not so sure ;)
The story was as much about techniques and methods (and fights for funding) as the supposed ship. So, yes, the aliens could be out there, and many astronomers are also science fiction readers and writers. In fact, Paul Krugman has fond memories of Asimov’s Foundation novels. But that doesn’t mean that’s our first choice in understanding the universe.
October 24, 2008 at 8:39 am
We’re still working our way up to fish in barrels.
October 24, 2008 at 8:51 am
Funny, but all the philosophers in the prestigious university at which I teach smoke dope. The astronomers, by comparison, are fairly boring.
October 24, 2008 at 8:59 am
Now this book had the stars themselves attacking each other….
“Star Maker is an influential science fiction novel by Olaf Stapledon, written in 1937.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Maker
Great work.
“The travellers encounter many ideas that are interesting from both science-fictional and philosophical points of view. These include the first known instance of what is now called the Dyson sphere, reference to a scenario closely predicting the later zoo hypothesis or Star Trek’s Prime Directive[1], many imaginative descriptions of species, civilizations and methods of warfare, and the idea that the stars and even the pre-galactic nebulae are intelligent beings, operating on vast time scales. “
October 24, 2008 at 9:22 am
What’s so painful about Easterbrook’s “writings” is they are completely pointless, even if they could be taken seriously. Say he’s right and super-advanced space aliens are about to kill us all. So? What’s he gonna do about it? Join up with Camille Paglia and make the aliens heads (or whatever) explode?
October 24, 2008 at 9:31 am
Yet another fan of Iain M. Banks here. But – if you’re reading the Culture novels as hard-SF, speculation about possible future technologies and their consequences, you’re kinda thick. Banks is interested in the dilemmas facing intelligent life in a world without scarcity, the ethics of intervention and risk-taking, the aesthetic attraction of destruction and violence, how we react to events outside our framework for viewing the world, and similar issues. And in good stories, of course. Technology tends to play a deus ex machina role. Of course, Easterbrook would probably read Moby Dick in order to learn whale-hunting techniques.
October 24, 2008 at 9:33 am
Oh yeah, _Last and First Men_ and _Star Maker_ have been used as cribsheets for SF writers looking to steal ideas for decades. At least for the good ones. The bad ones just steal from the people who stole from Stapledon. :)
If you used to love sitting back and reading the textbook (rather than doing what you were supposed to do) in history class, those books are definitely for you. Sort of like a vast future history of this and all other universes that fell through a wormhole and dropped on Stapledon’s desk.
October 24, 2008 at 10:32 am
We’re still working our way up to fish in barrels.
Yeah, we’re stuck on krill in shot glasses. Can’t seem to clear that level.
October 24, 2008 at 10:46 am
“How do we know some distant advanced race has not learned to make stars like Eta Carinae unstable, and is using this knowledge in an apocalyptic war?”
Is Kissinger advising them?
October 24, 2008 at 11:08 am
Maybe, just maybe, we think Eta Carina is unstable because all stars like Eta Carina are unstable. We can see which sorts of stars explode, we can use physics to understand why, and we can collect all sorts of data that supports this picture. We can even test the idea in other environments – e.g. whenever something gets extremely bright it becomes very difficult to hold it together. This has been a well-understood concept in astronomy for, oh, about fifty years now. The details of an individual object can still be surprising (and Eta Car is a fascinating object), but the overall picture fits with a lot of other information.
On the other hand, it could be Klingons or the Zerg.
That’s the level of his argument. Maybe Greg is just a brain in a jar too…
October 24, 2008 at 11:22 am
Brian May is an astronomer, I don’t think he is boring, and he has probably had quite a few bong hits.
October 24, 2008 at 3:42 pm
Memo to Easterbrook:
Occam’s Razor — use it.
(Also, count me another fan of Iain M. Banks’s “Culture” novels — my latest read-everything-in-sight author binge.)
October 24, 2008 at 3:54 pm
Oh, let me pile on! Iain Banks’ Culture Novels have my highest recommendation. Easterbrook, if he has actually read any of them, should try understanding them. He completely bollixed the description. But, then again he wouldn’t be comfortable in The Culture. Not uptight enough for him
October 24, 2008 at 4:54 pm
Easterbrook’s Razor suggests that we look for additional agents, spirits, aliens, and daemons to explain natural phenomena, multiplying as many as we need to get the epicycles to work out.
October 24, 2008 at 5:05 pm
On your unibrow.
October 24, 2008 at 8:46 pm
I dare you to read The Wasp Factory and not have nightmares about a scene 2/3 of the way through.
October 26, 2008 at 5:21 pm
Iain Banks is much, much smarter than Easterbrook, and probably writes better sports columns, too.