I'll start with other subjects, at least one, first because I remembered raising the topic of why green and red were primary colors in the column on how we see, 23-06, and I was leafing through Light, the 6th volume of The Copernican Series, to see what I had to say about it. This is always a dangerous thing for me to do because I always fear running into something I wrote a decade or more ago that's totally wrong. I guess one of the benefits of thinking about this stuff for half a century before I finally got it down on paper is, I pretty much had the basics in hand, and everything else naturally follows. The bad thing about it, of course, is, when I write these columns and then go back to the books, a lot of the stuff in these columns, which I thought original with the columns, is already in the books. Thus, the same explanation for why the sky is blue and why sunsets are red is in Light as in column 30-06.
One thing that really amazes me, though, is the length of the consistency. My views on engineering as opposed to theoretical research are evident in these columns, and I thought those views were developed writing Let's Talk Flying Saucers several years ago, where I concluded that without a theoretical science that describes actual reality, there is very little chance that our engineers will be able to produce technology that matches reality and therefore very little chance that we will survive the Earth as the unique species that evolved on this planet. However, on going over some old pages of the original Copernican Website put up back in the mid-nineties, what do I find but an article containing the same views.
The origin of my interest in color blindness is evolutionary. There has never, in my family, been anyone that has been colorblind. There's a lot of poor eyesight, but that's probably attributable to the type of work we end up doing rather than genetics and bless the ophthalmological surgeons. They might not know how the eye works, but they sure know how to create, or just adapt, superb technology. You won't see cardioretinometry coming to your local ophthalmologist soon because, once it's perfected, its going to pretty much eliminate heart surgery. It's the use of digital photography to map the arteries in the eye. These arteries get clotted with cholesterol well before the arteries in the body do, and unlike the arteries in the body, they are visible. That not only means early treatment, it means the development of treatments that can eliminate the cholesterol. The only place this work is authorized is in England, so we'll probably all be dead from open-heart surgery before the benefits become widespread.
When I found out my youngest grandson was colorblind I said, wow, where did it come from. It turns out my son-in-law has many relatives who were colorblind, so there's characteristic evolution taking place, although some might say its characteristic devolution. In colorblindness, the eye is deficient in either the ability to see red or green or perhaps both to some extent. I've known several people who were colorblind, and they were sharper than the normal pencil, and indeed, we have pictures of my grandson when he was two or three playing gin rummy, and doing what he still does, kicking everyone's butt at it. So maybe it is evolution at work. We'll all be playing cards when the lights go out.
Colorblindness does provide the clue to why we have two independent routes colors travel from the longest frequency, blue, to the shortest frequency, yellow. When light enters a prism, its passage through the glass reduces its frequency. See column 11-05. Thus, the color that travels the shortest path, yellow, has the highest frequency. The next two colors that pass the shortest path are red and green, with green having a longer frequency than red, but not by much. As the eye evolved to collect information so that we could move safely through the environment, the eye that could collect information that would allow the most accurate picture would be the eye that survived. An eye that couldn't discern colors wouldn't be able to create as accurate a picture of reality as one that could discern colors, and an eye that could discern only those colors that had their frequency changed would not be able to create as accurate a picture of reality as one that could discern all hues. Discerning all hues requires color adding because sometimes the colors we see are combinations of colors. This is especially true in humid environments were the moisture in the air distorts the actual colors, creating symphonies of colors, as well as in sunsets, where the individual rays are broken down and attempt to recombine, recoloring the landscape.
With blue the lowest frequency and yellow the highest frequency, all shades of color fall between blue and yellow. But the hues created buy color adding blue with green hues are not the same hues that are created by adding blue with red. With red and green the closest frequencies to yellow, two paths of hues are produced as blue is added on the green side and the red side to finally make yellow. All one has to do is look at the standard color wheel to see that yellow is exactly opposite blue, with paths to yellow going through green and red. The eye evolved with the ability to see both green and blue so that it could discern all the hues in the environment. To do so, it needs the ability to see blue, green and red, the primary colors, and that's what it evolved to see. However, because it can see another primary color, yellow, independently of red and green, see column 32-06, our empiricists, who make up their models to fit their theories, are going to have to retool the model of an eye with only three color receptors. There can be no argument on this, the eye has receptors for the four primary colors, blue, green, red and yellow.
Senility
Senility is fairly easy to explain once we know how the mind works (see column 25-06). The operative principle of the mind is the current running through the brain. Those currents are constantly altering as our pictures of reality, or if reality is cut off, our pictures from recall, are altered. Memes, or memory units, are stored in the neurons of the brain, which have developed a multipath system to facilitate the electric currents coursing through it gaining quicker access to the memes stored in the neurons. The level of the current matches the total of the flows that go into forming the pictures of reality we have in our mind.
It is fairly clear from this that the more accurate the current flows, the more easily those current flows will recall the memes. When we don't have reality in front of us, we have to self-generate the flows. This is most common when we try to think of someone's name. Of course, if we see the person, we have a picture to associate the name with and we don't have any trouble recalling the name. If the person is not present, then we have to recall something about the person to pinpoint the level of flow that will recall the name. I got through school simply by memorizing the table of contents of the course books. During an exam, I could locate the subject on the table, and instantly recall the contents dealing with that subject. We all develop tricks like that to get through life.
But it all depends on being able to generate an accurate level of current to effect the recall. Any number of things can work to degrade the accuracy of the current level. The obvious one, of course, is booze. Drinking alters the current level by changing the environment in which the current moves. Alcohol interferes with current levels, creating recall that doesn't match reality. We look at reality, we recall something else, then we act in reality based on that recall, which isn't reality, and we may end up in trouble for it. Drugs, environmental pollution, nicotine, anything that can pass through the barrier to the brain, will alter the current level of the brain. It might alter it to such an extent that we no longer can access the memes created when we return to normal, and our actions are a total blank.
When we're young and healthy, our current levels are spot on. They are so accurate, we can do many things simply by instinct, literally doing several things at the same time. The old taunt, a person can't walk and chew gum at the same time, is a reflection of this ability to multitask. We can do nothing in reality without forming a picture of ourselves doing it, and to do more than one thing with only one mind, we need the ability to go robotic, to dribble the basketball at the same time we're picturing the shot we're going to set up. We know we're dribbling, we're protecting the ball from others, so we're forming a picture of ourselves doing that, but we have such accuracy, that we can put that picture in the same frame as the picture we have taking the shot.
As we get older, two things start happening. The accuracy of the current levels we produce degrades and the pathways to the neurons begin to break, not to mention Alzheimer's, a condition I'm all to familiar with, where the neurons themselves clump together, apparently as a result of genes and some outside substance that produces an aluminum residue. With age, the ability to program robotic movements disappears altogether, so people who were accustomed to doing multiple things at the same time no longer can. This leads to all sorts of accidents, falls being among the principle one.
Recalling names also becomes difficult because the process involves recalling an intangible, a name is not a picture, by using some sort of picture to generate the recall. With degrading accuracy, many things that were once out the tip of our tongue remain at the tip of our tongue until we accidentally generate a current close to the one its stored at, and then we're, aha, got it. One of my father's favorite questions when I was growing up was where are the memories we have when we don't have them. If we can generate the current level to recall them, they're always at our beck and call. But if we can't, then those memories are locked away forever, like the reams of photographs left by my 19th century ancestors, who all knew who was in the pictures so didn't bother writing it down on them, information lost forever (there are now Internet sites that, using facial recognition software, let people post unknown ancestors to see if they match up with other postings, although the results I got from putting my picture in and querying what movie star I looked like, the sites aren't ready for prime time -- Kirk Douglas I'm not).
In passing, there's something I should write an entire column on, sequencing. Performing serial functions in reality requires that those functions be arranged sequentially in the mind, with one sequence recalling the next. Smooth sequencing allows for smooth efficient actions in reality. However, as we grow older and the flows doing the recall become less exact, our sequencing ability diminishes. This leads to erratic movements in reality as we start the egg before we get the bacon prepared, and presents as confusion. And finally there's the problem of stamina. It takes effort to from the pictures we need to act in reality, and effort takes stamina. As we grow older, we have less stamina, and that's translated into either forming sloppy pictures of reality, or no pictures at all, leaving us sitting there snoozing. Hey, everything has its compensations.
Savants
I, like everyone, am always intrigued my someone that can take a date and immediately tell the weekday it fell on, or multiply two long numbers and get the right answer almost immediately, yet can't remember to brush their teeth. Nothing is more mechanical than mathematics. It's the relationship of numbers pure and simple, and numbers are what we use to classify reality. When I look at a big box, I have no idea whether it'll fit in the truck of the car. My wife can look at it, and say exactly. She can look at a bunch of suitcases I think will take two trunks, and be able to arrange them in her mind in the truck and tell me exactly which ones will fit and which ones won't. However, when I was the financial officer of a 100 million dollar credit union, I could visualize the financials in my mind so well, I was able to call the treasurer on mistakes while he was reporting on current financials I hadn't yet seen simply because I could remember the sequences that led up to the report. If I hadn't gotten booted out of that job, I'd never have written the Copernican Series because it was using up a lot of my mental capacity.
And I think that's the key to savants. They have limited mental capacity, I would guess in the area of generating nuanced current flows in the mind. Therefore, when they come upon something their minds can deal with, something that's within the range of the current levels they can generate, they fill their entire mind with it. I don't think the savant is computing the day from the date, or making the computation. I think the savant has already done that because that's all his mind has to do and all he has to do is recall it, much like we recall names. The numbers given are within his range of generatable currents, and he recalls the answer he's already computed and stored in memory.
Global Warming, a follow-up
In column16-05, I pointed out that the thousands of so-called climatology experts that constantly sign onto political pleas to eliminate technology know beans about atmospheric science. I said the number of people actually qualified to discuss it were few and far between, and while I didn't say it, the fact is, they are never heard from. I ran across an article in the Canada Free Press written by Tom Harris discussing Gore's silly self-promotion, "The Inconvenient Truth." Harris goes right to the source, the few climatologists specializing in climate change.
He quotes Professor Bob Carter of the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University: "Gore's circumstantial arguments are so weak that they are pathetic. It is simply incredible that they, and his film, are commanding public attention." Referring to Gore's claim of universal scientific approval, former University of Winnipeg climatology professor Dr. Tim Ball says that while "many are highly skilled researchers, they generally do not have special knowledge about the causes of global climate change, they usually can tell us only about the effects of changes in the local environment where they conduct their studies."
As to those engaged solely in climate change, Ball goes on, many concentrate their research on designing and enhancing computer models of hypothetical futures. What does he have to say about these models? "These models have been consistently wrong in all their scenarios. Since modelers concede computer outputs are not 'predictions' but are in fact merely scenarios, they are negligent in letting policy-makers and the public think they are actually making forecasts." See the last column on models.
Harris then quotes Carleton University paleoclimatologist Professor Tim Patterson with this humdinger: "There is no meaningful correlation between CO2 levels and Earth's temperature over this [geologic] time frame. In fact, when CO2 levels were over ten times higher than they are now, about 450 million years ago, the planet was in the depths of the absolute coldest period in the last half billion years. On the basis of this evidence, how could anyone still believe that the recent relatively small increase in CO2 levels would be the major cause of the past century's modest warming?"
I guess it's time to put out there what really impressed me about the article. After about a thousand more words and quotes demolishing what is essentially Gore's ten-year-old slide show animated, Harris goes back to quote Carter on Gore: "The man is an embarrassment to US science and its many fine practitioners, a lot of whom know (but feel unable to state publicly) that his propaganda crusade is mostly based on junk science."
I added the emphasis to illustrate what I've said in many of these articles. There's a lot of real science going on out there, but it's being filtered through the empirical muzzle, and the result has to be frustration, both personally and professionally, and definitely in the development of our technology.
Peter Bros is the author of the 9 volume Copernican Series and is President of The Far Museum of Dallas, an actual history museum, which will house its collection of 50,000 rare Eastern Mediterranean manuscripts and artifacts together with actual history displays and tours in a full-sized replica of the Egyptian Temple at Dendera to be built in the Dallas Ft. Worth area. Email:peterbros@therealskeptic.com