Hexadecimal Monkey

Funny thing happened on the way to objective reality: nobody found any dark matter.  

Sitting in CMNS800 today, a graduate survey course on Communication, the conversation centred around ideology and related concepts.  What was very interesting to me was how some theorists spoke of “ideology” as a system of beliefs, even illusions and, to overly simplify things, contrasted those ways of thinking against “science.”  Science seems to be somehow removed from being an ideology even though it presents itself as a way of interpreting and presenting the world. 

During class, I didn’t want to interrupt the flow of conversation that was centering on the Frankfurt School’s inability to provide proposed solutions to the apparently depressing view of cultural hegemony as presented by Adorno and Horkheimer in The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception; however, I really wanted to take a walk down the rabbit hole that was taunting me every time Science was held up as an alternative or solution to ideology.  

The argument that Science (yes, I’m intentionally capitalizing here), because it values observation, repeatability and objectivity, is not ideological is troublesome.  In fairness, this problem of Science actually being ‘ideological’ was alluded to by a side comment, but ultimately that reference buried the issue rather than elucidating it.  

What I realized is that we have an excellent example happening essentially right now that shows the difficulty in assuming that Science is identical with Objective Reality: The Large Hadron Collider project. 

So much of our science and technology is grounded on our understanding of the workings of molecules, the structure and “function” of the atomic, and then sub-atomic units off matter.  By the majority of people, the ability to demonstrate the existence of subatomic particles is the ultimate result of a procedural pursuit of objective reality through experimentation and observation. There is some truth in that belief: it is possible for scientists to accurately model systems and demonstrate that their models reflect the motions and existence of sub-atomic particles, atoms and molecules and so on up the chain to the observable constituents of the world that we perceive.  This is Science to the common person, and in some discussions it would seem that people believe this to represent a well understood Objective Reality because the conclusions that we believe as Truth all followed from a structured approach of experimentation and observation. 

So what does this have to do with the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)?  The LHC is a massive undertaking that is a scientific attempt at validating our beliefs in the answers provided to us by science.  There are a few problems where our current models simply do not have answers.  We don’t know how gravity works.  We aren’t able to explain how a particle actually gets mass.  There is this nagging problem where the current calculations and formulas actually don’t work that well unless we have some explanation of where a bunch of matter went missing from the universe.  The LHC is going to try to find the answers to some of these questions.  The question in my mind is: “how?”.  And, it is this question is where I think the evidence that Science is bound up as ideology is made clear.  

The LHC is centered around a giant detector that has been built to verify a number of theories that we have about particles that we have yet to be able to observe.  If the particles are found and those particles behave in the way it is expected that they behave, that apparently validates the theory.  The problem, though, is this: we are building technology that is built for the very purpose of validating a theory that is presupposed to be true. Fine, you might say, that is how research works: hypothesis, testing and evaluation.  However, we are applying a single lens to the analysis of the problem and that lens is built to specifically find expected patterns.  Again, that is what is required of the scientific method.  The problem lies in that we are building tools that are so many levels away from direct observation (for some value of “direct”, which I also realize is a problematic concept) that it is entirely possible that the technological imperative to find an answer has developed a tool that has built in it many assumptions of Truth in the existing model that ultimately it gives the scientist no choice *but* to verify the model.  

To use an analogy closer to direct observation: if we were to build a lens that was to determine whether there was a significant wavelength present in a beam of light, but through some design assumptions we attempted to amplify that particular part of the spectrum, but in so doing the actions of a kind of reverberation of other frequencies made that frequency appear to be there, we’d have falsely identified something we had already expected to find.  That wavelength may or may not actually be in the beam of light, but given that the experiment was designed to prove it’s existence, a false reality came to be understood.

All of this is really no different to me than the usual philosophical questions in epistemology and the like: how do you know what you see is really what you are seeing? The result of this line of thought, though, is that Science is a system of beliefs that are coherent with each other for the most part. There are inconsistencies.  There are other ways of explaining the world in many cases. Sometimes there are exceptions and the model doesn’t work (hmm… is a photon a particle or a wave.  It’s both?).  

Science can’t be allowed to represent Objective Reality without realizing that it represents only a way of thinking about how to interpret our world, much like ideology does in other realms.

Today we had a community crime prevention meeting for the members of the various strata in our area.  A member of the Vancouver Police force came to chat with us about problems (and perceived problems) in the area and ways to improve both our security and our sense of security.  

What was quite interesting was to hear the constable’s impression of our area: she emphasized that we actually are living in an area that is incredibly low in crime compared to other areas of the city.  That statement was interesting because the reason we called the meeting in the first place was that there had been a few break-and-enters in the last weeks of summer, and the residents were becoming concerned.  It was incredibly interesting, though, to hear about the VPD’s overall plans for dealing with this recent activity and then to compare our situation with other areas.  

A few miles from our location there are a series of residential towers.  Based on a sophisticated investigation over a number of weeks, the VPD gained enough evidence to warrant a search of one of the buildings.  In that one tower alone, 5 condos were found to have been converted into grow-ops; in several cases there was up to 18 inches of soil on the floor throughout the entire unit.  Essentially marijuana farms were tens or hundreds of feet in the air, right between people living rather normal lives who didn’t expect to be living in quite so close proximity to agricultural activity. 

What was amazing was the plea from the officer to the attendees of our meeting: please report any crimes you see, including those that happen to you or against your property. I couldn’t help but wonder who wouldn’t report crimes such as break and enters that happen to their own properties, but apparently such a lack of reporting is quite common.  Amazing.  

We eventually got into discussion of setting up a Block Watch program here, and finally we’re getting some traction.  The requirements are so minimal to get going, but it’s been historically difficult to get any people to actually commit to doing anything.  However, today we got solid commitment from at least a half dozen people, and I think more will come around.  

At any rate, we were treated to some excellent information and lots of face-to-face community building.

Among the things we learned about were:

• the crime statistics maps that are updated weekly on the VPD site
• block watch
• Our local community policing centre
• Safe communities events grants that a community can use to fund neighbourhood get-togethers to promote safer communities

Very useful meeting. Vancouver makes some amazing resources available and that’s probably just one of the many reasons that it rates so highly amongst the best places to live.

So far so good.  I’ve been rather impressed with a cookbook I bought recently: Gordon Ramsay’s Fast Food.  

I’ve made only a couple of dishes from it, the Shrimp Pilau and the Sticky Lemon Chicken, but both were very simple to put together and had an amazing depth of flavour given the number of ingredients (few) and amount of prep time needed.  

Ramsay’s book presents recipes in a very useful way: combining courses of matched meals in sets that complement each other.  For example, the Sticky Lemon Chicken was grouped with a recipe for “Champ” (mashed potatoes with a fair helping of cream and green onions), and a caramelized banana split.  Each recipe stands on its own, of course, but prior to each grouping there is a description of when/where the grouping might come in handy (a luncheon or small dinner party, for example), but, most importantly to less confident chefs, a guide to the order in which you can make the most of your time in putting the dishes together (perhaps do the prep work for the banana split sauce, then begin boiling water for the potatoes, etc. etc.).  

While I’ve done only single dishes from this book so far, I can see the value in this approach. Timing is everything in cooking and this kind of example workflow is where an experienced chef usually outshines the newbie.   

In between episodes of semi-spastic swearing on his shows, especially the original UK version of Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares, Ramsay always emphasizes that simple, fresh and local ingredients are as vital to good cooking as is technique and a spotless kitchen and prep area.  His recipes in Fast Food stay true to that advice and are quite approachable for home chefs of many skill levels.