But who the heck is Rupert Sheldrake, and why should we care what he thinks? Well, while Deepak Chopra may hail him as a visionary, the more skeptically-minded consider him a bit of a nut. I personally didn’t know anything about him until I read this interview recently, in which – while he talked about scientific heresies like morphogenic fields and experiments in paranormal phenomena – he also talked about the damage done to science by its own establishment – in part by the way that science has become largely driven by its ability to produce profitable results – but also how science seems to be stuck in its own reality-as-machine faith. He cites how no-one is likely to talk about how, for instance, the Human Genome Project has been a disappointment, primarily because there are billions invested in it. And how the best and brightest new minds are drawn more to high incomes in the tech and pharmaceutical industries than to opportunities for “pure inquiry”.

Two topics that he discussed in the interview that I found compelling were based on the fact that current scientific doctrine implies that genetics will explain everything about life, and that in spite of little in the way of hard evidence, it also implies that somehow we already know how memory and consciousness work, we just have to map the details into specific electrochemical reactions in the brain. The latter kind of popular thinking is reinforced when statements like “MIT discovers the location of memories: Individual neurons” are made by popular tech and science articles. In that particular piece, the author goes on to say “By triggering a small cluster of neurons, the researchers were able to force the subject to recall a specific memory. By removing these neurons, the subject would lose that memory.” It’s not until the third paragraph that they mention that the “subject” was a mouse.

But one specific thing he said in the interview that really struck me was in response to the question “If…memory does not reside in the brain, then where is it?” to which he replied “‘Where?’ is the wrong question. Memory is a relationship in time, not in space. The idea that a memory has to be somewhere when it’s not being remembered is a theoretical inference, not an observation of reality.” Those two points are quite accurate, and I’ve personally never heard the concept framed that way. And it’s not terribly at odds with something that the trailblazing neurosurgeon we referenced at the top said, which was “Consciousness exists only in association with the passage of impulses through ever-changing circuits between the brainstem and cortex. One can not say that consciousness is here or there.”

I don’t know yet what I think of Sheldrake’s ideas about morphogenic fields and his other fringe-science pursuits, but I have a sort of “dull Occam’s Razor” view of the world. I don’t latch on to crazy, elaborate explanations just because I like them, but if there’s one thing I do know about science it is that it’s at its best when it overturns its own dogma. As Arthur C. Clarke said:

“If an elderly but distinguished scientist says that something is possible, he is almost certainly right; but if he says that it is impossible, he is very probably wrong.”

I miss the good old days, when polite people had a silent agreement that there were certain things you just didn’t talk about except amongst close friends. The lists vary, but amongst the affluent, it was generally religion, income, and personal health. For hairdressers, it was religion and politics. For British friends of mine, the rule was no jokes about the Queen, the Pope, or Jesus. Well, ever since someone opened that whole can, I’ve given up and been gleefully pulling out more worms whenever I’m able, in the hope that the conversations will burn themselves up so we can get back to talking about fun stuff, like sports and movies and food and books. Or advanced lovemaking techniques. Or whatever. So prepare to be offended here. But a little preface, lest you think you have any insight into the details of my stance on various topics as a result of reading my capricious trolling. I love science, and I believe in a consciousness greater than the individual mind. And those frameworks are compatible in my world. But in spite of my confidence in science, I feel we should add it to the “off-limits” list, should we ever return to old-school conversational etiquette, because thanks to rabid creationists, a lot of atheist scientists were goaded outside their legitimate territory, and into trying to apply science to topics it knows nothing about. Like the origin of the universe. Or lots of other things that are more like philosophy than science. So. On with the trolling! First up: religion. I had a belly laugh yesterday when I read that the Pope said that religion was being marginalized around the world. Yes, Mr God’s Representative on Earth, it is. Maybe it would help if the cost of one of your papal robes weren’t equal to the GDP of many starving countries, or if you’d be a little more proactive about addressing that whole pedophile priest business. Apologies are nice, but many think that maybe you should look into your own church’s history for a more fitting punishment for your errant and perverted clerics. Because you really should have your terrestrial affairs in order before you start baptizing aliens, right? And Islam? Although I find myself defending you a lot lately, I’m not too fond of the bits where you stone people (this article blames the practice on the Torah), subjugate women in a nearly neanderthal fashion, and generally let your heavily paternal secular culture poison any hope of popular spiritual enlightenment. I hesitate to mention Judaism, because there’s danger of talking about Palestine, and to discuss this topic in certain circles will certainly lead down a really bad rabbit hole. Oops. I just did it. But did I leave anybody out? Of course I did, the “big three” are Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism. I’m too ignorant to talk about Hinduism, I only mentioned Judaism because in spite of comprising less than 1% of the world’s population, it gets a tremendous amount of press, and Buddhists not only by nature aren’t an organization, but their estimated number varies from 100 million to 1 billion, largely because political oppression in the countries that might be most Buddhist prevents accurate information gathering. So we don’t even know who the big three really are. I imagine if there were more oil where there are people of other faiths, we’d know all about them, so we could irrationally fear them. But there isn’t, so we don’t. So, on to science. I’ve been amused for a while about about the whole “Intelligent Design” debate. Somehow, modern people have taken one of the central mysteries of our existence – one that has little hope of being explained with absolute certainty with any system – and decided that one side or the other (i.e.: atheist scientists or religious creationists) has the answer. Which is why I’ve decided I’m a little at odds with both when it comes to the creation of the universe and evolution. I mean, face it. No one can say with certainty what was going on in the universe in early human history (say, ten thousand years ago), let alone FOURTEEN BILLION YEARS AGO. And all the fun and usefulness of Darwinian thought is shot to hell as soon as it becomes DOGMA. So for some real fun in these areas, one of my favorite points of view to toss into casual philosophical conversation is Geocentrism. Because in the anthropocentric universe in which we live, how could the Earth be anything BUT the center of the universe, right? Read some interesting (if a bit carelessly assembled) points of view here. One of my faves is the one in which astrophysicist George F. R. Ellis points out that science relies on philosophical criteria to select its models for astrophysics, which makes the arguments intrinsically undisprovable. Just ignore the vintage web design if you can. And Darwin? That’s like shootin’ fish in a barrel. Just start with the simple factual statement that IT’S ONLY A THEORY. That gives the creationists fodder, and puts the hardcore science types immediately on the defensive. If things get off to a slow start, just mention nuts who write stuff like The Origin of Specious Nonsense. My apologies in advance for that site if you visit it, but the guy’s material is excellent fodder. Just watch him talk about sperm for 5 minutes in the clip below if you have any doubts. So “what”, you may ask, “is the purpose of this trolling?” I find that in most social settings, this is the easiest way to ferret out the know-it-alls and extremists so I can have a good time with the normal people. Plus, it generates page views. Any suggestions of your own for trolling topics?

Listen to nutjob John J May talk about “tousands of sparm” for five minutes.

…like neutrinos, nanoparticles, and your failing memory. No, I’m not referring to the fact that because of your ongoing stimulation overload that you’ll immediately forget most of what you’ve read in this article and the links it contains. I’m referring to things like cosmic rays, nanotechnology, and data loss. It used to be that things like soft errors in your computer caused by things like cosmic rays or math errors in Intel processors would only make your rocket crash or oil rig sink or something, but now, it’s getting personal, and affecting the accelerator in your car. Either that or Toyota is getting desperate. Which in any case got me thinking about how we think of digitally stored and manipulated information as somehow perfect and eternal, when nothing could be farther from the truth. As well as the the aforementioned catastrophes (see more here) there’s the fact that your memory isn’t what you think it is. Your digital memory, that is. Aside from the occasional hard-drive crash (if you’ve never experienced one, I’m happy for you) there’s the rather limited longevity of CD’s and DVD’s. Although we think of them as a very reliable form of long-term data storage, the discs you burn probably only have a reliable life of 2-5 years. And although commercially burned discs have a much longer predicted life expectancy, even they are prone to disc rot and decay. And with device makers moving away from hard disc drives to solid state drives, the longevity of your personal computer’s data will diminish a bit too. At least the data will be a little easier to tote around while it’s dying. So you may as well enjoy the moment, because as cosmic rays help your data decay, they may be slowly killing you as well. Never mind the 50 trillion neutrinos passing through your body every day, it’s the gamma rays you have to watch out for. Or the nanoparticles. Or if you’re Arthur Firstenberg of Santa Fe, there’s the neighbor’s wifi to consider.

The human race. It’s what’s for dinner.