Big words made easy

25 February 2010 – 21:23

burning planetCan you mention ‘pluralistic ignorance’, ‘cognitive dissonance’ and ‘confirmation bias’ all in one paragraph and still end up with a perfectly readable text that would make sense to, say, a Secondary School student?

The authors of the Welcome Trust’s Big Picture issue on Health and Climate Change can. While discussing why we don’t take quick action to address this threat to humanity’s future, they write that:

“Subconscious biases may also affect us. If things are so bad, we may think, why isn’t someone doing something about it? This may reflect widespread mistaken assumptions about the thoughts or beliefs of other groups (a phenomenon known as pluralistic ignorance). Or we may recognise that something needs to be done but believe that there is little we can do. We may even stray into the territory of cognitive dissonance, where two competing ideas – ‘because of climate change I should change my lifestyle’ and ‘I want to protect my quality of life’ – come into conflict. To resolve this tension, we may reject one idea, perhaps that climate change is a major threat. This in turn may lead to confirmation bias – taking note only of evidence that supports a preexisting belief – or denial.”

What an economic and effective use of words to introduce a whole range of concepts in a small box in the corner of a page. And the remaining 14 pages of the publication are just as densely packed with insightful and balanced information about all aspects of climate change, with a special emphasis on its implications for human health.

By Andy | Posted in communication, science | Comments (0)

Everyone’s invited

29 February 2008 – 17:35

On Saturday, 8 March, I will be giving a talk at the NUS Museum, as part of their NUS Arts Festival 2008.

Apart from the art of Ng Eng Teng, I will be talking about mosquitoes, how their world differs from ours, and what it takes to appreciate art (hint: there will be a fair amount of neuroscience involved).

Here’s the official announcement with all the details (click on it if you’re interested in the small print…):

Art for Arthropods

By Andy | Posted in art, communication, science | Comments (2)

Eco-friendly… really?

9 January 2008 – 10:30

Monday’s Straits Times featured an article on eco-coffins (access restricted… here’s a free abridged version). It reported on a new trend to use caskets made from chipboard or even paper rather than the traditional timber coffins. Given that Singapore goes through 16,000 coffins a year, that sounds like a great way to save some trees.

What struck me as odd was that the lack of demand for these recycled products is attributed to their relatively high cost. According to the Union Casket managing director, “imported green coffins are just too expensive.” Imported?! Wouldn’t it make more sense to build such caskets from locally available recycled materials? It seems, that these eco-coffins are seen as some sort of specialty product, another niche in our consumerist culture. It doesn’t seem to cross anyone’s mind that shipping a casket halfway around the globe to be burnt here makes it distinctly eco-unfriendly whatever material it is made of.

The Story of StuffThat reminded me of a website I came accross a while ago that does a great job at pointing out some of the perverse consequences of our consumerist society: The Story of Stuff. It’s a very nice example of effective communication of a complex issue. You’ll have to invest a bit of time in watching the animation, but it’s worth it. Maybe appropriately, the presentation is quite US-centric, but there are plenty of lessons in there for all of us.

By Andy | Posted in communication, general | Comments (0)

Why did the chicken cross the road?

2 January 2008 – 17:41

RoosterAbout a month ago, this rooster appeared in our estate. When I first noticed him, he was happily pecking away in the grass, upsetting the Mynas. Nobody I know knows where he came from, or whom he belongs to. But he looks healthy and he’s not at all bothered by people, so he’s likely to have had some human association.And he obviously misses his ladies; For the first few days, we would hear him crow a few times early in the morning, and that was it. But soon he started calling during the day as well, and by now it seems that all he does is strutting around the estate all day and shouting himself hoarse.But I shouldn’t make too many assumptions here - I learnt that when I saw him crossing the road the first time. I was amused that he used the pedestrian crossing, holding up quite a bit of traffic while taking his time to strut across. I tried to explain away that apparently intelligent behaviour by assuming that he used the pedestrian crossing – which is on top of a road hump – to avoid having to jump down the curb and up again on the other side. However, the next time I saw him crossing the road just a few meters away from the pedestrian crossing. So now, with more than one observation, it seems that the initial amazing behaviour was just a fluke. (But of course I still only have two observations; not enough to draw any conclusions at all.)

Similarly, I shouldn’t assume that our resident cockerel is lonely just because he keeps calling and surveying the neighbourhood. I don’t even know if any hens would actually respond to his cock-a-doo-dooing, which, as far as I’m aware, is a territorial call and hence primarily aimed at other roosters.

We all do this all too often: make assumptions based on one or two observations, and draw conclusions from limited information. It’s only natural, since we have to make decisions based on limited information all the time, and we would be completely dysfunctional if we let lack of data paralyse us. But we have to keep reminding ourselves that we are making assumptions, and that what we usually believe to be solid facts – anything from why the chicken used the pedestrian crossing to the number of planets in the solar system – is only valid till further notice.

 

By Andy | Posted in general | Comments (2)

Art and Science

13 December 2007 – 13:36

About two months ago, shortly after setting up ArtBioCom, I had my name cards printed in a neighbourhood shop nearby. While I was waiting for my order to be processed, an auntie sitting next to the counter – I don’t think she was working there, just the resident kaypoh – picked up the test print and commented that I had “an interesting job.” She was the first to comment on my chosen designation of “Artist, Biologist, Communicator”, but her next sentence was typical of many people’s reactions since then: “Most people who are good at art are bad at science.”

I realised that she was referring to the school subjects, not the practice of art and science. And there, she may be right – our science exam results depend more on our memory capacity than our creativity, so artistically inclined people may or may not do well in school science, depending on other factors such as interest and inclination.

In contrast, the practice of science – the business of pushing back the frontier of knowledge – actually involves a great deal of creativity. Scientists do have to follow a prescribed set of procedures and principles to ensure objectivity and reproducibility of their results (the so-called Scienctific Method), which may seem quite rigid. But within those rules, there is plenty of room for unusual, new and surprising ways of approaching a problem – creative ideas for what to look at and how to look at it that will eventually, using the Scientific Method, lead to new insights. In fact, without such original, out-of-the-box thinking, there wouldn’t be much progress in science at all.

So creativity, for one, is common to artists and scientists. The two share another trait in their aim to improve our understanding of the world around us. While scientists have to do that in a very objective and rational manner, artists usually take a much more subjective approach. But essentially, both provide us with new perspectives on the world that might give us new insights to help us deal with our surroundings.

Of course, there are vast differences between a scientist’s realm and that of an artist; science’s need for reproducibility and its concept of getting closer and closer to the truth about reality are diametrically opposed to the individuality and divergent nature of art, which is not bound to “reality” in a physical sense. But these are procedural differences, variations in approach; the essence of art and science, to me, is the same: a quest for new insights.

As a result, I see no major clash between art and science. Granted, they operate on different levels, and with different consequences, but there is no reason a single person cannot practice both. In fact, many scientists I know (and some great scientists I know of) are talented artists - it’s just that they are usually too busy with their science to become great artists as well.

By Andy | Posted in art, science | Comments (6)

My first post on my brand new blog

6 December 2007 – 16:35

Welcome to art.hropod, my new, first and only blog!

It has been more than three months since I left the Singapore Science Centre to give myself more time to focus on developing my art. The idea was that I would have generally more time – since I wasn’t “working” any more – to pursue my various interests, which included setting up my own website and blog. But it turns out that I have a lot of interests, and starting out on all of them at once just didn’t work out. So the website was one of those things that was given a slightly lower priority, but now it is finally taking shape. Some pages are still “under construction”, but the blog should be operational, so here we go!

By Andy | Posted in general | Comments (3)