"PopSci should be one of the cornerstones of the scientific enterprise."

In a perspective piece in Science magazine, Agustin Fuentes exhorts the scientific community to produce "better and more PopSci." PopSci, or popular science, is "science presented in a way that is interesting and understandable to people who are not experts." He lays the onus on scientists but I would say that the purveyors of PopSci do not have to be scientists. They can be any member of the scientific community, which includes those who are not professional scientists but engage in some aspect of science whether teaching, research, communication, or engineering.

Science has not fared well in at least certain segments of popular opinion over the last 10 years or so, which surprised me, although in retrospect I probably shouldn't have been surprised. According to Mr. Fuentes, we find ourselves in "a world shaped by a lot of misguided, and often erroneous, information about science." He identifies the problem as the "strong political movement to discredit science and scientists [which] is having a terrifying level of success." To put a name on it, the anti-science movement has been spearheaded by the GOP and other conservative groups. Examples abound from the anti-vaxxers to global warming denialism to the genetic racists. 

Let's be clear, the enemy of science is not the lack of understanding, it is the loss of objectivity. Too often people engage in motivated "reasoning" where the "reasoning" is secondary to supporting some motivated position. The ideal of science is objective reasoning and anyone can do this and be part of the scientific enterprise. Individual scientists are expert in a tiny, infinitesimal sliver of human knowledge, but they are trained to engage in objective reasoning based on factual evidence, and so too are numerous other professions.

I would like to see the scientific community broadened as much as possible and PopSci can contribute significantly to this accessibility.

Agustin closes with the following figurative call to arms:

"With political and legal actors increasingly downplaying and sidelining scientific knowledge, now is not the time for science to be quiet or compliant. It is the time for scientists to speak out, to communicate and participate with and among the public. The alternative is to let the anti-science organizations and movements warp reality and damage society and the planet by injecting more ignorance, antipathy, and malice into public perceptions and actions around issues of scientific relevance. Science must have a larger impact outside of labs, journal pages, and the research industry. For the future of science and society, we need better and more PopSci by scientists."

As mentioned above, I would just slightly modify the final sentence to read: "For the future of science and society, we need better and more PopSci by members of the scientific community which of course includes those who are not professional scientists."

Coaching

 I was watching a coach teach his soccer team. I thought he did three things well:

1. Offer lots of encouragement
2. Give very specific instructions
3. Provide rationale for the instructions

One thing he didn't do so well:

1. Ask for questions

Also at end, it would help to review and fit the lessons in the big picture view of what the team is trying to accomplish.

What's next after AI takes your crown

The New York Times caught up with former Go champion Lee Sedol in an article titled "Defeated by A.I., a Legend in the Board Game Go Warns: Get Ready for What’s Next."

What's next doesn't seem so bad: 

"Mr. Lee has kept one foot in the Go world. He has written several books, including an autobiography and a series about his famous matches. He has created Go-inspired board games. He founded a Go academy for children with about a dozen branches across the country."

Lee Sedol famously was the best Go player in the World but then lost the title to the AlphaGo AI in 2016 (4 to 1). This seismic event announced to the World that Deep Learning had arrived. He then retired in 2019, conceding that AI was "an entity that cannot be defeated," at least in Go.

The chess world experienced this upheaval 20 years earlier (even before the deep learning revolution) when the IBM Deep Blue program in 1997 defeated Gary Kasparov the reigning World Champion who was widely considered one of the greatest chess players ever. 

Deep Learning has further boosted the capability of the chess programs so that the top AIs possess an ELO rating of over 3800 in comparison to the 2850 rating of Kasparov, which is also the rating of the current best human player, Magnus Carlsen. A commercial chess program running on your smartphone can defeat Carlsen, and the top programs would not lose a single game.

Yet chess is more popular than ever thanks in part to the ease of online playing, and some top grandmasters have become social media stars. For example, GM Hikaru Nakamura has half a million followers on Twitter and 2.5 million subscribers on YouTube. 

For chess at least what matters is EQ rather than "IQ"; the "chess IQ" of the AI far outstrips any human and yet no one pays attention to the computer chess championships, whereas the human chess tournaments still garner substantial publicity. 

The article closes with Lee Sedol reflecting on the future of his child in this world changed by AI:

"His 17-year-old daughter is in her final year of high school. When they discuss what she should study at university, they often consider a future shaped by A.I.

“We often talk about choosing a job that won’t be easily replaceable by A.I. or less impacted by A.I.,” he said. “It’s only a matter of time before A.I. is present everywhere.”

AI will indeed be omnipresent in the future, but so far it has not replaced professional chess players or professional Go players. Lee Sedol has suffered a blow to his ego but not to his livelihood.

The Acolyte

I am enjoying The Acolyte, a more nuanced and ambivalent view of "good" versus "evil" in the Star Wars universe.

One of the best scenes is when the "villain" Qimir strikes down after a fierce battle the acolyte of the "hero" Sol (and in the same moment revealing his identity), and Sol cries out: "How could you kill her she was only a child!"

Qimir cooly replies: "You are the one who brought her here." 

Epitaph

Not so great if your epitaph reads "most prominent global warming denier". Many politicians still alive continue to deny the fact of anthropogenic climate change; in the U.S. all or nearly all of these politicians belong to the GOP:

"Former Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, a Republican who led the Environment Committee, is dead at 89. Sometimes called Capitol Hill’s most conservative politician, Inhofe was arguably Washington’s most prominent denier of the established science of human-generated climate change."

Certainly there are those who will celebrate Inhofe's achievements in the same way that there are many who celebrate the achievements of confederate "war heroes." But most Americans view them as traitors who fought against the United States of America so that they could continue to enslave their fellow human beings in the name of Christianity, and so too will History remember.

What did I write about?

Aging besets all of us whether Cristiano Ronaldo, President Biden, you or me. Of course the consequences of aging depend on your age whether you are 80, 60, 40, or 20. As people live longer thanks to modern medicine, the incidence of neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's Disease and Parkinson's Disease (which are fundamentally aging diseases in which older cells are dying off) will increase dramatically despite improvements in prevention and care.

Yesterday I was inspired by an excellent blog post I read to write my own. I vaguely remembered (my memory is not what it used to be) that I had just opened an account on Ghost to try something new and different from Blogger. But when I clicked on the bookmark, I was confronted with this:

So off went an angry email to the Ghost customer service, and this morning the representative replied and helpfully reminded me that I was on a three month free trial and that it had expired (i.e. I needed to upgrade to the paid "Pro" account). The site and its content had been deleted (with no warning). I completely understand and so I have returned to Blogger whose free trial lasts forever. 

Then I pondered the existential question of what content had been deleted? I had no idea. My best guess was that it was about President Claudine Gay and her unjust ouster from Harvard by reactionary conservative forces who mounted a campaign based on racist/sexist allegations of "plagiarism". One prominent example of her "plagiarism" was using the verbatim wording from another paper to describe a specific technique as if scientists don't cut and paste their methods section.

I had the insight to go through my Mastodon posts, where I don't post as much as Twitter or Threads, to see if I had tweeted out the blog post, and found the following:

So best I can reconstruct is that the post was on an article by Dana Smith about "Why Do We Age?". The explainer describes the hallmarks of aging listing some key factors. My response was that all of the factors likely contribute in a significant fashion to aging. Further I am a big proponent of the free radical theory of aging which posits that "organisms age because cells accumulate free radical damage over time." This damage can be direct or indirect and affects all biological macromolecules, not just DNA although DNA is probably the most important target.

The Parable of an Aging Superstar

Portugal men's soccer (football) team bowed out of the Euro 2024 tournament with a 0-0 loss (5-3 penalties) to France in the quarterfinals. As has been the case for the past two decades, the team was led by their transcendent striker Cristiano Ronaldo. The only problem is that he is now 39.

Long considered one of the great players in the World finishing in the top three of the Ballon d'Or award (MVP in men’s international soccer) 12 times including 5 first places finishes, Cristiano Ronaldo has not only led the Portugal team, but also has been the best player on the best teams in the best leagues for decades. That distinction came to a crashing halt a couple of years ago when he was unceremoniously benched while playing for Manchester United in the Premier League. 

Father Time is undefeated, and Cristiano Ronaldo is the latest to learn this lesson.

Despite evidence of his decline, Portugal not only inserted him into the starting line-up, but also once again built the team around him, accentuating his strengths while covering up his weaknesses. Not surprisingly he played nearly every single minute in the tournament. 

Some thought this plan was a mistake. For example, the ESPN commentator Gab Marcotti wrote an article on this subject which began by first summarizing Ronaldo’s poor performance in the tournament:

“The numbers are cold and merciless. Ronaldo took 23 shots in this tournament, the second most by any player failing to score in the Euros since the group stage format was introduced in 1980. His expected goals of 3.51 without finding the net are the most ever at a major men's tournament since 1980.”

Indeed, he had not started in the knockout rounds of the World Cup two years earlier:

“The odd thing here is that this is one boil that had already been lanced. Ronaldo had been dropped for the knockout rounds by Martinez's predecessor, Fernando Santos, at the Qatar World Cup just 18 months ago.” 

At the tippy top highest levels of competition, where the stakes are the highest, small differences in performance can lead to decisive changes in outcome. And make no mistake Renaldo’s decline has been crystal clear. Whether by the “eye test”, by topline statistics like goals scored, or by sports analytic metrics of his tournament performance quoted above, he is not the player he used to be.

Of course it was not incumbent on Ronaldo to bench himself, but the team manager Roberto Martinez and others in charge should have made the decision to put the best team possible on the playing pitch:

"Was he expecting Ronaldo to signal to the bench and say "Boss, I'm exhausted, it's not happening for me today, let's make a change?" That would be delusional. Elite athletes thrive on self-confidence and self-belief. Ronaldo spews it from every pore. Expecting him to take himself out of the game is just silly."

What were the consequences of letting Cristiano Ronaldo lead the team and play such a prominent role? in the opinion of the soccer expert Gab Marcotti:

"Ronaldo's legacy is secure. It doesn't need to be preserved. Maybe if Martinez had realized it earlier, maybe if he'd seen him as just another one of his players -- like he was at the end, applauding the fans and consoling his teammates -- Portugal would be in the semifinals."