Koby’s Kaos

I am sure it’s true. That there are some people plucked out of obscurity because of their silent hard work and humility, bonked on the head by a fairy godmother, matched to a mate beyond their dreams, and crowned with the success they truly deserve. But other than you and me, no one else comes to mind.

Arrogance is an underrated virtue–a necessary but insufficient pillar of success. I am not talking about aggression. The existence of aggressively arrogant co-workers is the reason ear wax evolved. Instead, think “assertiveness.” Assertiveness is when you don’t force your way in, but you don’t put up with excessive crap either. Sometimes it’s easier to be assertive in support of a quieter coworker–someone who really has a lot to contribute to the solution but the blowhards will never listen to without a little, uh, intervention. All of you have played the gallant knight (NOT GENDER SPECIFIC–I just don’t think “gallant maiden” or “gallant Amazon” quite works–if you have an idea, please send it in) defending someone’s ideas and even their right to contribute–if not, START NOW.

However, it’s often harder to be assertive about one’s own ideas. (And no, you can’t count on the quiet co-worker to come to your aid. That’s 200-level course work.) Yet the strength gained by diversity can only happen when some of those diverse individuals are willing to risk opening their mouths. While the usual one to three blowhards who always run things may be thoroughly competent, they can be predictable herd-followers because, well, they ARE the herd.

Enter the Prophet (stage right)

Some of the best moments of my life have been in the Arlene Schnitzer auditorium, surround by like-minded rabble, eagerly being stirred up by a distinguished rebel scientist speaker and continuing the discussions among ourselves long after the lights come up. Blowing fresh air into the halls of learning has long been the design of the Linus Pauling Memorial Lectures–named after one of the best annoying thinkers of the twentieth century. They are organized by the Institute for Science, Engineering and Public Policy in Portland, Oregon. They continually bring in pundits who have never lost their passion–people who have bucked the system, are bucking the system, and probably will never stop bucking the system. People who if they find themselves co-opted by the mass, will probably devote their remaining years to bucking themselves.

People just like you.

What these people do, even if they turn out to have been quite wrong, is to clear away suffocating scientific hypocrisy and make more room for taking leaps and chances.

I get a front row seat on the lectures because Mentor Graphics, the major sponsor, invites the local tech press to sit in. It is my favorite professional perk.

Last December the speaker was Freeman Dyson (do NOT ask him about Dyson Spheres–a misapplication of his ideas that evokes wrath). Professor Dyson is kind of an OT prophet among physicists. He is very quick to spot slopping thinking and complacency, and he is very good at analyzing whether the current big idea’s clothes are really there.

One problem, however, with watching a good windmill jouster is that sometimes you have to cheer for the windmills.

Global Warming, Humbug!

When someone brought up the then recent revelations concerning fudged Global Warming data and an attempt to cover it up, I at least expected some pious words and the chance to tell my conservative row-mate “See, all TRUE scientists agree.” Well, they don’t. Dyson’s response was that current assumptions were based on incomplete data and unverifiable assumptions and needed to be attacked. I was stunned, delighted, and appalled. I didn’t expect a dean of physicists to sound like Rush Limbaugh.

Dyson objected that that the real work had been hidden from sight. Science that was not open and verifiable was not science.

“But what if the Al Gore’s are right?” Someone asked. “Shouldn’t we be acting as if it is true until we know for sure?” Dyson shook his head at the questioner’s naïveté. I just shook.

Dyson talked about the lack of scientific merit in climate models. It’s become an industry based on very insufficient observations. Those models look good to the layman but look shoddy to the expert. He thinks that stratospheric cooling is much more serious and much easier to measure. He also pointed out other observations such as the recent comparative silence of the sun, and anecdotal evidence we’re now getting colder. Why not plan for the next Ice Age instead?

Ok, science does have a history of being its own worst enemy. Scientists, like engineers, like technicians, like marketing VPs, like journalists, like CEOs are finally just humans. Whenever science forms a bloc of consensus, its reptilian emotional workings seem to spawn a block to thinking. It buries contrary evidence and shuns any outside the club interpretations. Take the now accepted prehistoric Ice Lake Missoula which caused as many as 200 cataclysmic ice age floods that shaped everything west to the Oregon coast. The lonely geologist who first assembled the evidence and formed the theory became an outcast–virtually laughed out of the biz. Now I do love reading David and Goliath science stories, even though David is usually washed up or dead before the giant even notices it’s been hit. I just don’t like having my pet Goliath stoned.

But what about Arrogance, Herr Doctor Kobylecky?

Sorry, got sidetracked. But my point is that you have to be something of a b-head to go against the current dogma. You have to have done your homework too, but to fight for publication and funding, or getting the spec changed, or challenging any entrenched notion, you have to be a b-head. You also need what Howard Rheingold calls a “crap detector.” And you need to be able to turn it on yourself and not hide from the readings.

At the supper after the lecture, Dyson and the smaller crowd began talking about the role of physicists within science. I naively raised my hand and asked about the role of ex-physic majors. The University of Illinois had put nine of us in a clump in a freshman dorm. What seems odd, I said, was that none of stayed in Physics, but we all made waves wherever we went. The few I had been able to track did various postdoc work in diverse fields, one had even become a psychiatrist and the only black sheep was, well, me.

Dyson seemed to look at me sadly. That was because, he said, you were all arrogant. You couldn’t believe that there was nothing you couldn’t understand, if only you looked hard enough. Physics students have to be arrogant, how else could they sit by themselves and think, and still assume they could somehow understand the universe?

This time my own Goliath had been gored. He described me, and many of my treasured friends, completely. I had only abandoned physics when I bumped into something that I could not really understand. My arrogance had been breached, and I felt exposed to a cold and hostile universe. So I did what any self-respecting ex-physic jock should do–switched over to softer subjects where a lie is as good as the truth if you can get the seminar to believe you.