Uncertainty Sucks. Happy Leap Day!

I'm taking this leap day opportunity to 1) fit in a post in February, and 2) veer from my usual Abandon Certainty mantra. It turns out that uncertainty sucks!

In some sense it is a luxury to abandon certainty, in terms of opening yourself up to the wonders of being alive, without assuming that you know the answers, and embracing change over stability. But there is little wonder in the uncertainty of not knowing where or whether you will be employed, when that next paycheck will come in, whether you will have enough food to feed your kids, and similar issues that too many people worry about every day. Perhaps the difference is in whether you are actively abandoning certainty or whether uncertainty has been thrust upon you.

Over the years I have interpreted this in terms of both Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and the Hindu Chakras. Before one can take an existential leap (pun intended!) into the unknown, one must first deal with the basic needs of nutrition, health, personal safety, etc. This is similar in spirit to the chakra hierarchy, where the three basal chakras dealing with survival, pleasure, and willpower must be opened before the heart chakra, which deals with openness and love. So perhaps the uncertainty that sucks is about basic needs which, if not met, become a barrier to experiencing the uncertainty that is awesome.

As this current and prolonged period of uncertainty about my future continues (seriously, this is a painfully slow metaphorical death), I am finding it quite hard to experience anything awesome about uncertainty. It sucks and I hate it and it is causing stress, anxiety, and depression. I'm losing sight of where I am and where I'm going as if my life is guided by some existential uncertainty principle. My existential wave function had better collapse soon. Is the existential cat metaphorically alive or dead??

OK, OK, enough with the quantum physics analogies. Happy leap day everybody. Today is a day to remember that the Earth takes 365.25 days to travel around the Sun. Enjoy the fact that this is yet another day where you can eat, sleep, and breathe, and worry about everything else another day.

Theory vs. Observation

In astronomy there are theorists and observers. Theorists do scary things like path integrals and observers do tedious things like data reduction, and somehow the field has managed to inch forward over the centuries to advance our knowledge of the universe. At one point astronomers were often both, but these days that is rare.

This year, Cosmology on the Beach was populated by many non-astronomers and certainly many theorists, so that might be why the question, "You said ellipticals don't have disks; does that mean they don't have star formation?" was not too out of place. The theorist lecturer answered, basically, yes, and then went on to muse on why there is this difference between spirals and elliptical galaxies. It occurred to me that an observational astronomer might have went into some detail about what different galaxy surveys have found, examples of observed star formation in ellipticals, and the properties of both. By glossing over details and giving the simple answer (yes), the theorist's answer was perhaps less true than my hypothetical observer's answer. The real world is more complicated. But instead of detailed examples and caveats, the theorist's attempt to answer "why" was perhaps more meaningful.

Thus I am writing this instead of listening to discussion which has now moved on to the subject of inflation theories (both less true and less meaningful). I wonder if the statement: "Observers are concerned with what is true; theorists are concerned with what is meaningful" is either true or meaningful. Observers (and experimentalists) collect facts about the universe. Theorists try to put these facts together into a coherent whole and derive new facts. Obviously both would argue that they care about both what is true and what is meaningful, and they would be correct, but not in a meaningful way. ;-)

Most theories end up being falsified by observations, so I think it is easy to accept the first half; but what about meaning? Can meaning even exist without truth? I would say yes, but it is not obvious. I think meaning is really found in connections, processes, and dependencies, whereas facts are static. Facts are independent of other facts. Regular readers may not be surprised that I prefer change over stability and processes over products, and perhaps that is why I'm not an observer.

I think it's not much of a stretch to say that truth is stable, final, while meaning connects truths to each other and to people. Observations themselves lack meaning unless they say something about theories... so for example, observations of N stars and their positions, brightnesses, colors, etc. don't say anything meaningful about the universe until they are connected with a theory of star formation. On the other hand, observers collect beautiful truths that stand on their own while theorists only ever make models and attempt to describe reality with math. Observers touch reality itself, while theorists play around with representations of reality. Perhaps that's why I'm not a theorist either....

How much of this "theory vs. observation" divide is a result of personality differences, and how much is a result of the need to specialize? Theorists and Observers are both important and needed, and although both admit that the other has their uses, both have put themselves into a box of one or the other. Both make jokes at the others' expense: theorists aren't connected to the real world and observers fit lines through scatter plots. Sometimes I laugh at these and sometimes I find myself bothered by them. Can't we all just get along? Of course, whenever a joke is directed at me I can say "no, not an observer!" or "not a theorist!" And then I say "phenomenologist" and vanish in a puff of smoke.

But then I find myself in a puff of smoke! And I'm not even sure I can use the word "phenomenologist" legitimately. I simulate things and analyze the simulations, so I don't do scary integrals and I don't do tedious data reduction. I'm probably close enough to a theorist to be grouped with them, since basically my computer calculates the integrals for me. It turns out a lot of science can happen from inside puffs of smoke.

Death

I decided to pull out some Tarot cards today, and the first card was Death.

Don't worry, it's just a metaphor. And a pretty accurate one too. A lot of things are changing right now and a period of my life is ending. I'm in the middle of figuring out what the next stage of my life is going to be like. And before anything new can happen, the old has to become old. It has to die. Only with death can there be birth; only with birth can there be death.

Death is not an evil thing, nor always bad, but it is often scary, and sometimes painful. We become comfortable in the life we have and start to fear that it won't always be so comfortable, that at some point something will be different. Fear of death is fear of change, for death is the first step to change. I mostly mean metaphorical death here, as in ending, leaving, or being destroyed, but physical death too. Physical death is the ultimate change from which there is no changing back (in so far as anything can really be changed back). But we forget we have already gone through such a transition: birth. We come into this world and we go out, there is no escaping this truth, for the nature of life is change. Creation and destruction are the two sides of that change and merely different ways of describing a single event.

I was at a funeral recently and as I listened to the pastor, I became convinced that the nature of religion is to address in some way the fear of death. And in my opinion, most do this the completely wrong way, which is to get rid of death entirely. When you die you go to heaven. Death is not real, you won't really die, the people you love won't die, everything will be perfect in the light of God. "Others have to say 'goodbye', we get to say, 'see you later'." To me that means no growth can occur, no moving forward but always looking back - eternal stagnation and sameness - the absence of change and so the absence of life. The absence of life indeed - the very thing that was feared - but also the absence of death. What is left? No, I would rather say goodbye. I would rather be able to feel loss and sadness and pain. How can one grieve if there is nothing to grieve? How can I rejoice in the new if I never let go of the old?

I don't mean to be too hard on the idea of heaven, though. I don't mind if people believe in what gives them comfort, and I don't mind interpreting heaven as a metaphor even though people take it literally. ;-) But I will continue to say goodbye. And hello! (FYI that means to babies, in this analogy.)

One of my favorite movies is The Fountain and its major theme happens to be death. As the husband struggles to cure his dying wife, he spends less time with her. By trying to have her forever, he loses her now. And the wife instead becomes fascinated with the story of the Mayan creator god, who plants the tree of life from his own dying body: "Death as an act of creation." "Death is the road to awe." (One could say, the road to "awesome!" But one wouldn't.) And in the picture on the Tarot card, the dead one is placed in the fetal position in the womb of the earth. The snake sheds its skin to permit new growth. Or, to put it a little grossly, phallic and wombic imagery come together to create new life. (They make baby imagery.)

Having said all that, I'm not looking forward to my own metaphorical death at all! But I have to remind myself that Fear won't help anything... and then I have to eat some chocolate and calm down.

P.S. Almost forgot to mention another thing about The Fountain. I remember thinking the credits looked a bit like cosmological structure formation, but I didn't take it quite this far. Pretty awesome.

Simulacra

I recently bought new ear buds. I wasn't sure I even wanted them, but they would be small and good for traveling. The ones I had came with my media player and were cheap, too big, and the felt covers were coming apart. The earphones I use at work I like, but the wire is a bit too short, and anyway I wanted some for traveling. So I bought some mid-level ear buds and jesus, they feel nice and have some sweet bass!

And it got me thinking... the difference between the music I was listening to then and what I'm listening to now is purely due to the little tiny speakers in my ears (which I still find pretty annoying and weird). So which one is right? Obviously neither is the right way for the music to sound... it's not like my new ear buds are some how tapping into what the musicians thought the music should sound like. What they created with their instruments (synthesized or acoustic or whatever) is lost forever... it was captured by certain equipment, and what is played back is only a cheap copy. Then the sound people do what they do and change the levels and it becomes a different thing altogether. The musicians and the sound people decide on what the copied and played-back music is supposed to sound like, and they produce it.

And the journey has only begun! The music is consumed in various ways... on the radio, as CDs, or, and I say this with some disgust, bought as mp3s. Neither is what the musicians actually created, but at least the CDs represent what they think the music should sound like, instead of castrated and decapitated mutant-clones that contain a tenth of the original information. But then these digested forms of music are played with some kind of speaker and finally make it to your ear according to what the speakers can do; how do we believe that the speakers' interpretation of your music-playing software's reconstruction of whatever mutilated audio file that was torn from the original digital copy of music that was captured out of the air in some box where the actual music was created... how do we believe it represents that actual music?

It is actually a simulacrum; a "likeness" or "similarity." It is not the actual music, but we are used to taking symbols to mean the thing that they symbolize. I will admit that I only know the word "simulacrum" (plural: simulacra) because Jean Baudrillard's philosophical book "Simulacra and Simulation" was discussed in the behind the scenes DVD of The Matrix and referred to when Morpheus tells Neo, "Welcome to the desert of the real." The music that we listen to is a simulacrum of the music that it represents, and I don't mean to suggest that there is anything actually wrong with this way of listening to music, but it is interesting to think of it as it is and not what it appears to be. The journey from music creation to music appreciation, unless it takes place at a concert (and even then to some degree...), occurs through the degradation of meaning. The true form of the music (maybe Platonic, but maybe it's too late for me to be speculating on Platonic forms) exists in the act of music creation. Once the music is played, everything else is a copy, a likeness. (A shadow on the cave?)

I think the deep thing I'm going for here is that the creation of music is a process, and so it can't be captured, not by any audio equipment, and it certainly can't be sliced-and-diced until it's finally regurgitated into your ears. It exists only in the moment of its creation and is gone outside of that moment. BUT, listening to music is itself a process. All of my violent imagery aside, most of the true essence of the music survives this degradation of meaning, so that when you listen to some sweet beats it is an experience! Maybe the bass isn't all there and so some of the power of the moment is lost. Maybe it's an mp3 so it lacks complexity and fullness of sound... the complexity and fullness of the moment. But maybe listening to that combination of rhythym and melody is enough to bring you out of yourself and into your moment. Your attention is captured and you are fully aware of the music.

Even though the music may be a simulacrum, your experience of the music never is.

Crossings

Between forest and field, a threshold
like stepping from a cathedral into the street--
the quality of air alters, an eclipse lifts,

boundlessness opens, earth itself retextured
into weeds where woods once were.
Even planes of motion shift from vertical

navigation to horizontal quiescence:
there's a standing invitation to lie back
as sky's unpredictable theater proceeds.

Suspended in this ephemeral moment
after leaving a forest, before entering
a field, the nature of reality is revealed.

"Crossings" by Ravi Shankar

This poem came up on the PBS Newshour blog and I wanted to share.

That is all.

Jobs and Gender

There has lately been a bit of a scandal in (a very narrow segment of) the science community regarding a story published in Nature's Futures section called "Womanspace" by Ed Rybicki. Check it out for yourself, and then see which of the comments match your own opinions on the piece. There have been many blogs about it, including one by Ed in response to the outrage, that I am still reading and absorbing, and if I was on twitter I would probably start using the #womanspace tag, but a full blog post on this will have to wait.

What's more pressing currently is job season. In astronomy this is the time of year for postdocs, fellowships, and faculty positions to appear on the job register and rumor mill. I've been writing proposals, research summaries, research statements (which is incredibly vague and annoying), and finishing up papers. This morning I was sent a notice for new postdoc positions in my field. It turns out they're looking for people with different expertise than I possess, but sometimes it's nice not to have to apply for another job. And then I read the end of the advert and find myself back in #womanspace:

"Applications from disabled persons are encouraged and will be favoured when equally qualified. [The University] is committed to increase the percentage of female employees in sectors where they are underrepresented. We want to especially encourage female applicants to apply for these positions."

Now, as a female, I don't feel especially encouraged after reading these words. The intent is in the right place, but this type of disclaimer, I feel, only serves to promote the notion that women/minorities/disabled and other underrepresented groups only get accepted (to college, grad school, jobs) because of their demographic and not because they are qualified. The common conception that "all other things being equal" we will hire a woman or minority - held by those who believe they want to help - actually does more to hurt by reinforcing the Other-ness of these groups and down-playing their abilities, which is what all agree should matter in these situations. Consciously, people who think this way are saying "Your Other-ness is going to be a good thing, not a negative thing." But why should it matter at all? Does this mean that unconsciously, these people think the Other-ness is more important than actual qualifications? I don't want the fact that I'm female to be the deciding factor; I want to feel that I'm actually qualified for a job that I get. This type of thinking also reinforces the Imposter Syndrome in these "Other" groups: if my Other-ness is what got me here, maybe I don't really deserve to be here, I'm just filling a quota, etc.

The other side is how majority groups perceive this type of disclaimer. Those who aren't necessarily advocates for promoting equality among the majority and underrepresented groups see an unfair advantage being given to the Others at the expense of themselves. "These Others are not qualified and they are stealing our jobs! They are explicitly being favored! Not fair!!" Regardless of how fair the selection actually is (and I submit that standard practices give unfair advantages to majority groups because of unconscious biases and stereotypes, and that though this can be eliminated to some extent, the process will never be completely "fair"), the perception of unfairness is in fact quite harmful to all involved and especially to underrepresented groups, who always have to prove themselves with a higher standard just because of this assumption (held by few, not all, but enough to have an effect) that they start out less qualified because their Other-ness has helped them succeed.

There is in fact a growing amount of research into how unconscious biases creep into hiring decisions, including the writing of reference letters, that cause people of different groups (gender, race, etc.) to be judged with different standards. (Test your own unconscious biases here, you might surprise yourself!) After seeing a great talk on this topic by Dr. Abby Stewart, the PandA Diversity group has invited her to talk at JHU. Outright discrimination is much less of an issue these days so some are inclined to think the problem has been solved. Women just don't want to do science, right? As incredibly wrong as this is, and as unsupported by data from many studies that I don't feel like looking up and citing right now, some still do think this is the answer. Some may only think so unconsciously, having never bothered to consciously question their assumptions.

I could go on, but I'm getting into #womanspace issues again that will take more time and effort for me to sort out into a coherent post. Let's continue on with my day, during which I am reminded that the AAS job register has been updated (being the first of the month) and I should check it out. That's when I read this lovely job listing:

The Centre de Physique des Particules de Marseille (CPPM) invites applications for a postdoctoral position in cosmology. The successful candidate will work with Dr. Stephanie X on original cosmological probes using large-scale structure surveys. The position is suitable for a wide range of expertises from theory and data modelling to statistical analysis of large-scale structures of the universe and of N-body simulations.

The successful candidate is expected to interact strongly with researchers of the Center for Theoretical Physics (CPT) and the Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille (LAM). He will in particular work directly with Pr. ABC at CPT, who has led the development of new observables to probe the cosmological model. He will have privileged access to data from the BOSS and VIPERS redshift surveys. He is also encouraged to contribute to the science cases of next-generation wide-field surveys such as LSST, BigBoss and EUCLID in the conception of which our laboratories are strongly involved.

Perhaps it's because I've had #womanspace on the brain, but my immediate reaction was to get very angry. "Guess what job I'm not applying for," I tell my roommates. Oh, but the job is in France? It's probably just a translation issue, ain't no thang. (Full disclosure: no one ever actually said "ain't no thang," but they could have.) Other reactions are along the lines of "Oh, those French!" Somehow that failed to be satisfying, though my initial anger had cooled.

Then I noticed that the contact for the job was one Dr. Stephanie X. A woman! "You see!" says my roommate. "Ain't no thang!" (Ok ok, but he could have said that.) So maybe it is only a language issue and not a culture thing (those French with their insensitivity to gender, or something?), but the fact remains that it's not ok and I'm still pissed off. Whether or not I decide to apply (depending on factors other than choice of gender pronoun in the advert), I am seriously considering emailing Dr. X about it. On second thought, probably only if I don't decide to apply. But anyway, every other job listing has managed not to assume that the successful candidates will be male, and I feel like that is something to be encouraged. Whatever the reason how such language made it into the AAS job listing, it is completely unacceptable. Unacceptable!

I guess I'm less pissed off now. The lack of outrage from friends makes it hard to justify continued outrage in what's obviously an unintentional mistake that is completely unacceptable. I won't try to base my decision on whether to apply on this issue, but it will probably be a factor whether I want it to or not at this point. I wonder how many other female graduate students will read this and react with righteous indignation? I wonder if this job will get fewer female applicants compared to others? Of course, what would have been more awesome is if the advert ended with "females are especially encouraged to apply"...

Fear

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

- The Litany Against Fear, Dune, Frank Herbert

I remember only one time when I genuinely said this to myself. There have been many times when I might have thought “Fear is the mind killer” and then gone about my day, but one time I used the litany against fear as an actual litany. I was in the hospital, recovering from the surreal feeling of waking up after general anesthesia. I just had my third knee surgery in as many years and was about to be a senior in high school. The first two surgeries reconstructed my ACL, and I went back to playing soccer each time because that was a core part of my identity. This was supposed to be an exploratory surgery (screws from the first time prevented an MRI) and the doctor hoped the ligament was merely strained and could be fixed. Not the case.

It came unbidden. I don’t remember who told me the news, but I remember thinking it, repeating the whole thing, which I had read Dune enough times to memorize, over and over. I would not be recovered in time to play soccer my senior year. I would have to have another full reconstructive surgery and months of painful rehab, for nothing, because I certainly wasn’t good enough to play in college. (Side note: I ended up playing rugby and I don’t regret it, even though I did tear my ACL again senior year... haven’t had surgery because just thinking about hospitals and IVs and anesthesia fills me with dread and whatever I can run fine everything’s fine...) There’s probably no way for me to really convey what a blow this was, and I don’t exactly want to try, but the litany helped.

Part of it, I think, is that any kind of litany would help in that situation. A mantra that you repeat gives you something to focus on that is not the turmoil of your emotions or the racing of your thoughts, so you are able to just be while the shock wears off. But of course the mantra can’t be something meaningless – I don’t think “red socks red socks red socks” would be very encouraging in a time of crisis – so the litany helped because it is powerful. Fear is the “mind-killer” that prevents me from thinking rationally. I must “face my fear” instead of running away from the way things are. It will “pass over me and through me” because it is insubstantial, it is only fear; it is not the thing I fear and it is not me. “Only I will remain.” Saying the litany against fear or a similar mantra is a stabilizing force, and as we learned from the Avatar TV series, the first chakra (Earth) deals with survival and is blocked by fear.

This is significant, not just because I love that episode and it is one of the best explanations of the chakras I’ve ever heard, but because the chakras represent a hierarchy. You must open the base chakra before the others because spiritual insight or cosmic truth means nothing when you fear for your very survival. Fear is one of our most tangible and powerful emotions, and that is why it is so easily used to manipulate people. The conservative agenda has been very successful with “they are taking away your freedoms,” while loftier ideas of compassion (the heart chakra) and truth (the sound chakra) have much more difficulty taking hold. How can one have compassion for the other when one is afraid of the other?

I won’t go into politics or the culture of fear because it makes me angry, so I will stick with psychology. (I just mistyped “psychoco.” Freudian slip!) The hardest part of dealing with fear is not knowing what you’re afraid of, or even that you’re afraid. It can be hidden under layers of hate, anger, worry, anxiety, or despair. Of course, there’s no easy answer for that, but we could all use a little more introspection and self-awareness, because the things we are afraid of have power over us. We act or react to avoid them, but our fear of them comes from the inability to clearly see things as they are. That spider is not going to do you any harm; it is merely being a spider. That future disaster does not exist, because the future itself does not exist and neither does the past.

Face your fear. Find a point of stability within yourself. Open your Earth chakra. And if you still want to kill that spider, at least it won't be out of fear. ;-)