Rational reactions and irrational reactors

At the risk of being too untimely, I had initially decided to not write about the nuclear crisis in Japan since the moment had presumably passed. The moment, however, won't seem to end and commentary has annoyed me enough that I wanted to share a few thoughts.

I keep on hearing journalists refer to our 'irrational' fear of radiation and nuclear power in general. The argument goes as follows: In the past 30 years (Chernobyl included) nuclear power is directly responsible for x deaths whereas fossil fuel consumption is directly responsible for y deaths; y is much greater than x therefore we should be more scared of fossil fuels. I'm even willing to ignore the logical fallacy of this argument which completely overlooks the number of people killed/injured as a percentage of those who work in these industries (far more work in fossil fuels and therefore larger gross numbers of deaths are to be expected, all things being equal).

Thousands of people do die in coal mines every year, and the sum total of people who die in natural gas explosions in any given year exceeds the number killed at Chernobyl - a nuclear accident far worse than the current situation. Its important to keep these facts in mind, and to not forget the utter ineptitude of the BP calamity and the enormous environmental damage it caused.

But suppose I will give you ten thousand dollars if you complete one of three tasks: A, B, and C. I now tell you that you have a 1/100 chance of losing a finger at endeavor A, a 1/1000 chance of losing an arm in endeavor B(but no chance of losing a finger), and a 1/100000000 chance of being killed at endeavor C (but no chance of losing a finger or an arm). Which do you choose? Which is riskier?

Task A has the highest probability of something bad happening. But is it irrational to say that B or C has a higher risk? Though there is a lower chance of something bad happening, the cost of that event is much higher. The question was rhetorical, and the answer you should've realized is 'no' - it all depends on how we assign relative costs to loss of a finger, arm, and a life and individuals will likely assign these costs very differently. 

Fossil fuels are task A: people will die to satiate our need for gas and electricity. Some of us will feel bad about it, all of us probably should, but this is the cold hard reality. Accidents will happen with relative frequency but the impact of each will likely be miniscule in terms of loss of lives. 

With nuclear power, we'll rarely have a problem. However, the 'worst case scenario' for a nuclear plant is much worse than for fossil fuel plants and it's not irrational to fear nuclear based on that fact. 

Radiation levels in Tokyo, a city of 13+ million residents, are apparently 20x their average level (still farrrrr below anything known to be harmful). It would take a perfect storm of events for radiation of lethal levels to ever suffocate a major city, but that perfect storm - however unlikely - is conceivable in a way that its simply not for coal/natural gas/oil. 

I'm not at all against nuclear power. It won't solve our energy problems, but it's one of the least bad (and feasible) alternatives that we have at our disposal to stunt our dependence on fossil fuels, a cause that I believe in. Yet I recognize that some people could assign different values to the risks and be overwhelmed by the catastrophic possibilities that it presents and thus take a different opinion, and this is not irrational thinking.

What I'm ever-so-vaguely trying to say is that; it is futile and useless to argue for and/or against nuclear power (or any topic, for that matter) without arguing the root cause of different opinons: the values and premises which form the basis of the costs and benefits for that individual. Once you've convinced me of your premise, your conclusion will be logical. Few people understand how to construct arguments at this level and instead the airwaves are full of people ranting for or against nuclear power in completely unproductive ways. This is my annoyance of the day.

Self improvement through pharmacology

I just finished watching 'Limitless' and while 1/2 of the movie was an unexplained non-sensical mess, the other 1/2 has me thinking. Premise in a nutshell: Man takes drug, gets ridiculously smart, makes lots of money on account of his newfound intelligence, has lots of sex on account of his oldfound good looks, learns languages, fights amazingly, and otherwise chalks his life up in the win column.

Science fiction, of course, but it raises an interesting question about how our society will or won't deal with memory- or cognitive-enhancing drugs. Though we only prescribe them for individuals effected with ADHD, one could argue that adderall and ritalin might already fit this bill. Just go to your nearest neighborhood college campus on finals week and ask around to see if these drugs really only enhance the focus of individuals afflicted with ADHD.

Another example that I recently learned about is Modafinil (see: Wake Up, Little Susie). This is a drug that claims to drastically reduce the amount of sleep that individuals need with few/no side effects. There is controversy surrounding both its efficacy and the no side-effects claims, but nevertheless, the benefits aren't necessarily restricted to the prescribed individuals (narcolepsy and sleep apnea).

What if new varieties of adderall/ritalin/modafinil work even better? And the real kicker, what if they can start to do it with minimal/no side-effects? I, for one, think this is inevitable (for a recent scientific treatment, see: A critical role for IGF -II in memory consolidation and enhancement).

The authors of the aforementioned study showed that by injecting mice in their hippocampus with Insulin like growth factor II (IGF-II) after training the mice had greatly enhanced memory recall abilities. Much like 'Limitless', these memories were already created via the training and dosage with this drug 'cemented' those memories so that they were available for recall weeks down the line. Injections to the brain aren't quite as ideal as a pill, but a mouse is an extremely complex organism and these kind of results point in the direction of serious advances in the realm of cognitive enhancing pharmacology.

This concept of enhancing our cognition, or ridding ourselves of sleep is quite controversial because in a sense we're not curing anything but I would argue that 'cure' drastically depends only on what you call normal. Most diseases are spectrum disorders, and our society has set a minimum bar for 'normal'. We have no problem prescribing drugs to bring individuals up to that bar. But that line whereby someone crosses from ADHD to 'normal' is incredibly fuzzy and there are many individuals who equally far on the other end of the continuum with focal abilities that are greater than the population average.

A high school teacher of mine belongs to a rather elite group of people known as healthy insomniacs who need only 3 or 4 hours of sleep per day to feel perfectly rested. He is 'abnormal' if we define our normal to be the population average, but no one would say that he has a disease.If we can design a drug to bring narcoleptic individuals up to a reasonable level of 8 hrs of sleep per day, I can't fathom a logical argument against bringing the average person up to that 3 or 4 hour per day level where unique individuals already reside.

Drugs that enhance physical performance are generally frowned upon in the sporting world, but sports is a zero sum game with winners and losers. If we can design drugs to safely increase memory storage and recall, enhance focus, and/or decrease the amount of sleep required, no one loses. The technological and intellectual advancements that this could make possible are vast and it would almost be immoral to not allow this to happen.

The only question that haunts me is when to personally decide that the benefits are large enough, and the side effects low enough to take the plunge. I don't have that line sketched in my head to know when pharmacology has crossed it, but I'm happy to be thinking about it.

A little more than kin, and less than kind

Round number 2: I've given up on my other blog primarily for the sake of a name change and also to turn over a new leaf. As many of you know, I've begun a new stage of my life during which time I hope to write more, or at least more thoughtfully. This will overlap with a period in my life where I will be unquestionably busy with other pursuits but I maintain my unbridled optimism about writing more frequently.

Of course, I'm not simply writing this for myself. Comments and criticisms of format, style, and (most importantly) content are expected and wished for. So please enjoy, tell your friends, and discuss.