Psychology

First uploaded on 2023/06/15
Last updated on 2023/06/19
Copyright(C)2022-2023 jos <jos@kaleidoscheme.com> All rights reserved.

I once heard a man who claimed to be a psychologist. He walked into a room of about 40 people waiting to hear him. He was well dressed, but I knew from the start that he was not to be trusted. He drew a line down the middle of the room and divided it into right and left groups. I was in the left group, so I kept my face up, but the people in the right group were told to get down on their desks. He showed us a picture of a back of a young lady. It was not a very pretty picture, but a rough pencil sketch. Then, he told us to get down on the desks. And, he told the group on the right to look up and showed them a picture too.

Finally, everyone in the room looked up. He showed us a picture again. It was a picture of a young lady' back again. It was a little more disheveled than before, but still that picture. He asked us, "Is this a picture of a young lady?" Of course it is. I raised my hand. I thought everyone raised their hand, but no. Only the audience in the left group raised their hands. He continued, "Now, who can see that this is a picture of an old woman?" People in the group on the right raised their hands. What is an old woman? It looks like the picture of a young lady, doesn't it?

He revealed the truth. In fact, there were three pictures; one of which was completely a young lady's back, one of which was completely an old woman's face, and the rest of which looked exactly intermediate between these two pictures. He showed the picture of the young lady to the group on the left, including me, then the picture of the old woman to the group on the right, and finally the intermediate picture to both. Since I did not know the picture of the old woman's face, I naturally assumed that when I saw the intermediate picture, it was the picture of the young lady's back that I had seen first. The group on the right had only seen the old woman's face, so when they saw the intermediate picture, they would assume it was the picture of the old woman's face.

He was proud of the success of his experiment and said, "You see, this is what we call an assumption. We cannot objectively judge what it is, even if we see the same thing. It is always a subjective judgment influenced by experience we have seen or heard before."

What is he talking about? It's a matter of course. I don't know a picture of an old woman's face, and if I were shown a picture of a young lady's back just before I saw a similar picture, I would think it was the same one. He's doing something as obvious as that? As a job? What a shady guy! I certainly thought being a psychologist was a carefree job at the time.

But this experiment of his, in a way, strikes at the essence of all phenomena involving human beings.

Almost all of the people involved in cumulus parameterization research today probably come from a meteorological background. They must have passed an advanced meteorology exam as a prerequisite for this work. Indeed, meteorology has explained phenomena at each level of the scale hierarchy in terms of respective dynamics; namely, synoptic, meso-scale, and cumulus dynamics. Their approach is to apply the dynamical methods, that have been successful so far, to the new problem. It is a natural promotion of meteorology, and that is what people agree and expect.

To tell you the truth, I am different from them. I originally came from a physics department and took a fluid dynamics course for only one semester. But I was riveted by the lecture. The excellent lecturer introduced me (not "us", because there was only one student in that class! In those days, physics was all about quantum mechanics, and all the other students were interested in nothing else.) various phenomena of fluids; instead of just showing me a pile of formulas, he explained the physical implications in detail. At that time, much of the research in fluid dynamics was devoted to nonlinear waves. But he taught me not only about wave phenomena but also about all kinds of nonlinear phenomena in fluids, many of which were incompatible with intuition. I was always amazed at the vast differences in the phenomena between linear and nonlinear fields. Some time later, I happened to be assigned a research subject to study the interaction between convection and radiation. Thus, I did not have the advanced meteorological knowledge or the noble mission to solve the global warming problem as other climate researchers do. I have been just interested in the wonderful motion of fluids.

However, I am convinced that my poor background is not a disadvantage to me. While other researchers have been shown a picture of an old woman's face, I have seen a different picture of a young lady's back. We see the same phenomenon of transport out of cumulus clouds, but we see it in very different ways.

To us, it seems pointless to apply across different scales the dynamics that were applicable at each hierarchy. In particular, we do not believe that cumulus dynamics, the smallest scale dynamics, is responsible for the outflow into the atmosphere, which has a much larger scale. If such a phenomenon occurred, it would violate the second law of thermodynamics. A small-scaled blowout that is dynamically forced would be immediately converted into turbulence, which would only promote local mixing. Thus, the transport of such small scale outflow has very poor efficiency and is therefore unrealistic. Just as we don't know much about advanced meteorology, they may not care much about the nonlinearity of phenomena occurring between different physical scales. Or, perhaps they were so concerned with advanced state-of-the-art cumulus dynamics that they forgot to filter through the most basic second law of thermodynamics. On the other hand, RDC with a large physical scale, obtained by considering thermodynamical equilibrium and mass continuity outside the cumulus, appears to be much more reasonable to us. It is a completely new approach based on the field physics in the structure of the equilibrium atmosphere, beyond the framework of the old hierarchy of meteorological dynamics.

As the swindler told, it might be impossible to know objectively whether the picture is a young lady's back or an old woman's face. However, as long as the outflow from the cumulus cloud is a subject of scientific research, it should be possible to conclude what is correct by logical consideration and observation. At least, it is not fair to take only one approach, DD, simply because of the absolutely large number of researchers or because it is the opinion of well-known researchers. We have pointed out the principle problems with DD and have also presented an alternative, RDC. We believe that DD research alone should not be pursued without pointing out the physical problems with RDC or implementing, testing, and confirming RDC to show that it is hopeless. We hope that as many researchers as possible will take an interest in RDC.