Yet There Is Method In It

“No amount of entertainment is worth the life of a child!” This is perfect political rhetoric, guaranteed to get the Question Time studio audience clapping their support. But it also explains why that same audience is beset by so much “nanny state gone mad” regulation. What’s more, it is wrong. Anyone who thinks that no amount entertainment is worth the life of a child either overvalues children or undervalues entertainment. Jamie Whyte, The Times

Something that made me laugh: Charlie Brooker on Aspirational TV. The last quote reminds me of this blog: “Far better is to sit here and sneer at the lot of it. Isn’t it? That’s what we like to do, isn’t it? Aye? Have a good sneer, aye? Aye, that cheers us up! Aye?”

AC1

Security guru Bruce Schneier has challenged the view that privacy and security are at loggerheads, suggesting the real debate is between liberty and control.

Schneier, security technologist and CTO of BT Counterpane, made the comments during a keynote address at the RSA Conference in London on Tuesday. He sees ubiquitous surveillance and measures such as identity cards tipping the balance towards the state, describing them as stepping stones towards a future where checks become less obtrusive while simultaneously more all-encompassing. The Register

Interesting view there and agrees with what I have said on this blog several times.

There was also a piece on the BBC about flat earth theory. How do you personally know the world is not flat (or flat)?

AC1

Organisers of the campaign, which was launched yesterday, were seeking £5,500 to run adverts in London saying There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life” on 30 buses for four weeks. By last night, individuals and organisations had pledged more than £47,900. The Guardian

This is an interesting case. On one hand, if religion can run adverts, why can’t atheists? But I immediately regret saying that since atheism is a very broad label that encompasses a range of ideas. I perhaps should have said the advert is promoting secular humanism. I also despise advertising because their underlying message is inherently illogical. This example illustrates advertising’s deception and to quote Nietzsche:

“Do this and that, refrain from this and that — and then you will be happy! And if you don’t…” [...] I call it the original sin of reason, the immortal unreason. (Twilight)

The advertisement is effectively saying “Belief in God makes you worry, instead enjoy live (be happy)”. The assumption, which is so impudently praised, is happiness is a criterion of truth.

One positive thing is both sides of the debate seem supportive of the adverts since it will provoke people to think. This is a mature attitude but I fear over optimistic (that people can think). (An immature response to criticism was recently seen in Afghanistan where student was sentenced to 20 years in prison for campaigning on feminism (and against religious teaching).) On the bus adverts:

“I think people will ask themselves, ‘On what basis can they make that statement?” said Inayat Bunglawala of the Muslim Council of Britain. “So it will get people thinking, so in that sense it can only be good.”

[...and...]

The Rev. Jenny Ellis, spirituality and discipleship officer for the Methodist Church, welcomed the ads.

“This campaign will be a good thing if it gets people to engage with the deepest questions of life,” she said. AP

Anti Citizen One

On BBC’s question time:

Goldsworthy: How far is he [Hoon] prepared to go to undermine our civil liberties to protect us… [from terrorists?]
Hoon: …To stop terrorists killing people in our society, quite a long way.
[and later]
Host: The words Julia [Goldsworthy] used were “undermining peoples civil liberties”. You said you would go quite a long way to undermine people’s civil liberies?
Hoon: Because the biggest civil liberty is not to be killed by terrorists.

Now I would grant that the right not to be killed is a human right. Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights reads “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.” But it is not correct to put this single natural right over the others in the way Hoon argues. With this logic, all the other rights may be abridged to serve the right “not to be killed by terrorists”. If anything, staying alive is less important than the other civil rights. As Patrick Henry said, “Give me Liberty, or give me Death!”. If you don’t have the other civil rights, some might think it justified in risking one’s own life to achieve civil rights - this is the case of revolutionaries, freedom fighters and “terrorists”.

I notice that article 12 begins “No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy….”. I guess one way to get around this right is to attempt universal surveillance so no individual can claim their privacy was arbitrary violated?

Anti Citizen One

In a refreshing break from current social norms, various artists at the Free Art Fair have been giving pieces away to members of the public for free. I applaud this because it notes that something is worth while even if it does not have a financial price tag. It also blurs line between professional and amateur - this distinction is often unhelpful when placing value on their work.

The ironic thing about altruistic acts is, if it is truly selfless, then the giver should not expect anything in return. The question that might be posed to a moralist, is if selfless action is the best action, why do we try to give gifts to people in the expectation they will be received? Isn’t receiving an unworthy action compared to altruism? This at least encourages others to act in an “unworthy” fashion.

A close relation is the action of giving (or bestowing) but without the baggage of altruism or even the baggage of expected rewards. (The action is not even its own reward, perhaps.) Perhaps the best is to give as a choice and, if a person is inclined, as necessity.

In other news, I was disturbed but unsurprised to read this:

With so many scientific papers chasing so few pages in the most prestigious journals, the winners could be the ones most likely to oversell themselves—to trumpet dramatic or important results that later turn out to be false. This would produce a distorted picture of scientific knowledge, with less dramatic (but more accurate) results either relegated to obscure journals or left unpublished. The Economist

I notice financial rewards are linked to a researcher’s publication record. Perhaps scientific journals could do with a little more of the bestowing virtue?

Anti Citizen One

PS Interesting news item on economic growth destroying the ecosystem.

I saw Steve Jones (the geneticist) talking about the future of the human species. It was a very slick presentation. It seemed to be an expanded discussion of an article he published in the telegraph. He claimed that human evolution has come to a halt. The reasons for this are perhaps not interesting in this blog’s context. I was immediately skeptical of his conclusion but he did add two important conditions: he was only referring to the western world and the halt in evolution was temporary.

Any claims of constancy or certain knowledge in the apparent world should be examined closely since they can only come from two lines of reasoning:
1) A priori - there is no reason why constancy (or even inconstancy) should be expected, so no certain claim can be made.
2) A posteriori - basing a theory on past observations can never provide certainty since the next observation might disprove a theory.

The purists would try to apply this reasoning to my argument. An uncertainty might be the possibility of other sources of knowledge apart from a priori and a posteriori. What we can say is any claim about the apparent world without an element of doubt is, at best, misleading*. Since the apparent world is different at different times, we can speculate that change is possible. It seems the universe has changed greatly through out its existence, and it is therefore conceivable that constancy is illusionary. We could say some things are constant and some things are transitory. There is also a possibility that an seeming constant in the world is in fact going through a slow transition - too slow for us to perceive. As Heraclitus said, “All things are flowing.” Also Nietzsche, “Insofar as the senses show becoming, passing away, and change, they do not lie.” (A luck “guess” by Heraclitus - that everything is made of one primordial element (fire) is not so far from the modern concept of mass/energy equivalence.)

A few blogs have attempted to rebut Steve Jones on practical grounds which might be interesting for some.

Anti Citizen One

* probably

There has been several creationism news articles recently. Instead of the usual analysis, I present four thought experiments that relate indirectly to the issues.

Thought experiment:

You have won a lottery (by random draw of a winner). There are three explanations for your winning:
1) It was part of God’s plan for you to win.
2) You were the only one to enter the lottery so winning was inevitable.
3) Many tickets were distributed and you won by chance.

If you don’t know how many tickets were distributed, is it possible to decide which possibility is correct?

Thought experiment:

You see a rock archway in a sea cliff. If any part of the arch was removed, the structure would collapse. The rock archway could have been formed by:
1) Being created in its current form.
2) Created by erosion to form its current shape.

If you are uncertain about the truth of 2, can you infer 1?

Thought experiment:

You see an illusion in which the magician appears to vanish and reappear. You might conclude one of the following:
1) The magician can really vanish and reappear at will.
2) The magician has performed an illusion and you do not know the method.

If you are uncertain about the truth of 2, can you infer 1?

Thought experiment:

If belief X causes life to be full of unhappiness, reckless behavior, materialistic concerns or immorality, is it
1) false
2) true
3) unknown as to is truth or falsity.

If we are unclear as to the religious instinct, it is stated thus:

There is another form of temptation, even more fraught with danger. This is the disease of curiosity. It is this which drives us to try to discover the secrets of nature which are beyond our understanding, which can avail us nothing, and which man should not wish to learn. St Augustine

Further reading: Who are the British creationists?

Anti Citizen One

In other news, India’s use of brain scans in courts dismays critics

PS. I have been thinking about these ideas for a while but it seems they are half remembered examples from Dawkins.

PPS “Nitimur in vetitum, semper cupimusque negata” (Ovid), we strive after the forbidden.

Update: ‘Creationism’ biologist quits job

At the risk of repetition, there is a good piece on correlation on the BBC.

And a piece on offense overriding expression of ideas is also interesting.

I just finished The Gay Science. Really good and really quotable (unfortunately for you dear reader!). “April weather” is present in it.

Anti Citizen One

Several very interesting news items:

“A federal judge says the University of California can deny course credit to applicants from Christian high schools whose textbooks declare the Bible infallible and reject evolution.” Interesting state and religion issue. SFGATE

UK Government proposes wide reaching surveillance powers to investigate … well anything. I expect we will soon be given a helpful reminder by an anonymous camera operator when I forget to turn the oven off. I am now thinking the balance of power to the government from the individual is getting extreme. Individual rights are fraying at the edges and are almost torn apart. PCPRO

China: where an application to hold a protest is met with arrest for “disturbing social order”. BBC

Interesting piece on atheism in the US - The Guardian

And a subscription only news item, the New Scientist had a issue exploring the boundaries of reason. I have not finished reading all of it yet!

AC1

It strikes me that several recent government policies have been concerned with resisting a decline in our “way of life”. Security, the economy and our personal welfare are all held by governments as something that is already good and must be protected from immigration, terrorism and violent crime. This view tends to see the world as a place that has no room for improvement and as decline which must be prevented. We are then victims of outside sinister forces. We are almost presented with the choice:

1) To surrender to external forces and see our way of life change.

2) To fight change and maintain the status quo.

The paradoxical (and ironic) problem with resisting change is that to resist, we must already accept change to a way of life!

I will give you an example: fundamentalist terrorists wish to undermine the open society and impose a totalitarian government - all aspects of people’s lives are centrally controlled. The way we are fighting this is to centralize power and rip up the open society! Recent instances: surveillance, long detention without trial, supporting extraordinary rendition, alienation of minority communities and curtailing individual freedoms. All these activities as the characteristics of what we are supposedly resisting.

Surly the best way to resist this trend is to strive for the opposite society is to do the opposite? We should increase transparency of government and police, increase personal freedoms, involve minority communities in government, and encourage personal responsibility over reliance on a father figure government. We can fight terror best by ignoring it. Terrorism is a propaganda tool to force political change. A propaganda tool is defeated if it is ignored. The impact of terrorism can also be reduced by designing infrastructure to be distributed and redundant.

Anti Citizen One