Year: 2013

Interesting piece tweeted by Medium Picks.

Not fully digested. But my view of unmoderated comment threads on every news story or campaigning web page going is that these are always skewed by the cynical who believe that taking the hard line on any topic is the way to get noticed and failing that sarcastic ridicule will do instead. They wouldn’t think of themselves as trolls by any technical definition, but that’s what they are, driving intelligent and balanced debate – faster than greased lightning – off the very pages where they would be most valuable. It quickly ends up as polarised lowest common denominator stuff, a race to the bottom.

There’s more in this piece, but I agree with this gist:

A single format will no longer serve
for the multiple contexts
where comments once made sense.

Serious web media need to think about how to marshal different comment environments for different motives, and as I said many times, ensure any moderated threads associated with their specific pages adopt a level of “respect” that involves reading, understanding and constructive synthesis before disagreeing, criticising and worse under cover of rhetorical games. Or, ultimately treat all reactions as correspondence – letters to the editor – to be subject to the site’s own editorial policy. It might not be so bad, but the success of celebrity comics – and celebrity scientists who wish they were – on twitter and facebook and comment-is-free seems to reinforce the idea that everyone thinks it’s their job to be cruelly witty on ever topic, whereas that’s a job for the professionals. As I always say, we can’t all be court jester at the same time, we’d get nothing worthwhile done.

(Quite different for any media channel where fun and provocation are designed for public reaction and amusement or “gossip” and “hits” – good luck to them – but any channel with serious communication objectives needs to consider the “comment crisis”. Building engagement is more than  a numbers game – quality matters.)

Two other significant points in there – Popular Science being one of the on-line journals seeing the need for proper moderation, and the idea of an independent moderation service to apply your policy, ie doing it right is worth significant effort – Polygon Guideline Enforcers – your rules of engagement as I’ve called them before.

I expressed hope for DiCanio when he was appointed at Sunderland, and repeated my admiration for his passion and honesty when he was sacked. He’s someone whose ethos I’ve always liked, since he was a player in his West Ham days.

Reason to post today is reading this piece from Frank Keogh. He’s dead right. DiCanio’s approach worked at Swindon and the reason it didn’t work at Sunderland is that highly paid premiership players don’t take kindly to their bubble being burst by being asked to turn up with personal passion for the club, so they troop into their paymaster’s office to object. In the premiership – with only a few exceptions – it’s just not about that any more. Better luck next time Paolo, that bubble needs bursting, if this football supporter is ever going to value the premiership over the championship.

It’s probably been said, but getting beyond the grief and heroism angle, we do need the Kenyan authorities to come clean on what happened. Somewhat confusing statements so far on arrests and deaths and “missing” amongst the terrorists, in the centre, under collapsed parts of the centre and/or at the airport or elsewhere. Putting 2 and 2 together I’m guessing:

Most of the gang scarpered in the original confusion and escape – hence the early (but no doubt too late) shift of attention to the airports and borders on day 2. Most of the days 3, 4 and 5 mop-up has involved (very) few who remained with or without few (if any) hostages, and booby-trapping / time-wasting by the remaining few.

We need some facts.

[Post Note : I see journo’s are asking the same questions.]

Lisa Jardine was briefly on BBC R4 Today this morning on the need for science to have proper conversation with the pubic about its work. Not sure even top class journalists like Justin an/or Evan got what Lisa meant my a proper conversation, but her point is very important.

In these days of ubiquitous mass communications, it’s easy for science to bypass the media entirely, or more likely collude with media science-desks, in getting the attention grabbing “news” out there. The meme, the 15 minutes of fame, the public imagination, the headlines. Promoting the value of science itself as an enterprise is a valid motive, and there’s a lot of that about too, but in the rush to communicate the “value” of the particular science news, the social value, its value to the society of humanity in the cosmos at large – the 140 character sound bite forces a cut to the chase, a conflation of the science and its value, into whatever message grabs the headline (and justifies the next round of funding, of course).

It’s wonderful and indeed essential that science and scientists concern themselves with value to society, but totally wrong to assume that science and value are one and the same thing, that science itself describes value, that one can be reduced to the other, or that they are otherwise closely bound. Science – specific content of science as opposed to the politics of the enterprise of science – is about understanding the world and that requires conversation – even amongst scientists, let alone with the public.

When science is talking about science content – unmediated conversation adds value to all the mediated channels, the more varied and direct formats the better, it’s about education, education, education. Go for it.

When science (and science journalism) is talking about the value of science to humanity, this absolutely must be mediated, moderated, tempered, shared with a balance of humanities disciplines as well those of science, with wider human wisdom.

Science, like Lisa, is magisterial, but the two magisteria of science and the humanities need mutual respect for and understanding of the porous boundary or overlap between them. Being “popular” doesn’t give a scientist the right to cross the border unmediated, without creating enemies – that’s the dreaded scientism. Ironically, but perhaps not unsurprisingly, Lisa’s father Jacob Bronowski was one of the very few to earn their colours in both camps, and hence earn that respect necessary to speak for both.

So science, please don’t confuse popularity with respect in the domain of humanities, and more importantly, don’t forget your main purpose to communicate the science itself. More conversation, less headline-grabbing war please.

Time for this debate to focus on the real issue.

It’s about social mores having authority over individual freedoms when it comes to sexual modesty.

End of.

• Yes some religions, and more to the point some sects of some religions (Islam for sure, but don’t forget sects of Judaism, Christian Amish and Orthodox and the like), apply more extreme traditions on what counts as immodest. Hijab, niqab, a whole range of head-scarves, hair-styles, unflattering dress and cosmetic codes, applied to (mainly) women at different stages of sexual and marital maturity.
• And yes, some religious social traditions are more dominated by male patriarchal authority. In some extreme cases, that domination amounts to total suppression of women, but here the focus on female modesty is from the male hetero-gender perspective, and there are social codes for male dress too. The sexes are different – get used to it.
• And yes, some less secular and counter-intuitively more religiously-tolerant secular societies (like the UK), privilege some religious over other social traditions. A price for tolerance.
• And yes, in most “western” societies we see the eyes and face generally as part of trust in society’s interactions – personal identity sure, but more subtle than that. Some societies the eyes are a big enough window on the soul, in some we prefer the whole facial body language. (BTW as a counter-example I’ll let you into a secret, my secret stash of hard-drive “porn” includes a fair number of sexy-eyes-through-the-veil images – purely in the interests of research you understand.) But don’t forget, males in crash-helmets or black balaclavas entering some institutional contexts make us nervous too.

I heard a very interesting interview with a selection of UK Moslem women, with reassuringly varied views on their own “preferences” for head-wear, and takes on how much this had to do (if anything) with respect for their religious social traditions – I think on BBC R4 Sunday ? What was intriguing was how quickly amongst the diversity of opinion, the debate converged on “the woman’s right to choose” vs “authority”. Sadly the journalist involved didn’t pick up on the main point.

Yes, in free societies, individual freedoms are very precious, but “paramount” is fashionably over-used rhetoric. All our individual freedoms are quite rightly limited by appropriate social mores. Social mores that may have quite murky traditional histories, religious traditions or otherwise and with dubious if complex Darwinian origins and mechanisms.  Modesty of pubescent single females, and male rites of passage are common aspects of such moral traditions. Think school dress codes, think sloppy underwear-exposing dress fashions, think both genders.

Modesty is a good thing. If overly-modest dress gets in the way of interpersonal identity and trust, then both parties need the good manners to respect the other. I think this is one reason why even moderate but passionate Moslems get so frustrated at the individual freedom argument being added to the polarized anti-religion debates. The point about “good manners” is being missed and people with good manners may be too polite to point that out. Think FFS.

Good to hear the latest climate change publication – heavily vetted and verified before publication.

My position remains totally unchanged – Anthropogenic Global Warming is common sense, so anything we can do to minimise our negative impact on the cosmos the better, so recycle, reuse, minimising resource waste, minimising energy degradation, etc is good – as it always was.

The good thing about the latest publication is the same; the fact that it’s reception may damp down the total waste of the scientistic vs political dogma wars. The wasteful war far outweighs the value of the science involved – real and valuable science, but let’s nevertheless maintain a sense of proportion.

A post primarily to recommend a read I’ve not yet completed: Orientations, the autobiography of Sir Ronald Storrs, described by T E Lawrence as “The first of us …. always first, and the great man among us.” Conversely, Storrs a man with as good a handle on the flawed genius – “my little genius” – that was Lawrence as any could.

I’m reading it after Lawrence In Arabia by Scott Anderson, another highly recommended read for anyone with any interest in the 20th century history of the middle-east. Frankly, is there anyone in the 21st century not interested?

Storrs interacted – corresponded, met and worked – with everyone – the list of royalty, aristocracy, premiers, politicians, generals, diplomats, adventurers, artists and thinkers is a name-droppers who’s who of 20th century history, worth the read for that alone – but Storrs is no name dropper. Tremendous wit and insight. By way merely of example, a wonderful exposition of his equally wonderful relationship with the much-maligned Kitchener. In our context here you need to know he was in 1917 the first British Governor of Jerusalem (and the putative Palestine, after Balfour, but before the British Mandate) immediately after Allenby had ended 80 years of Turkish rule there. The holy city of the holy land shared with the three Abrahamic religions. Fancy the job? But Storrs had similar periods of responsibility, not to mention power, in London, Cairo, Baghdad and Cyprus too.

Fascinating career, of a fascinating person, in a fascinating period of history – in his own words.

Local petitions were no less ingenuous. I had been appointed not three days before I received from an Orthodox [Christian] Arab an appeal clearly intended to combine a recognition of British conventions with a delicate personal flattery. “I do beseech Your Excellency to grant my request, for the sake of J. Christ, Esq. : a gentleman whom Your Honour so closely resembles.”

So many good anecdotes in the historical narrative. Go read.

=====

I recall where and when I first saw a copy of Orientations, and dipped into it.

I was working in Alexandria and the hotel, like many do, had a small library in the guest lounge. And, also like most such libraries, it was in general not very inspiring, a pretty random collection of donated travel guides and fictions, new and old, English, French and Arabic, but hey, this was Alexandria the home of libraries, where the new Alexandria library was nearing completion.

As a sometime amateur Lawrence scholar, I noticed the name Storrs on the spine of one blue-bound volume, though to be honest at that time I didn’t really appreciate the depth and significance of the connection. The aristocratic and clergy Cust / Storrs family heritage in the early chapters didn’t initially inspire or trigger much further connection to my interest, despite checking that the index did indeed include many Lawrence references later, one amongst the enormous list of names (see above).

I had noticed the book just a couple of days before the end of the assignment, and snatched only a couple of brief introductory reads, but with the promise of the later references, and being the kind of random hotel library it was, I thought – I may as well take it, might be interesting, they probably wouldn’t miss it. However, the staff had been so good to us, I felt just taking it wasn’t the thing to do. So I asked at reception if they’d mind if I took it, or if they wanted I could pay for it, add it to my bill as it were. “No sir, he replied. We have so few worthwhile books in our library so far, we really wouldn’t want to let it go.” Oh well, I thought no more about it.

Until I came across all the Storrs / Lawrence references in the Anderson book.

Just a holding link to this piece by Julian Baggini, where both head and heart are needed to recognise the value of something arithmetically expensive. (Hat tip to David Morey on FB a week or two ago. Significant on balance because Julian is one I’ve criticised before, but increasingly I see I can agree with him.)

I’ve adopted the term “scientism” for the subject – the problem topic – of my agenda here in maybe the last 5 years or so? Previously I’ve called it scientific fundamentalism, or maybe obsessive objective reductionism, Maxwell’s scientific neurosis, things of that ilk, since I started this blog 13 years ago. Before that I never really gave it a name – it was just a nagging doubt that there was a deep problem going unrecognised in the whole of human life, well beyond science. A problem I had difficulty even articulating, until the blog gave me a vehicle in which to practice. Scientism’s become the fashionable term for the problem, particularly since the more “shrill” new-atheist humanists – supported by celebrity scientists and comics – turned it into a front-page and social-media war. Amen to that.

Interestingly it was one of those “wow” moments of revelatory epiphany where I first used the term in 2008. (Good guess, 5 years ago.) I was actually using the term against myself, having previously been pursuing the problem of science within science, and recognising that as the error in itself.

This piece “Crimes Against Humanities” by Leon Wieseltier in New Republic I first looked at when tweeted by Tiff Jenkins a couple of weeks ago, and tweeted a positive holding response. Decided to do a thorough read again today. Essentially I agree with every word in Wieseltier’s piece, and have only one reservation.

As Wieseltier says, Pinker’s (baseless, and breathtakingly arrogant) argument can be summed up as:

There is nothing wrong with the humanities that the sciences cannot fix.

[And, my later references to Pinker’s piece, here and here.]

Wieseltier says a lot more – both assertions and reference arguments – so I’d recommend a thorough read and digest by anyone taking the debate seriously. As I say, I really have only one reservation – Wieseltier’s idea of casting humanities and science into distinct “domains” is too much like Gould’s “non-overlapping magisteria” much rejected by Dennett (with whom I mostly agree, like I mostly agree with Pinker and Harris). The boundaries of science and the humanities are indeed porous and open to cross-border investigations, as the definitions of the border evolve on both sides. Good fences make good neighbours, they say, so yes “working” definitions of boundaries are useful if not essential, but simply drawing them up as some kind of cease-fire line is not the solution, an agreement to disagree about the value of the other. Mutual human respect must be shared well into “enemy” territory both sides of the line. (A large part of Wieseltier’s argument is to point how little science seems to actually respect the wisdom, intelligence and intentions of those on the humanities side of the divide.)

Science was originally conceived as nature by those natural philosophers that pre-date science itself and the human pursuit of knowledge has gone hand in hand with the evolution of science . And indeed human nature is by definition part of nature, but that does not make the humanities in  any way a subset of science as if science were by definition an explication for the whole of nature. Science simply has no privileged position when it comes to knowledge of humanity within the cosmos, not even the overview of all applied empirical knowledge. In my view rather than seeing science and the humanities as mutually exclusive domains, they must be seen as complex interlinked patterns in the whole of nature. That whole may never be a single unifying theory of everything, certainly not in any causally reductive sense. To be unifying any “theory” needs to encompass more than science.

Particularly interesting, taking the topic beyond any science vs humanities “defensive” debate, well beyond any science vs religion “offensive” war, is that amongst the enlightened, the problem of scientism is recognised within scientific academia itself. Some scientists may believe that the philosophy of science is dead, without value, and that science is self-describing toward potential completion, but philosophers of science see that what science is missing are “values”. Ditto in hard to classify realms like economics. We all do well to remember:

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Interesting that the press cynics are taking the line, once they’ve got over the concept that Russia may be sincere, is that securing Syria’s chemical weapons might not be “feasible” anyway. Mad thinking. If it weren’t feasible to locate (most of) them with any (reasonable) certainty, then how would any kind of targeted strike have been any more feasible, without significant risk of accidentally releasing them in collateral damage. Keeping stockpiles, like civilians, near likely targets would have been Syria’s greatest deterrent.

Anyway, full marks to France, Russia, and now UK & US falling into line, in taking the “securing and removing / disposing of the chemical weapons” proposal to the UN. Gaffe? How dumb do the press think international diplomats are? The politicians may says things off agreed scripts, but the ideas will be in real discussions. It’s win, win, win, win, lose, win. As good as it gets.

Putin gets to be the hero.

France gets to repair relations with US.

US and UK get their objectives, both moral and self-interested, without needing to take credit (or responsibility for the consequences).

The plan gets proper UN airing, even if debate can never reach reach unanimous agreement, allied majority is seen to have done right thing before attempting tough action. Being hard to achieve doesn’t make it wrong.

Syria gets message, takes note and makes public statement (and actions) of its responsibilities to comply.

World gets action with minimal WW3 risk, but can escalate if cooperation stalls or mission fails.

UK and US (and France) were right to (a) threaten a forcible strike against Assad’s use of chemical weapons, and (b) right to try to get government buy-in to exercise that right – both of which are quite separate from the actual order to act, if and when needed. Even talking softly, the diplomats need their governments to carry a big stick, one that will actually be used if attention to responsibilities waivers.

[Beyond Doubt][Bashing Heads Together]

PS – John Humphreys is past his sell-by date on BBC R4 Today. Just not up to “grown-up” politics and 21st century living.