Psybertron Asks

Another good post from Maria Popover at Brain Pickings fed via Facebook.

Perhaps a bit obvious the list of “rules” in the Zen sense, but totally applicable to the education context – ie where education, education, education is the point of the exercise, though of course education, education & learning remains a major point of any evolving human activity. No point doing anything if you don’t also learn to adopt, adapt, improve.

Particularly like this:

“RULE EIGHT:
Don’t try to create and analyze at the same time.
They’re different processes.”

I’ll say. Not only different, but conflicting opposites. To analyse is to cut to pieces, the very opposite of constructive creation. Analysis is not only paralysis, it can be destruction too. There’s a time to analyse, there’ a time to act. The adage I’ve adopted is:

“Careful with that knife, Aristotle.”

And there are equivalent adages in many other contexts, I’m sure you can think of.

It’s almost a couple of weeks since Pinker responded with round III of his debate with Wieseltier over whether the humanities have a genuine claim of “scientism” against certain factions of the science community, or not.

[I’ve commented twice on this debate, and mentioned it in several other posts too. Most recently the post on the value of ethics in science, but also previously here and here.]

The thrust of Pinker’s argument in round III seems to be this – what I call the “good fences make good neighbours” debate :

“Why should either discipline stay inside Wieseltier’s sterile rooms? Does morality have nothing to do with the facts of human well-being, or with the source of human moral intuitions? Does political theory have nothing to learn from a better understanding of people’s inclinations to cooperate, aggress, hoard, share, work, empathize, or submit to authority? Is art really independent of language, perception, memory, emotion? If not, and if scientists have made discoveries about these faculties which go beyond received wisdom, why isn’t it for them to say that these ideas belong in any sophisticated discussion of these topics?” Pinker.

The point of the “good fences make good neighbours” argument is this. The rooms are NOT sterile. The rooms are NOT bounded by impenetrable walls that prevent each discussing the other across the garden fence, nor less discourage each to visit the other domain to participate and share. Far from it.

Cross participation is of course thoroughly encouraged. Boundaries represent working definitions, based on “good practice and established precedent” and of course boundary disputes lead to redrawing of boundaries and evolution of working definitions when necessary and agreed. And of course that healthy exchange and dialogue means both parties benefit from learning to understand the other, and acquiring knowledge that may benefit their own domain. The point is the working boundaries do exist, and what each party MUST is recognise which domain they’re in at any time, recognising the variable rules of engagement wherever they are currently. My rules on my side of the fence, it’s just being neighbourly. The boundaries exist in the sense that they represent a distinction between different rules of engagement, different rules for what counts as evidence and rational argument.

The key thing is neither side has the monopoly of rules across the whole combined domains, nor does either have any privileged position in the rules whereby working boundaries are defined and re-defined. It’s for neither “side” to say, rather for the conversation to enable the working distinctions to evolve, and by bringing ideas across from one domain to the other to reap the benefits of eco-diversity and avoid sterile in-breeding in any one domain.

Most of the rest of Pinker’s argument just seems spurious to me, not wrong, just not relevant to the point of the accusation. He also makes a great deal out of Wieseltier’s confining science to the “empirical” – but this I fear is just a talking past each on what the other means by empirical. The empirical in science has an objective repeatability, whereas in reality a good deal of the empirical involves subjective experience – a philosophical debate as old as the hills, but resolved from most practical perspectives by moving away from the focus on the subjects and objects. I’d like to see anyone highlight if I’m missing a point, specifically.

The accusation of scientism is applied to those scientists who believe in (and insist in applying) the rules of science in the domains of human value. We can obviously debate exactly who claims which rules, and in doing so refine our boundary definitions, but here I’m talking about defining rationality in terms of objectivity and logic testable by falsification – the essence of what make science science – whilst acknowledging many other aspects of quality and value, creativity and inspiration shared by science and any number of non-scientific “disciplines”. In fact we could argue with different narrow and broad definitions exactly which disciplines might claim to be sciences and which claim to be humanities. It’s part of the same debate of course, and everyone prefers to back a winner, but the point is the boundaries, the distinctions do exist, even if their only reasons for existence are a manageable sense of order – authoritative precedent against which to evolve progressive change. There aren’t really two “sides” here but multiple domains of varying shades and combination of applicable rules.

Clearly life would be much simpler if all domains agreed the same rules of engagement in what counts as rational argument and evidence for knowledge, decisions and predictors of actions. But the fact is the core value-neutral rules of scientific rationality do not apply to all domains of human value, at least not simply because science says they can be. Human values are not all reducible to science. To claim otherwise is scientistic (by definition, so no reason to argue defensively against that).

Significantly these distinctions matter between the following, though obviously the fourth is least contentious:

1. Science – Philosophy (including the Philosophy of Science)
2. Science – Technology & Engineering
3. Science – Politics & Economics
4. Science – Arts & Humanities in general

Of course, in responding to Pinker, these things have much “to do with” each other at many points, it’s just that the distinctions none-the-less matter greatly. None is totally reducible to any of the others.

[Post Note – Interestingly, having written the above in response to Pinker, I realise that Wieseltier’s round III response is pretty much the same “good fences make good neighbours” argument. Funny, I’m also having trouble getting scientists to see that there is actually a case here – some either disagree, or agree to disagree, but no recognition of the actual point. The scientism is Maxwell’s scientific neurosis, a denial that there are any rules of knowledge and values beyond science. To repeat – scientism by definition. That much cannot even be open to debate, even if science is entitled to argue the maximum scope amenable to scientific analysis and rationale. To start from the assumption that everything is not just fair-game but game-over, unless  demonstrated by conclusive argument and evidence otherwise, is to miss the point that their rules of objective evidence and logical argument are those of science. Not a valid argument, since it presumes its own conclusion. A Catch22 as I’ve called it many times before.]

[PPS – re-reading, I notice Pinker actually opened with this:

Leon Wieseltier writes,

“It is not for science to say whether science belongs in morality and politics and art.”

I [Pinker] reply:

“It is not for Leon Wieseltier to say where science belongs. Good ideas can come from any source, and they must be evaluated on their cogency, not on the occupational clique …. blah, blah, blah … “

Just look at that word – “clique” – a pejorative value-laden word if ever I heard one. Up to “cogency” no reasonable scientist or humanist could possibly disagree, so why don’t we stick to the point constructively – already elaborated above – rather than introduce disingenuous rhetorical smoke-screens. The trouble these days, is that once people get beyond the 140 character smart-ass sound-bite limit, the medium seems to be the 3 or 4 page essay full of examples of straw-men that the original interlocutor never even suggested. And to suggest them back in response is disrespect to your opponent.

So “cogency” – your word Mr Pinker, let’s work with that, it’s as good as any – to summarise the qualities of a given argument. As I (and Wieseltier) have said already, this simply begs the question of cogency according to who’s standards, the standards of who’s domain. This is why the domains matter – it’s not that they are no-go areas, it’s to accept the possibility that their standards of cogency might not be the same. For science to simply say – the standards of science are the measure of cogency for all world domains is scientistic (the definition of scientistic) according to those who see domains other than science. So let’s debate in a few sentences – sticking to the point – what qualities might constitute cogency in one domain but not the other, rather than insult the intelligence of your interlocutor.

I already made a start: Scientific cogency depends on:

• objectivity of evidence, and
• logical relations between those objects, and
• assertions built on that logic that are falsifiable, and
• falsifiability that is either directly empirical, or
• falsifiability that is related by chains of logical reason to knowledge that is.

How’m’a doin’ ? Of course the whole scientific enterprise depends, like any of the humanities, on many other less-objectifiable aspects of human interaction, imagination, creativity and ingenuity, but let’s stick to the cogency of what makes an argument or knowledge scientific (or not).]

Interesting BBC R4 Point of View this morning by Lisa Jardine.

[Fuller text in BBC Magazine article.]

Based on the telling by her father (Jacob Bronowski) of the Leo Szillard story of the flash of inspiration that led him to patent the neutron chain reaction idea as a source of energy in the name of UK Admiralty, and the subsequent UK and US development and use of first nuclear bombs.

Szillard (and Einstein and Bronowski and many others in science) raised many ethical objections to the use of such weapons as their reality became more certain. (Aside – Many previous references in this blog to the Einstein letter and to Durrenmatt’s play “Die Physiker“. Szillard is topical again thanks to recent work by Graham Farmelo, whose previous work on Paul Dirac has also been covered here.)

But Lisa’s point was really this. Being told that story was valuable lesson in ethics associated with science, even though the complex chain of events and reasoning quoted by, and told of, Szillard, as any one of the many individuals involved, was objectively suspect and in need of selective interpretation as history – a convenient narrative with an agenda. But none-the-less valuable to her (and to me).

The point I add to this is that a major – and dangerous –  part of the problem is science conflating itself with many other domains associated with science, from basic philosophies of science and knowledge, to the technological exploitations of understanding scientific possibilities by the rest of humanity, of which science is a part but not the whole.

Science is not technology and the distinction matters – in the Szillard story, the subject was “patenting” the use of idea for its technological exploitation, not the idea itself. Furthermore – science is not humanity’s sole privileged access to knowledge, the distinction between the subset we call science and the whole of “rational” knowledge applicable to human decision-making, also matters. These distinctions matter because the ethics (and politics and economics) of best choices for humanity cannot be reduced to science alone. Not even (say) Anthropogenic Global Warming.

The use of science to solve the problems of and increase valuable possibilities for human society, both requires technology and involves value judgements – human value judgements in domains where science has no privileged view. Science is privileged in value-neutral domains, but not in domains where human values matter.

Science good; Scientism bad.

The latest social work failure – child abused to death – being debated everywhere, is just another symptom of the underlying problem of scientific objectivity getting into too many places where it shouldn’t.

• “Politician” claims social worker seeing dog mess in room where child is kept (after long history of other visits and issues) should simply have the right to remove the child on the evidence of their own senses.
• “Professional” responds that only police can force entry and removal and only after court proceeding and only after sufficient “evidence” has been gathered and “due process” has been followed, etc.

Precisely the point. In appropriate cases the evidence of the social worker’s own nose should suffice as due process.

The reason why this is not accepted by the professional institutions, is the counter case. To indemnify against accidentally over-zealous action causing damage where there was none – the usual rights and responsibilities challenge. (The old Cleveland child-abuse scandal, for example.)

What’s missing ? The idea of wisdom. The idea that the individual social worker can (be able, be trusted to) make such a decision. Instead, the idea that evidence and justification is something scientific, to be “tested” by formal process. Well, beyond science it’s not scientific, nor even wholly objective. But sadly, the values of science are privileged, allowed to take precedence over values of humanity, in a social context, everywhere beyond the domain of science in fact.

Social workers need to be entrusted with wisdom and common sense. (So recruitment and training and work assignment, and management, assessment and sanctioning, etc, all need to be based on this. Human values and experience of humanity being at least (if not more in domains like social work) as valuable as formal “qualifications” and knowledge of application of formal procedures.

The reason we have the problems we have is because we don’t trust our social workers, or can’t trust them except through formal – objective, scientific – procedure. Another case of the measures devaluing the work, and tending the work towards lower value, the complete opposite of what is required. The balance of human rights and responsibilities is a value judgement, a human value judgement involving the humanities NOT science alone.

Science is immensely valuable in its domain, but destroys (human) value in domains where its use is misguided.

Interestingly, just seconds after the previous post on the disservice done to science by the conflation of science and technology, Lisa Jardine also tweeted a link to this Sue Nelson piece on “BBC lads’ science” in the Telegraph. And, only hours after Jim AlKhalili had tweeted to “boast” (tongue in cheek) about acquisition of  his iPhone5 – the “latest boys’ toy”. Man, what a tangled web.

[Hold – still trying to find 5 minutes also to comment on this “Round III” response by Pinker to Wieseltier on the interminable science vs the humanities debate in New Republic, tweeted by Tiff Jenkins.]

Where to start? Scientists, science journalists and science media-folk, do science a disservice, when they promote science wrongly. And, in doing so, that is also a disservice to the society they aim to serve. So what could possibly be wrong about the way science is promoted?

Promote science as an enterprise of wonder in its own right, and as as a route to understanding the wonders and workings of the world. Go for it, surely the core aim of science.

Promote science as the source of understanding, discovery and development of enabling technologies that underlie the sustainable advancement of human society in the cosmos. We’d be mad no to. Remember, a flint hand tool, whose development depended on recognising cleavage planes in otherwise continuous naturally occurring hard material, was new technology once, as all technology is.

By promotion, I’m talking about informing and educating society about the above, to attract interest and resources – individuals to join the enterprise, and funds to support their work and their organisations, both commercial and institutional. All valid, laudable and indeed essential to the enterprise and to society itself.

But let’s not confuse promotion with education, and let’s not confuse education about science with science education. Sure each contributes to the other in a self-reinforcing virtuous-circle. Education that actually achieves understanding in the topic, also promotes effort towards achieving more of the same. Some aspects of education are part of that valid promotion. But education that inspires interest without actually achieving understanding, nevertheless also achieves the promotion objectives, so it is important to recognise that science education is more than science promotion.

The success of celebrity scientists – and celebrity honorary-science-supporting comics – in TV and Radio does a great deal to blur that distinction. If this played only into the virtuous-circle of promoting science (and technology) it would be OK, but through ever more ubiquitous public and social media debates on the biggest science-related issues of our times, the blurring of debate about and understanding of science issues is far more dangerous to the future of humanity.

The “lads’ science” of Sue Nelson’s piece reflects part of this. The very fact that “boys toys” technology and engineering media like Top Gear can be rolled into the same breath as the more explicitly “science” light-weight media of the likes of O’Briain, Fry, Ince and Cox is part of the conflation of science with its technological products.

Personally (as a bloke) I can take or leave “boys’ toys”, and the fact that these are obsessions of laddish males reflects well on the fairer sex IMHO – vive la differance (*). But science should not taint itself with such crass commercialism. Science – even when promoting itself publicly, commercially – needs to maintain blue-water between its gender-neutral self and the technology / life-style marketing of boys’ toys.

Maintaining boundaries – between science and technology in this case – is not just about agreeing to disagree about the distinction – that’s only ever a temporary cease-fire.  In fact it never needs to be about “warring” at all. Boundaries reflect evolving definitions of the domains either side, where fences make good neighbours. The science / technology boundary is problematic enough itself, as described by the Sue Nelson piece, but a mere trifle compared to the wider science vs humanities debacle dangerously rail-roading wisdom out of the world at large.

[More on the science / humanities distinction – and the ongoing Pinker / Wieseltier dialogue – later.]

[(*) More on the positive value of real gender differences – not in science, but where they matter – in this dissertation.]

Lisa Jardine tweeted a link to this piece by Alice Bell, on BP funding of the International Centre for Advanced materials with the comment “More please.”

In so far as the emphasised conclusion is not to simply object to, or place demands on, industrial funding of “science”, but that the public debate should aim to  ask questions, I’d wholeheartedly agree.

But it raises two issues for me, about the questions that need to be asked.

One is that science itself should also remember that it’s main job is to ask questions.

Technology or applied science, unlike science itself, concerned with applications of sufficient potential value to attract industrial funding. Still research, still risk money, but quite different to science research. One may have ethical doubts as to “strings attached” to research funding for science itself, though clearly it does happen successfully, and clearly the funding and activity of the technology also supports the activities of science too, but it’s important to notice the distinction.

Science’s job is to ask the questions of knowledge quite independent of their potential for technology applications.

Secondly, the piece, like the research centre and its funding, concerns science & technology, but conveniently uses the topic “science”. Blurred for easy reading and digestion, and of course, blurring to ease the spin-off funding into science itself. But this is part of a trend of privileging the position of science in society, treating science as the catch-all, the superset of all things, to which science relates – which is most things one way or another. Science is science, and applied science or technology is both science and its application. Application of science is neither science nor a subset of science. Application involves many more human values than are found in your science.

Constantly blurring this important distinction – science over-reaching its remit – is one source of the interminable science vs dogma wars, where many supporters of science do science a disservice, by ignoring values between the dogmatic extremes.

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.