Month: March 2013

Just heard Dan Roam (Napkin Academy) speak at Fiatech2013.

Great use of Ian McGilchrist’s divided brain model,

… where objective analytical intellect has crowded out the more holistic visual aspect of experiencing the real world. The emissary having forgotten who is master. We need visual outlines before we express in written language. Excellent presentation by Dan.

Particularly impressive – the demonstration of recalling a couple of dozen images presented for only a second each – a 100% when given a visual choice, but barely a handful if asked to list from memory.

This has been banging around a few days, and today Larry tweeted the link to the story in the Telegraph.

I think there is an important point being missed. Voluntary (culturally conditioned) segregation is different from enforced segregation, even if you do disagree with both.

• With the former, you can disagree, in fact it’s a valid topic for the talk, given the title of the debate, but the people in the room are not having any human rights infringed here and now, so get over it.
• In the latter case, you can disagree and withdraw cooperation here and now, because rights are being denied here and now.

There was nothing in the context that pointed to Muslim radicalism or extremism any more than there was anything suggesting Larry was promoting incest – god forbid. Get a grip guys ‘n’ gals.

Yes, some of the cultural conditioning, creates intimidation that means the immediate voluntary segregation may not be straightforward – life’s just complicated enough. And, yes it was a “public” event, but in the context the fact that a significant part of the audience is actively Muslim is pretty fundamental, not some incidental factor.

So I do defend respect for, and sensitivity to, cultural differences if you want to start a dialogue where culture might evolve – mutually. Better than a display of rational arrogance.

[Post Note – another example from Leicester Uni on 20th Feb – reported by HuffPo on 16th April – of (non-enforced) segregation.]

Interesting conversation with Dawkins. (Hat tip to tweet from BHA.)

Law is a philosopher with an interest in the paranormal, so not surprisingly Sue Blackmore crops up. Love the “God helmet” passage. Also love the infinite regress argument on what counts as “evidence”. Must follow up with Law, and the argument around the value of philosophy (and theology) to scientists. (See previous Krauss reference.)

Law seems to have the patience to take his differences with Dawkins along in conversation. I’ve lost that.

Great first question too – where Dawkins doesn’t get it. The logical positivism and regress of scientific method not itself being amenable to scientific method. (See Maxwell’s Wisdom)

(Also the 4th question about prejudiced topics even in secular schools. Brilliant. Brilliant. The faith in “objective” peer review and the method, especially in highly specialised physics (Higgs Boson again). Objective standards of “expertise”, “concensus”, “independence”, etc, etc …. the “On The Road” continuous scroll myth …. believe in bullshit, go nuclear, tire of rationality …. lots there. The question at 1:24 ish … different sciences, different kinds of evidence, different things fixed / explained by that evidence.)

Interesting that this angle of the new Pope is already being picked up. Jesuits have a long history in education – education beyond religion and faith. (Catholicism, scholasticism and intellectual attraction form a huge topic in their own right. My interest here goes back to Inklings, etc.)

Prompted by this tweeted by David Gurteen, I recalled recent experience in a particular company.

I’ve been around a bit, worked over many years in different organisations, at different levels of management, and done a bit formal education and a lot of reading and writing on management subjects. I’d say I was a pretty well confirmed advocate of the MBWA (Management by Walking Around) approach and the Water Cooler ad-hoc conversations approach to organizational communications, even before ubiquitous social technology channels emerged.

However, my last full-time employment job (I currently work as an independent contractor) was in a Norwegian organisation where they took a very strong opposing view. Even having a conversation with someone at your desk or theirs was frowned upon – others at desks within earshot would “Shhh” and give dirty stares if you did stop to talk or shout over the open-plan cubicles more than a couple of sentences. You always had to invite someone over to a meeting area. To be fair there were various kinds of informal as well as formal meeting spaces available, but there was never the ad-hoc overheard participation.

Hi, thanks for responding.
First I must assume since you replied to my tweet that you at least saw this post linked in that tweet?
https://www.psybertron.org/?p=5492

You will find linked in that post links to other specific relevant posts. (And of course if you were to browse, there are many more on the relevant topics on that blog over the past 12 years.) Following a previous email exchange @ BHA, I did contemplate writing an open letter to Jim, since it was clear his style is much more open to the issues.

Here goes:

In a nutshell the problem is BHA seems to be defining itself in terms of what it is against. For secularism sure, but secularism defined in terms of being against any forms of religious faith in any positions of public authority or even influence.

The whole 3-Horsemen or “Ditchkins”  crusade against the “excesses” of religious faith – Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, plus Dennett, plus Pinker, and more recently Krauss getting on the celebrity bandwagon. 6 Horsemen of which 4 are US and 2 British? Not to mention the other celebrities in the social media. Gervais, Fry, Izzard and many more.

As Jim says these guys and the various campaigns hitching themselves to their media celebrity have already “cleared the way”. To keep knocking the religious is like “flogging a dead horse” or “shooting fish in a barrel” – too easy – that easy argument is already won. So easy that their styles are often sarcastic, sneering and mocking against their religious adversaries. Even the “bit of fun” in the BHA questionnaire had this sarcastic tone. The whole thing has become very destructive and polarising.

It seems you must be either FOR rationality (defined in “scientistic” terms) and AGAINST irrationality (defined in terms of religious faiths). Or you are FOR religious faith.

Err no. Reality is that NOT ALL aspects of religious faiths are irrational. Certainly not when it comes to traditions that capture structures of human value, where decisions require “policy” that can’t immediately be resolved by science in the governance of public and economic life generally – personal local, national, international, cosmic. Sure, no religious faith has ever had any monopoly on these, but the history of humanity has many values that happen to be enshrined in traditions that have been maintained by the humanities and institutions beyond science, including religions. We can’t wipe away history. We can’t start again like the fabled Irishman who, when asked for directions, said “If I wanted to get there, I wouldn’t start from here.” The rational thing to do would be to investigate and debate where real human value lies, here and now for the future.

By polarising the debate into science vs religion, either / or, we are in danger of throwing out a valuable baby with the bathwater. Ending up like The Only Way is Essex. There is a massive middle-ground to be taken into account, to be integrated, accommodated, valued. Rationality comes in many varied forms and science is NOT the sole arbiter of human value, any more than TOWIE should be representative of “British” humanity. God forbid 😉

Simplest recommendation:

Take a leaf from Jim’s book, and look at what that Cambridge debate (or the more recent Oxford Union philosophy of science debate) would have looked like if it had been Jim on the humanist side of the debate. The people on the other side are not “opponents” they are fellow humans we need to integrate (accommodate) into a balanced world view of human values.

If the BHA itself – as an organisation – cannot recognise the issues, I’m not sure what else to suggest. The current flavour of the BHA is “inhuman”. I could suggest intelligent and constructive topics for public debate. Take some clues from Melvyn Bragg’s “The Value of Culture” for example:
https://www.psybertron.org/?p=5241

Generally – What are human values? Where do they reside? How are they maintained and developed? More specific example – If our history of values lies in culture, where does science fit with culture? Many more possible. Articles, papers, debates, examples from real public life.

Put the humanism back in the BHA. Leave the “knocking” to the court jesters, that’s what they’re for.

Regards
Ian

[Slightly edited for the blog context.]

Would everything be better if women ruled the world asks BBC Magazine.

Yes, actually. I always recall a study I did, where gender and women in management was NOT the point, but I had the data to correlate gender responses, that the statistical average responses from women were significantly different from those of the men. Led me to conclude that a better balance of change management decisions and implementations would be achieved if female influence reflected the balance of the population.

As the dominant sample, response to both questionnaires from the men more or less reflect the overall sample analysed earlier.

Women perceived higher average problem levels for both questionnaires. Both sexes agreed on the four most problematic issues in questionnaire 1, but women perceived COMMITTMENT and ACCEPTABILITY issues of specific recent change as significantly more problematic. In questionnaire 2, women are also unique as a group in perceiving the definition of KEY TASKS and objectives as one of the most problematic issues.

The survey sample summaries in appendix S show that the distribution of women’s roles are skewed into certain grades and departments, however to pursue any correlations and causal connections is beyond the scope of this dissertation.

The fact that the women do emphasise different issues from men supports the idea that encouraging women into a wider range of roles and levels can only improve the balance of issues addressed in future decision making.

Great interview of Jim Al-Khalili with Caspar Melville of the Rationalist Association. So much better face for the BHA.

[An] introduction to the man who has recently become, at least in principle, the most important and high-profile non-believer in Britain. In January Al-Khalili was confirmed as President of the British Humanist Association.

He has been [a convinced atheist] since he was a teenager. He is also, as a scientist, a convinced rationalist materialist who believes that there is a real world out there …. his life experience and temperament, have convinced him that a “softer” approach is required: …  if you focus on what’s bad about religion that doesn’t serve any purpose.

Al-Khalili credits the outspoken atheism of Dawkins (though he doesn’t agree with everything about his approach) with clearing a path for a new, gentler and more accommodating brand of public humanism …  it’s because we are winning the battle that we can afford not to be so strident, belligerent, antagonistic, confrontational. Because we’re winning the battle that more and more people can see that humanism is an inclusive thing, it’s not an exclusive club, … it’s not a sect. Because that is changing we don’t need to be on the attack against people with faith. … Al-Khalili represents a new face for British humanism.

[My emphasis] Someone with a constructive streak at last. I’ve been banging my head against a brick wall with the BHA recently, pointing out that they are in real danger of defining themselves solely in puerile terms of what they’re against – just a bit of fun apparently – rather than what they’re actually for in the real grown-up world.

Be interesting to see Jim in debate with Tariq Ramadan and Douglas Murray.

Interesting also that he makes it possible to say you’re an accommodationist. Might not be the word I’d choose – maybe integrationist (after Mary Parker-Follett), but the point is the bigger the issue the less it is about taking sides (after Slavoj Zizek).

Accommodating the positions of others is not about compromising your own. It’s not about compromise at all, nor is it about opposition; it’s about integration.

[Post Note : See also the Geek Chocolate interview with Jim Al-Khalili from last year.]