Month: August 2013

Another good post from Sam. Not taken time to post on this current “Miranda” news story yet, but since Sam has, I’ve commented my view there.

POST NOTE – there are two corollaries to this story. Considering:

A. The state-secrets / state-security / whistle-blowing / publication “rights” issue.

B. The use of “terrorism” legislation as an expedient or indirect justification for actions re A.

C. The stop and search “suspicious” individuals in response to B.

1. The Miranda case is fundamentally about A, where B is simply an expedient, a non-issue.

2. The real issue with B is C, and what counts as suspicion. At one extreme, every time any individual comes into (otherwise routine) contact with police or security officials there is a statistically random sampling of all of us. (I get stopped for a possible parking / driving offence – or as happened recently, I draw a police officer’s attention to a nearby argument turning ugly –  and one in x times, I’m invited over to the office for a thorough security search?) Or the other extreme, each official is subjectively allow to pick up on “appearances” at that point, given time available to their primary job. What do I look like, who am I with, what does my behaviour suggest, where have I just come from, etc. Particularly tricky where your primary job is rights vs aliens at border control. (A pure red-herring in the Miranda case, where the individual was pre-identified, beyond any immediate “suspicion”.)

Once you bring in pre-existing “evidence” concerning an individual’s security interests / activities, the contentious question is not really about the evidence itself, but about discovery of evidence – “surveillance” based on wide general selection or on subjective / circumstantial suspicion “prior to any actual evidence” – interest has to start somewhere. (Common problem in the whole “scientific” agenda here is what counts as reasonable evidence for …. whatever decision / action next.)

Augusto Cuginotti (hat tip to David Gurteen again)
Anyone who can bring “love” into knowledge management is OK with me.
As I so often quote Nick Lowe:

Where are the strong, and who are the trusted?
What’s so funny ’bout peace, love and understanding?

When I see quotes like this:

Chemical weapons attacks
have killed dozens of people near Damascus,
(Syrian opposition activists claim).

I’m reminded of this Churchill quote, (from the days before mass ITC media, remember).

“A lie gets halfway around the world,
before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.”

(Hat tip to David Gurteen, I think, for reminding me of the Churchill quote – can’t find the tweet.)

UPDATE – 27 August. OK, the truth is getting its pants on – so the facts are now accepted undoubted chemical weapon “attack” and undoubtedly by “Assad regime” (Kerry statement no less). So – given that – a specific moral case to answer – questions of what kind of intervention (for me) still depend more on context than on any “scientific” justification for specific long term ends from specific short-term actions. The message of unacceptability is end enough to justify an intervention, details of the intervention can be evolved to longer term ends. Initially – take out or disable the head and/or its communications (I’d be amazed – disappointed – if detailed plans for such didn’t already exist).

Context questions for me are basically “how come?” Who were the specific target civilians and what are they to Assad’s interests? In what sense was the attack targetted or “indiscriminate” or a one-off – what other chemical / non-chemical attacks on those targets or others? What did Assad and/or his operational commanders think they were aiming to achieve, what are the decision / communication channels? Where is the cock-up vs conspiracy balance? Is the whole affair really just a Sunni vs Shia religious political power struggle? (And remember none of these questions undermine the basic moral case, they add meat to what makes a “wise” intervention, not the case “for” an intervention.)

[PPS 29th August. OK, so right first time, doubt of intent is still significant. And to be clear “being responsible” is not in doubt either, but that is different to intent. Sure Assad’s military are responsible for chemical weapons being accessible in Syria in 2013 whoever releases them for whatever reason. That’s why Syrian authorities must be seen to address.]

As I kept saying during the “gay marriage” debacle debates, why stop at two ?

Good thoughtful piece by Richard Heller on Yahoo News (hat tip to BHA on Facebook)

Clearly so long as there are far-reaching anomalies that need sorting, then it makes sense to have “ministers” whose job it is to work the issues. Clearly it makes sense for religious groups doing social good in the UK to be considered on their merits for UK charitable status like any other such group, but equally clearly the secular state shouldn’t be supporting specific religions promoting their religious practices. Hence the scope for anomalies and questions. So far so good.

As an atheist any defence of religions is cultural. That extends to having representatives of churches in the second chamber, to represent the cultural heritage of social values. Plenty of scope for anomalies and compromises there too, but being difficult to organise and agree doesn’t make it wrong. And yes, those church representatives need to “reflect” the current population, church populations that is, but this is about cultural heritage, not representation by popular voting – so historical as well as current. It’s a force of conservatism. Not surprisingly the Anglican church has a de-facto privilege here, but one that erodes over time, to reflect the cultural balance. (Note that this is entirely about human values, and has nothing whatsoever to do with rational questions of whether science is right and religion is wrong.)

Heller concludes with a little sarcasm, referring to the example anomaly, that a Mormon group gets the dubious benefits of charitable status:

Meanwhile, I shall continue my pursuit of Baroness Warsi.
Would she meet me if I became a Mormon?

Oh, how we laughed.

[Post Note : Sad that most of the comments on the Yahoo piece have nothing to do with the post, just rants about religion(s). Sad that is the environment in which Richard Heller gets to write. And sad that you can’t comment without signing up to Yahoo, not even with your Facebook identity. Criminal.]

Not commented on this so far, but however well-intentioned the military take-over from Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood government, proving that there is far more to a real democracy than the mere arithmetic of  popular majority voting and body-bag counts, the shooting of hundreds by the state security forces is a criminal tragedy. It’s going to set Egypt back a long way.

Often wonder how the US supporters of “the right to bear arms (against your own government)” would honestly handle it differently. Massive peaceful (but armed) demonstration occupying public places, opening fire on the security forces, killing several, when ordered to break it up and leave. Lethal force meets lethal force. Probably a defensively armoured stand-off would be preferable to actual retreat, if they’d come prepared for that, but once fire is returned …. already a bloody mess.

Would it have been less of a mess if the forces had simply withdrawn from the (armed) mob once they had been fired upon. Somehow I doubt it. Like I said, a mess.

 

The point of critical disagreement is to test agreement, it’s not for the sake of argument itself. The point is to achieve progress on what can be agreed – to expand mutual knowledge, not to perpetuate and extend disagreement.

(Of course that doesn’t change the fact that ultimately everything agreed as known is contingent and could fall down like a house of cards, but the point is to build something, something of practical value, not to destroy anything. The wise never lose sight of the contingency, the potential destruction, but nevertheless work towards achieving value.)

When substantial disagreement is agreed, of course the point is to unpick that back to some point of mutual agreement so that constructive argument can resume. Agreeing to disagree can only ever be a temporary or localised truce; a difference of current priorities; a pause from progressive efforts. Disagreement is never an end.

Which leads to the criticism of what I refer to here as scientism (or SOMist thinking, as it might be called elsewhere). I say scientism to distinguish it from science itself – science is scientistic for good reason – but I’m talking here about scientism as the dominant or privileged approach to reasonable rationality generally for all human decisions of policy and value. Ethical, moral and value questions of what’s best.

When I refer to scientism as the prevailing, but flawed ideology, I’m referring to this.

• Decisions that privilege argumentation based on objectively defined entities and concepts, with relations that are amenable to logical (including arithmetical) manipulation, over any other kind.
• Considerations that may well recognise the existence of less-well-defined objects, relations and values, but nevertheless privilege “reduction” of decision-making considerations to models that may be “evaluated” according to the privileged mode of argumentation. (This isn’t to say such models may not be of practical value, it simply says they need not be privileged over any other kind as “the” view of reality.)
• Argumentation that, despite depending on creative theorising, imagining, conjecture and hypothesis, privileges sets of relations and premises that are falsifiable, those sets that exhibit incoherence, where pairs may conflict in truth value, over those that are coherent, constructive, and reinforcing.

All of which begs questions about what “other kinds” of valid consideration there are. However, the ideological dogma is effectively to say there are none; that is to say that the burden of argument on any consideration not meeting the above criteria is with those beyond the dogma to provide arguments about considerations beyond the dogma that nevertheless meet the dogma. (The denial of this point is Maxwell’s “scientific neurosis”.)

In summary, the dogma is:
Doing things scientifically represents high quality.
Doing things unscientifically equates to low quality.
A scientific argument always trumps a non-scientific one – in scientific knowledge obviously – but in any question of policy and value in human affairs.

 

Ironic that Jim Al Khalili, one day after posting a challenge to the tweeter who could explain the most complex / significant fundamental physical theory in 140 characters, resorted to a chain of 4 tweets merely to express his outrage and other tweeters suggesting “celebrity” was maybe a motive in large numbers of A-level students naming Brian Cox in their UCAS applications to study physics at university. And doing it just two tweets after tweeting himself that “the Cox effect is real” though he “hates to admit it”. (With a smiley, of course, fortunately he doesn’t really mind Cox being more famous than him.)

Hamish McKenzie, writing in PandoDaily – Elon Musk is more important to society than Steve Jobs ever was – notes Elon Musk pleading with successful entrepreneurs to “think outside the Internet.” He goes on to quote (Musk’s PayPal co-founder) Peter Thiel:

“We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters.”

Talking of celebrity name-dropping, how ironic too that Larry Krauss going on stage this evening (now) in Oz presumably to deliver his stadium rant in defence of “reason” should tweet: (coincidence that Cox is also on stage in Oz as I type?)

“Equally nice to have something to remember Christopher by to take with me onstage.. 🙂 pic.twitter.com/q23OTE6HLR “

Who wouldn’t “defend reason” Larry? The problem is in your presumed privileged definition for the whole of reason. Name-dropping the late Christopher Hitchens to cement his mantle of 5th Horseman (or is that 6th after Steven Pinker?) maybe. Not forgetting the other celebrity atheists from the world of entertainment, Fry, Gervais, et al.

The famous celebrities kindle interest, and as Plutarch said (hat tip to David Gurteen):

The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.

Even the top scientists need to beware the cult of celebrity. So yes, the marketing value to grabbing attention and generating interest is real, but don’t confuse the perceived authority of that with the value of the knowledge content, the ideas expressed. The memetic effect of authority by celebrity association “the Cox effect” simply compounds the problem of crowding out the higher value ideas with the catchier ones.

Jim is the last person I’d want that to happen to – the celebrity scientist / atheist who understands the high value idea that it is irrational to wage war on the faithful.