Month: July 2014

Riff on Gaza

When Hamas started its volley of rockets at Israel 3 weeks ago or so, it was already too late for anyone outside Israel or Gaza to have much effect beyond hand-wringing and expressions of outrage over the armed tit for tat.

There are several interested parties here, dozens of them, all distinct and different …

  • Palestinians, Gazans, Hamas, Fatah and other assorted Islamist factions in and out of Gaza.
  • Israel, Israelis, Israeli Jews, Jews generally and various whackier factions of Jewry in and out of Israel.
  • Wider Arab & “Western” nations and interests. Western here needs to include Russia (see other local difficulty)
  • Current interests, plus historical & cultural interests, responsibilities, claims, offers and rejections.

The immediate conflict is between Israel and Hamas. Gazans and Israelis are collateral damage.

Having decided to rocket Israel Hamas has chosen to be the aggressor in the current armed conflict (*1). (Gazan’s specifically(*2), plus Palestinians and Arabs more generally, let the world know your affiliation with Hamas …. Hamas’ own aims are clear and public.)

Having decided to respond to the attacks defensively, and then by pre-emptive attacks, Israel is within its rights. Its responsibilities are then “proportionality” and humanitarian care for the collateral damage on both sides.

Once in the mess of the current armed exchanges with sporadic cease-fires, broken several times by Hamas and ignored (“for operational reasons”) occasionally by Israel, it’s still the same mess we’re in.

Collateral damage of innocents(*) is part of the mess, attributing whose direct and indirect responsibility for whose ordnance hits which “accidental” targets and who located the targets, once we’re in the mess, is the fog of war and blame-game rhetoric. Shit happens because shit is happening when we’re in this kinda mess.

It was too late to avoid the mess 3 weeks ago, other than pleas to humanity. Only the US has forces to match Israel anyway, and whilst US and Russia are miles apart in the world right now, there is little chance of external intervention of genuinely neutral force. This conflagration needs to burn itself out.

Same is true now for both Hamas and Israel, in the sense that the current mess is unavoidable, it’s the current reality; (it wasn’t 3 weeks ago, but now it is). Now we’re in this mess “we” might as well finish the job – the damage is already done, it’s not really about numbers. Having kicked-off the mess originally against Hamas rockets, and their sources, the threat of invasion tunnels became not only real (actual physical assaults) but more extensive, as more were unearthed on the Gazan side – it makes perfect military operational sense to complete their “destruction” with the (human) forces you’ve already put at risk.

The belligerents need to cease any new operations, and cease fire, and withdraw to at-peace dispositions. Fast. Then they need to talk, with mediators clearly.

  • That talk needs to address the whole of the real problem, not the unfortunate recent mess.
  • The talking to solve the problem also needs parallel ongoing strategies for responding to provocations to any new mess arising.
  • The talk must not stop. And the talking shop needs sustained and continuous world effort and variety to maintain its credibility.

That real underlying problem is complicated. What we mustn’t do is wait for the next mess before we fix it, because if it’s not fixed we all share responsibilities for the next mess, just as we do for this and previous examples.

(*1) Hostilities are ongoing, so the precise start of the current armed conflict is a matter of perspective. Before the rocket strikes on Israel per se – ie civilian targets – there had of course been tit for tat kidnappings and killings of individuals on both sides, and Israeli strikes against specific Hamas targets. Hamas themselves confirmed the victims were their own military leaders.

(*2) The parents of Gazan children, and their local leaders are NOT innocent when it comes to Hamas launching rockets and building attack tunnels “in their name”.

[Post Notes :

This started as a riff – some short sharp statements, without explicit arguments and connected paragraphs. Only response so far has been personal twitter abuse, but I’m gradually adding referenced facts. and subtly modifying details as I do. One suggestion was I was ignorant of facts in this Henry Siegman piece at Democracy Now. Good news is that Siegman agrees with my first point and indeed it’s his first point – in the shorter term now this mess has erupted there is nothing to do but hope the disaster is short-lived. All strategy, planning and action concerns what next, based on deeper understanding of the parties and real issues, current and historical. Reading on, I don’t find anything of which I’m not generally aware, that’s not covered by my “it’s complicated” above. But feel free to point out and ask any specific, anyone. Immediate interest for me is current Gazan “governance” and where Hamas fits in. The fact current Palestinian Gazan’s find themselves “blockaded” into their current narrow strip is a long and sorry tale of missed opportunity in itself – the idea that they are forced to live this way simply being “Israel’s fault” is laughably simplistic. That is one point I depart from Siegman.

Anyway for now – the riff stands. (Fixed the Fatah reference). Sure “provocation” is part of what leads to outbreak of armed exchanges, given the tense conflict of the status quo. No-one is blameless, and sure, I do think Israeli response has been disproportionate and inhumane – I add my voice to that outrage, but I believe other Israelis and Jews saying “not in our name” says that much more eloquently and forcefully than the rest of us hand-wringing bystanders. But both sides have a longer agenda here. Beyond the immediate ending of hostilities but before the “full solution” the short-to-medium term issue has to be Hamas. It won a Palestinian-wide election back in 2006, but had to impose its own Islamic rule of force in 2007 to take control over Gaza from shared secular responsibility with Fatah … since then it’s declared aim of the destruction of Israel, and it’s alignment with other Islamic movements since the Arab spring, Egypt and Syria crises means several things. (1) we need to know where Palestinians and Gazan’s (and wider Arabs) stand on Hamas aims and actions in 2014, and (2), if the supported aims are Islamic militant, against tolerance of other cultures and beliefs, internal or neighbouring – we have a much larger issue to work on whilst “peace-keeping” in and around Gaza.

And here’s a good piece from Brian Eno on the immediate humanist issues.

And (5 Aug) another strong action from Baroness Warsi.

And (5 Aug) the HuffPo interview with Warsi – very explicit on the loss of William Hague, and the internal FO unrest. How much more evidence needed for long-life meritocratic second house, and “wisdom” rather than vote-catching fads manning important ministries – like the FO – that have tough ethical decisions to make over long and short time-scales.

From both Eric (Pickles) and William (Hauge) I learnt the art of reconciling passion and idealism with pragmatism and realism …

Art not science, notice.

Meanwhile (1 Aug) ISIS in Syria and Iraq and …. where next. There is still one complicated problem here called “the middle east” and Israel/Hamas are the bull & red-rag in the china shop.

The belief that Isis is interested only in ‘Muslim against Muslim’ struggles is another instance of wishful thinking: Isis has shown it will fight anybody who doesn’t adhere to its bigoted, puritanical and violent variant of Islam. Where Isis differs from al-Qaida is that it’s a well-run military organisation that is very careful in choosing its targets and the optimum moment to attack them …. A new and terrifying state has been born.

Disappointing to see the myth that Sykes-Picot was “implemented” after WW1? Hopefully just short-hand. After all that’s what myths are for.]

Dick Dawkins on Rape

Put my comment in the thread already : “Richard Dawkins, what on earth happened to you?” by Eleanor Robertson in The Grauniad. Stick to the science, Dick.

Don’t know enough about Ms Robertson as to why she gets to publish a personal tirade against the individual, but the point is real (of all the 4, 5, 6 horsemen, not just Dawkins).

To say x is bad, y is worse, presumes bad and worse are some objective measures that lie logically related along some common scale. x and y are different sure, but they’re not to be reduced to objects.The value judgments depends on whose perspective and a lot more than are found in your philosophy (of science) Mr Dawkins.

The Eagleton quote is spot on. The horsemen should stick to their science, and show a little humility – given their public profiles – when launching beyond science, pushing scientism where its contribution is doubtful, even laughable.

His logical point that a statement about B says nothing about a previous statement about A – is true enough. His (scientistic) error is to pick an example topic where simple logical objective points are least relevant, and to be ignorant of the error or its significance. That’s the recurring error of all the “horsemen”, and the reason it brings the anti-personal reactions it does, rather than well-reasoned arguments. That argument is about what a well-reasoned argument is, and their capital error is the arrogant belief that science holds a monopoly on rationality – scientism.

[Followed-up by Dawkins here. Where, to be fair, he does emphasise his logical point about the X and Y statements. Rather than apologise, after all it’s OK to cause offense in his world, he does acknowledge that the subjective personal violation examples he chose as illustrations, could have been reversed without invalidating his original logical point. Which shows PRECISELY that these non-scientific examples cannot be decided / ranked / valued by his scientific logic – merely expressed as vacuous logical examples of no real world value – opposite statements having equal value, logically, scientistically, in the real world beyond science. THIS is what his detractors (me included) are railing against. Stick to the science Dick, or wake up to the real world. ]

Science Articles of Faith

One article of faith in science is that dinosaurs became extinct 60-odd million years ago and couldn’t have been around at the same time as early hominids. Article of faith in the sense that evidence for it refutes any possible young-earth creationism. Herewith a current story pointing out the elements of chance in evolutionary progress, if anyone needed reminding.

However here also a couple of stories [CSUN Story] [Smithsonian Story] that show why it really is an article of faith amongst scientists, rather than good science. When evidence of (potentially) shorter lifecycle occurs in the fossil record, (potentially) supporting young-earth creationism arguments – actions to reject and suppress the evidence (rather than find better explanations) are anti-religious and far from scientific. [Hat tip to Rick on Facebook for the CSUN Story.]

Maybe some pockets of population did survive longer, niche-habitats are crucial to many evolutionary stories. Maybe there are mechanisms of soft-tissue preservation and /or substitution that do occur protected inside older fossils of larger bones. Maybe the original interpretation of having found preserved soft tissue is misguided or wishful thinking. Maybe a hundred and one other hypotheses – one rule of scientific method is that potential hypotheses are infinite. Who knows, without the science, but failing that, let’s bash the perceived “enemy” of science anyway (*).

Anyway, I can’t research all the circumstances and motives of all the people in the linked stories – some individuals clearly do have creationist religious views – but the scientific community response to evidence is far from scientific. My call is for neurotic science to wake up from turning itself into its own religion in order to counter the kinds of religion of which its consensus doesn’t approve.

[(*) Post Note ; Following up more “Speculative Realism” sources – ones I can read and understand. Recently bought, but found too turgid after the excellent introductory chapters Quentin Meillassoux’s “After Finitude“, so went back to my previous reading of Levi Bryant’s “Democracy of Objects“ to restore faith. In the context of this post, and the previous post on democratic “consensus” in science, I found this previously quoted passage spot on the mark:

On the one hand we have the pro-science crowd that vigorously argues that science gives us the true representation of reality. It is not difficult to detect, lurking in the background, a protracted battle against the role that superstition and religion play in the political sphere. Society, at all costs, must be protected from the superstitious and religious irrationalities that threaten to plunge us back into the Dark Ages.

Where “at all costs” includes the unwise corruption of science itself. Anyway, faith restored, I’ve now also ordered Levi Bryant’s (ed) “The Speculative Turn“:

… the new currents of continental [including UK] philosophy depart from the text-centered hermeneutic models of the [PoMo] past and engage in daring speculations about the nature of reality itself.

What I’ve been refering to as PoPoMo. More later.]

Science is an Appeal to Authority

Science is an appeal to authority, but where does that authority come from? An interesting Guardian piece by Graham Redfearn on Naomi Oreskes (with a TED Talk of hers at the bottom)

There really is no scientific method.

  • Inductive of hypotheses and predictions, true, but actually a rare case
  • Deductive of observed evidence, true, but much judgement and interpretation of evidence and experience and of correlation and causation, and with varying faith and trust in people and reports – very little evidence is direct observation causally related to any hypothesis or law.
  • And, both confirmation and falsification logic can be flawed by unrecognised assumptions in your model.
  • So in practice, almost “anything goes” (Feyerabend), there is much creativity and imagination involved.
  • Ultimately science is the emergent and evolving collective consensus (of scientists).

Paradox of modern science:

  • Science IS an appeal to authority (albeit the authority of a collective consensus).

This is the root of a large part of the agenda here – where the topic is at the boundaries of accepted science, even questioning the accepted boundaries of science, the consensus cannot come entirely from those who are scientists or with declared interests in science.

Fact: The quality of thinking and questioning required to achieve such consensus cannot be derived entirely the received wisdom of the existing scientific consensus.

Wittgenstein Swimming Against Scientism

Ray Monk’s 1999 essay on Wittgenstein’s forgotten lesson – that

“scientism” is a tide against which we are swimming.

(I constantly use the word “scientism” to describe the prevailing problem and wasn’t aware of this source. Stumbled across it in Prospect Magazine, whilst following up the Nagel review below.)

Beyond Energy, Matter, Time and Space

Interesting NY Times science post by George Johnson.
(Hat tip to Rick Ryals on Facebook.)

” … it is almost taken for granted that everything from physics to biology, including the mind, ultimately comes down to four fundamental concepts: matter and energy interacting in an arena of space and time.”

” … maybe decades or millennia from now — here or someplace yet to be imagined — science on Earth, circa 2014, will look like nothing more than a good start.”

concludes Johnson.

In practice it’s a comparative review of two books:

Thomas Nagel’s 2012 “Mind and Cosmos:
Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False” and

Max Tegmark’s 2014 “Our Mathematical Universe:
My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality”

The former gets slated by Pinker, so that’s a good recommendation for me. (Here a review in Prospect Magazine.)

Peer Review Scam

There have been debates before about the validity of “peer review” and alternative publishing authority models – seem to recall some hoo-ha around arxiv.org a few years back. These here are technical articles rather than pure science, but show how systems are manipulated. (Hat tip to BifRiv for the link.)