Month: November 2018

Sacred Scepticism

An interesting edition of The Sacred Podcast with @TheosElizabeth inteviewing @SethAnzisca about his book “Preventing Palestine: A Political History from Camp David to Oslo”

Tweeted a few responses as I listened – it resonated with so many of my own agenda items. This one merges the opening and closing thoughts:

When I heard the initial remark I mentally added the qualifier in parenthesis, which I had to take as a given in the task of reducing to a single word what one holds sacred – Skepticism in his case.

I would have the same trouble picking one from a word-cloud of Humanism, Atheism, Skepticism, Rationalism – each would risk too narrow standalone connotations. “I’m a rationalist, humanist atheist.” is what I ended-up with in the Worldview section of my Manifesto.

Mashing those concluding thoughts into the opening remark adds that balance of humanity to the stark choice of one word.

Interestingly this thought too:

Actually summarises my “Timeline” approach to the work of all authors whose thoughts seem significant. Where was the author coming from when they wrote this was the whole motivation behind my Pirsig Pages for example. No-one, no history, is truly neutral in any objective sense. “All identity is politics” is a recurring mantra of mine too – all identifying of or with a group involves the implicit agenda of that group. All conversations (should) involve understanding before drawing any other conclusions or actions.

If I had to reduce my own word-salad to a single word it would probably have to be Duty. The duty to respect the other when engaging skeptically in free-discourse about overt differences and the responsibility to follow-up any offence and misunderstanding. Where coincidentally I already quoted @TheosElizabeth.

Interestingly neither my thoughts nor Anzisca’s sacred word concern the Israeli-Palestine content explicitly. It’s all meta. Worth a listen. [Coincidentally my immediate previous post does in fact involve a significant contribution to the mid-east content!]

Gertrude Bell

2018 is the centenary of the Representation of the People Act 1918 creating the first votes for women in the UK, coming at the end of WW1 being commemorated this weekend. I thought I’d share a presentation (an exhibition display with photographs) I did for Great Northern Women earlier this year.

(Full PDF of the slides with all source links here.)

Respect for Value-Based Boundaries of Free-Discourse

Time to bring this to a worthwhile conclusion-so-far. I used the Grenfell effigy-burning as the recent opportunity to pick up on this debate: When is Free-Speech a Hate Crime? and Are There Any Limits to Free Expression?

[Permanent link to “Rules of Engagement”.]

In fact, Grenfell was the first item on a particularly excellent edition of BBC TV Question Time this Thursday. Mairead McGuinness as the voice of non-UK-partisan reason, Diane Abbott with her own perspective as a regular victim of hate-speech and back on form after a couple of worrying years(?). And, a treat to see Jordan Peterson in an uncontroversial context. Great contributions also from David Aaronovitch and Kwasi Kwarteng.

I summarised my own position – offered as a steelman of myself in a footnote to the previous above – as follows:

In life in general, there are rules and rules are there to be respected — and, if broken, responsibility for the consequences respected in turn.

In free-speech, free-expression of free-thought, religious or otherwise, is enshrined right from the top at the UN. Thought and expression are never a crime in themselves. Such thought and expression may always be “offensive” to someone.

But, – a very subtle and important BUT – there ARE rules about motivation for choosing to express them; choosing audiences and contexts for that expression; and choices in publicising their expression. These include questions of potential victimisation of disadvantaged groups beyond the local audience and victim (if any) of the immediate physical expression.

These rules will never be simple to legislate for every objective possibility, yet society needs to enforce and sanction their transgression, escalate such sanctions on repeat transgressors, publicly uphold the values in the rules and incentivise potential transgressors to modify their future behaviours and so on.

Criminal law and enforcement by police are a blunt instruments for such problematic value-based rules. It’s is only a matter of practical alternatives that police and criminal process are brought to bear in public cases — usually initially to question motives and context and warn of potential consequences where judged necessary. It would take further circumstantial evidence before any consideration of any such case being brought into the criminal justice system — but the possibility may always need to be considered. My personal preference would be something like “community policing” before getting anywhere near the criminal system, but the glare of publicity in such cases generally demands a clean audit trail so, eg of questioning under caution(?), is probably unavoidable in practice. I’m not the legal expert. Suspicions under public order offenses is probably as good a fudge as any available. God forbid anyone suggests “thought police” 😉

But, these are practical enforcement issues that do not change the basic premise that, even in free-speech, there are rules to be respected.

And, my ORIGINAL MAIN POINT, that this respect of rules — mostly the same meta-rules incidentally “Respect, Respect & Respect” — applies in ANY discourse, especially where there is obvious disagreement and not just those that escalate to public offense.

Interesting that Mairead McGuinness’ main closing point in the QT debate was that the sad events were really a loss of RESPECT, a coarsening of public discourse generally. As you can see in my own summary above, respect in discourse generally has been the primary focus the whole time.

But respect for what? Jordan Peterson’s point, like Peter Tatchell’s in my previous post, was the extreme care needed when calling-out instances of free-speech as potential hate crime. Tolerance for free-speech is so high that exceptions have to be seen to be exceptional. As Peterson said,  the psychology of motivation – why? – matters most and it cannot be a matter of someone “defining” expressions of hate-crime. In my own “rules” of respectful dialogue, and in “legislating” for hate-speech enforcement in the steelman above my caveat is that attempts at objective definition of the rule are to be avoided, and that a fudge permitting judgement is essential.

It is for this reason that the more objective-scientistic, extreme-reductionist, freedom-fetishists struggle with the concept of any exceptional boundaries to free discourse demanding any respect. Fortunately we still have wiser heads in positions of authority. But for how long?

The real scare is the direction in which public – unmediated anti-social-media – discourse is evolving. Fake news and alt-facts ain’t the half of it.

[Post Thought –Media-Moderation – as in nuclear reactor moderator rods – controlling the speed of reaction, the speed at which “lies get half-way round the world before the truth gets its pants on”. Simplistic half-baked information becomes universal before nuance gets its pants on. Doesn’t take away the basic freedom to express, simply slows down the speed of spread, so that nuance can get a look in?]

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[Post Note: One to add to the collection – policing our inner monologue?]

[Post Note: And the memetic fact of the matter – evolution by cyclical causation- “Today’s Laptop Activists Seek Attention, not Truth“. Even truth needs to be communicated, so attention to truth also requires seeking attention for its communication. Game theory anyone? Needs a new post in light of the Axelrod simulation.]

[And: It gets scarier. Some people still hanging onto the false hope that inhuman communication and machine processing is amenable to ethical rules. Hat-tip Jamie Bartlett.]

[And: A real case that got as far as conviction: “Unchecked, they would have inspired violence and spread hatred.” As scary as you like.]

[And there’s more: Today (14th Nov) Bercow the speaker of the house during PMQ’s after May reports the “we have an EU deal” status of the proposal she has to put to cabinet …. constantly using the word “respect” to describe the rules of decorum in the house, so that the nominated speaker has the right to be heard.]

Are There Any Limits to Free Expression?

There’s a lot of water under the bridge since my post yesterday on the burning Grenfell effigy case and the dialogue I’d already started with Stephen Knight (GodlessSpellchecker -GS for short). Not least that GS subsequently “tapped-out” (sic) his own post, and overnight has drawn compare-and-contrast attention to another non-free-speech crime against Grenfell (a compensation fraud).

The pile-on continues with a great deal of the whataboutery of seemingly Socratic questions mostly unrelated to the case I’d described. (All questions answered by me incidentally, even where already addressed by the original post and links, except where rhetorical questions implying straw-men.)

However lots, most, of it ad hominem against me a being “a buffoon who hasn’t thought this through”, or some who “can’t spot the difference between different cases”, etc – when clearly I have done little else but address these. The reason the freedom-extremists haven’t is because they stop at first base and don’t feel the need to think, or give any respect to any thought, of alternatives.

A lot of time-wasting could have been saved by GS simply answering the first question in my previous post “When is Free Speech a Hate Crime?“. If your answer is “Never.” – as in the case of GS and his echo-chamber – then not surprisingly, none need ever consider the caveats and nuances of when it might be. No actual dialogue occurs.

In GS’s own post, since he is starting from the “Never.” position, he uses much the same previous examples as I did, without any acknowledgment of any issues I’d raised, but applies the same simple rule. Never. They’re all wrong. There is no discussion of any of the nuances that make the contexts of public bad taste jokes scenarios, their motivations and intended audiences, and their necessary public responses, all different (and all already covered by me). (If there is any motivation to progress this dialogue, with respect, feel free to point out any arguments I might have missed. However please ensure my case is properly represented also – both posts and links read and taken into account. I’d recommend starting with a Steelman?)

It’s interesting to contrast with Peter Tatchell’s position, speaking on BBC R4 PM yesterday. Someone who has experienced both sides of this as the victim, on behalf of LGBTI groups, of prejudiced acts of hate-speech, and as the user of free-speech to (attempt to) ban free speech (!) in the past (Fairy Tale of New York anyone?). Some might suggest hypocritical, I say a sophisticated position given the complexity of any such case. He says pretty clearly this Grenfell effigy case should not be a criminal matter, he’s probably right, but also that we must be very careful because there are exceptions where so-called free-speech becomes an offense that society must sanction, criminally or otherwise. Pretty much my position, he could be my Steelman, after which the devil is in the detail.

An aside to the immediate point of this thread, but there is one agenda item starkly exposed here. This demand for “unequivocal simplicity” in response to a complex situation, if I can’t express my own position in 280 characters I clearly don’t understand it myself apparently. I call it simplistication – that ensures that most of the social-mediated interaction reinforces the simple (bad) choice and drowns out any nuanced (good) discussion, any proper dialogue. Pure memetics that simple ideas spread quickly and easily whereas good ideas do not, when unmediated by any slower variety of rationality – wisdom(?) for short. Not the immediate point here, but related two ways in fact: the (shock-horror) concept of social-media requiring moderation (more anti-free-speech shock horror); and conversely the idea that there are “rules” of free-speech to be respected. Anyway:

How can free-expression be free if there are rules to moderate it?
What does respect – for the rules – have to do with it?

My recurring agenda throughout this dialogue, and indeed the point of the original dialogue – including the post and the linked material on jokes, etc – has indeed been respect. Respect. Respect for what?

Firstly, given the “never” response to the first question, the specifics of Grenfell effigy case are no longer relevant. Knowing that, is why I had already suggested a thought experiment variation – burning an Auschwitz / Jews effigy?

[Now this kind of thought experiment is basically trolleyology; the variation of fixed objective variables in an ethical dilemma framed as an instrumental choice in a physical arrangement – switching points to change the victim of a runaway rail car, etc. I’m only using it to get to the point that there are exceptions to “never”. Trolleyology, like Socratic questioning, never gets much beyond Ethics-101 when it comes to practical analysis of real life complexity. It makes you think, even if it doesn’t satisfactorily answer the questions.]

Is hateful free-speech against (say) Jews a hate crime?

Public expression of hateful thought – burning effigies, daubing gravestones, displaying placards, sharing stereotypical images, explicit and implicit commentary on such acts? At what point is such action incitement or abetting incitement of acts of real consequence against unfairly vulnerable groups in society? It is always a question of immediate victims – who may or not be damaged or “offended” – and the implied or explicit class or group victimised.

If your answer is still never. Free expression, no exceptions, no concept of hate-speech ever, then I can’t help you. I suspect the remaining question here is simply the criminal policing aspect of any social boundaries of gross public bad-taste twattery and consequences for transgressors.

In the Grenfell effigy case public sanction and investigation of transgressor motivations and potential victim consequences was entirely correct. Whether we have any machinery other than police to do that is a separate question as is, having done the investigation, whether any criminal proceedings beyond warning of transgression are taken by the police. Motivations and contrition – name and shame, and sincere public apologies – affect that decision. (Tatchell also agreed on this.)

That decision is a socially negotiated response; cease and desist and reparation or punishment if not, whether police and criminal or not. Society’s message to would be transgressors – to think before you express your free thoughts, and that we take respect for the rules of free-speech seriously. Free speech is so important to us that its rules matter to us.

[Consequences of such decisions do not physically constrain free-thought and expression. In fact, the “martyrdom” of being formally punished is always part of the social campaigner’s armoury towards long-term change to the rules of a free-democratic, death-penalty-free society.]

But motivations and contrition are a matter of whether we and the transgressors respect that any boundaries exist. Free speech is not free of consequences, and we are not free of responsibility for those consequences.

The same is true of any dialogue, any exchange of expressed ideas. This is especially true if the dialogue involves obvious disagreements – which is where this dialogue on respect started – that disagreement is more essential than respect, or that respect is just as important? Respect for the constraining rules of free dialogue. And part of that respect is taking personal responsibility for the consequences of transgressing the rules.

Society is indeed “sick” – but not because it is “outraged” by disrespect.

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[Post Note: The pile-on continued much reduced, and GS did respond after this one intelligent intervention:

Time will tell if GS (or his entourage) will take the hint and continue the dialogue with a Steel-man, or whether the spurious Straw-men and Ad-hominems will continue. Until then …. next topic?]

[Try this for a Steelman:

  • There are rules and rules are there to be respected – even if broken and the consequences respected.
  • In free-speech – free-expression of free-thought enshrined right from the top at the UN – the thought and expression are never a crime in themselves. Such thought and expression may always be “offensive” to someone.
  • But, there are rules about motivation for choosing to express them, choosing audiences and contexts for that expression, and choosing to publicise their expression, including questions related to potential victimisation of disadvantaged groups beyond the immediate audience and victims (if any) of the immediate physical expression.
  • These rules will never be simple to legislate for every objective possibility, yet society needs to enforce and sanction their transgression, escalate such sanctions on repeat transgressors, publicly uphold the values in the rules and incentivise potential transgressors to modify their future behaviours and so on.
  • The law and enforcement by police are a blunt instruments for such problematic value-based rules. It’s is only a matter of practical alternatives that police and criminal process are brought to bear in public cases – usually initially to question motives and context and warn of potential consequences where judged necessary. It would take further circumstantial evidence before any consideration of any such case being brought into the criminal justice system – but the possibility may always need to be considered. My personal preference would be something like “community policing” before getting anywhere near the criminal system, but the glare of publicity in such cases generally means a clean audit trail – eg of questioning under caution – is probably unavoidable in practice. I’m not the legal expert. Suspicions under public order offenses is probably as good a fudge as any available. God forbid anyone suggests “thought police” 😉
  • But, these are practical enforcement issues that do not change the basic premise that, even in free-speech, there are rules to be respected.
  • And, my ORIGINAL MAIN POINT, that this respect of rules – mostly the same rules incidentally – applies in ANY discourse, especially where there is obvious disagreement and not just those that escalate to public offense.

End.]

[Oh, and by the way, talk about tedious …
During this dialogue I’ve suspended my policy of:

“Block all tweeps who like a mention
but offer no other interaction
and no evidence in their own bio
of genuine interest in the actual topic.”

Used to be my pinned tweet, may have to reinstate it.
Ho hum.]

When is Free-Speech a Hate Crime?

The bonfire-burning an effigy of Grenfell complete with victims, as some kind of entertaining joke, is the latest free-speech battleground according to some. It’s very like the Count Dankula case, that is it’s very complicated. And as I type, this case is referred for investigation, no actual crime necessarily. It’s a complex decision that could go either way, but whatever the verdict, the referral sparks the public thought process. [See BBC update in second post-note below.]

I might characterise the battleground as those that see free-speech as trumping all other responsibilities vs those that beg to differ, though as I say it is invariably more complicated and characterising it as a binary battle doesn’t do the topic justice.

Freedom of thought and expression is probably one of the most inalienable rights enshrined quite rightly in UN law. Of course, as soon as one expresses an idea – the content of which is entirely free of any constraint – the question of why, where, who, context arises. So the expression of free-thought is a decision to speak or act which comes with responsibilities.

So we also have the concept of hate-speech (and hate-acts expressing hateful ideas) captured in practical law, where the free-expression targets a class of victims, and their human rights become a consideration.

In the Grenfell case, the individuals (potentially) represented are the class of people living in that kind of accommodation under those conditions. Typically, in most of the ongoing debate around Grenfell, a group seen as a mostly ethnically and economically disadvantaged, compared to their institutional landlords. This is an ongoing class with ongoing rights for which we have ongoing responsibilities.

One commentator, Stephen Knight, compared the act with burning effigies of Guy Fawkes or Boris Johnson say. To focus the mind in making the contrast, I suggested replacing Grenfell and it’s victims with a representation of (say) an Auschwitz camp hut complete with Jewish occupants?

In the Fawkes / BoJo case, the point is respect for what the individual represents. We burn Fawkes to remind ourselves that despite our daily dissatisfaction with government, we respect the imperfect institution. We burn BoJo (or Maggie) for similar reasons – the individual hate-figure – because we can, to claim the freedom to do so, yet still respect the imperfect institutions in their being duly elected representatives. There is no disadvantaged class being victimised by the act of expression, indeed the symbolic opposite.

Switching out Grenfell for Auschwitz in the thought experiment would make the victims “semites” rather than a less well-defined presecuted class. We would be adding to the anti-semitism debate. But we still have a class of (potentially) persecuted victims, if less focussed.

At that point, as I say, it is very similar to the Dankula case (see the Baddiel analysis) the complexity of which hinges on understanding the motives (and audience) of the act as well as the nature of the target of the joke. And like that case, the private-party vs select-audience vs public-sharing is going to matter in terms of what the actors knew and intended. It’s the wide public sharing that creates the legal dilemma – between freedom and hatred. The jury is still out.

Conveniently, Stephen Knight had forgotten a one-to-one 10/12 tweet exchange we had yesterday on the need for respect in progressive dialogue. It’s about respect for the rules of engagement when other humans are on the other side of your position. I respect Stephen, I see the sincerity in his many religion vs atheism campaigns, even if I think he’s misguided in his extreme-freedom position. Enough respect for a nuanced dialogue beyond simply “taking no prisoners” on a point of disagreement.

I won’t post the whole twitter exchanges, but you’ll find them in the threads above and below these two pairs:

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[Post Note: and of course there is a whole twitter thread following this post, including a pile-on of ad-hominems and “likers” for his subsequent Socratic questions and straw-men (all of which I’ve answered) with no other constructive contributions. And of course, in real time, only two clicks on the actual post. Ended for now with this ….

I’ve said what needed saying.]

[Post Note: And on the specifics of this case – updated BBC story – clear grounds to check possible hate crime. Making this opinion public:

“That’s what happens when they don’t pay their rent.”

That use of “they” & “their” does suggest deliberate and objective reference to the victim group, as I suggested.]

[Post Note: And more … the public conversation, unrelated to the specific dialogue above:

“It depends”. It’s complicated.
This one will run with good humour for a while yet.]

[Post Note: Stephen Knight – GodlessSpellchecker – has subsequently posted his own thoughts, though sadly ignoring – positively rejecting! ridiculous! incompetent! (disrespecting?) – the whole dialogue from my side. Anyway, he’s clearly parked in the “society is sick for sanctioning hate-speakers joke” camp. Any future follow-up will need to be a new post I fear … once I’ve considered if he has any new arguments … Follow-up post here: “Are There Any Limits to Free Expression?“]

Progress in Dialogue Again – Helen Lewis and Jordan Peterson

Helen Lewis conducted a long interview with Jordan Peterson for GQ Magazine and a 100 minute version is up on YouTube.

The set-up is journalist “versus” controversial public person – “interrogates” them in a “dissection of masculinity” – was exploited by GQ, whatever Lewis’ own feminist agenda. Explicitly adversarial. (Lots of people commenting on the relative sound and lighting between the protagonists.) Peterson himself saw it as an attempted “take-down”. A grilling, holding the influential to account, etc.

In that sense very similar to the infamous Cathy Newman interview which I’ve written about before, but that was live, within the constraints of a 10 minute or so mainstream-media news segment. In that interview Newman got to the “you got me” aha! moment only a minute or two from the end – and as I’ve said on numerous times since, that conversation really should be taken up again and continued in long form. Newman (like Lewis) has a feminist agenda but as we see in both cases these are highly intelligent and well researched people that bring a lot more to any debate than simply being the journalist primed to ask the awkward questions. (We have plenty of idiot men like John Humphrys for that.)

The real point here is that it may start adversarial by design of the standard journalistic set-up, but the dialogue is far more intelligent than that. Peterson wants you to challenge him and hold his feet to the fire, provided the dialogue is mutual. Peterson is indeed an emotional and quick to anger in his own defense kinda person, but he knows it and is excruciatingly careful in controlling and following-up, elaborating and explaining beyond first reactions.

What we see is that the conversation does evolve into a two-way dialogue. Lewis brings a lot to it, her own intuitive and objective positions. Each challenges the other and common ground emerges.

In Peterson’s case, obviously he defends himself, but the point of doing such interviews is to expose his thinking to the challenge and to challenge others in doing so.  He is nothing if not thoughtful in considering his responses. In fact his whole agenda revolves around understanding the psychology of emotion and intellect in what knowledge and belief lies behind our actions, his own included. It’s his day job.

And it’s Lewis behaviour too, to put up the examples from her own beliefs and experience to the challenge. She’s not always right – like Peterson, she’s also an imperfect human – multiculural society vs multiculturalism, the Pepe flag story, citing PZ Myers as a credible critic(!), the need for ideology, the Dankula blasphemy case. (In the latter, nothing wrong with her position – I just think Baddiel took it to a better conclusion.) But these are deep topics individually and really only get passing air-time in what is already a long conversation. Hierarchies too … don’t get me started. More dialogue is always needed.

My point is, it was an intelligent dialogue with proper knowledge-enhancing intent – both good-natured enough to smile genuinely at each other’s responses, and recognise narrowing of differences and misunderstandings topic by topic.

It’s an excellent interview where absolutely nothing depends on demonising Peterson as some alt-right misogynist bigot. Nothing could be further from the truth. The real danger, as Lewis often alludes, is in the possibility of Peterson’s short-attention-span fandom misunderstanding him, which is of course why he is excruciatingly careful in the more provocative implications of anything he says. His sense of responsibility is clear for all to see. The comment trail below the video also attests to this danger, and Peterson several times mentions struggling with how to manage social-media interaction. First responses are defenses of their “hero”, but in my experience those that actually achieve intelligent dialogue do get to more balanced positions. Job done.

Excellent. Worth the long watch.

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[Post Notes:

Interesting responses and follow-up. Now as I said, JBP is not perfect or conventional in expression of his ideas, and he’s not short on “weird” – both written and spoken – so if your aim is to pick holes, there are plenty of targets to throw rocks at.

GQ posted some short clips as teasers and others dug up older quotes and one-liners. There is a strong agenda to ridicule JBP from those supporting the feminist agenda, but the ridicule rarely addresses any of the actual argument in dialogue. Which is why I say the dialogue itself is so important. Intelligent feminism is a lot more than its stereotype.

His “all beef” diet draws a lot of “snark” – but you need to know the history and background for that exercise.

Many laughed at his old tweet (from a year of two ago) asking the direct question “Why so many of his audience are young men? I wonder why that is?”. That tweet was around the same time as the very emotional Radio5 clip that opens this recent discussion.

I did say above that “hierarchies” per se deserves unpicking along several axes – it’s a really big topic that constantly bumps up against the particular “patriarchy” debate. Many have ridiculed JBP’s use of the lobsters and planets examples. The long quote on the arrangement of celestial bodies being panned as looking like a Sokal post-modernist parody. Leaving out the complexities of why – how come? – JBP is simply highlighting that “equality” (of objective outcomes) is a human social-intellectual ideal that is not a default position in physics or biology and more primitive social arrangements. Things in general are arranged according to any number of attributes in any number of unequal arrangements. (As I say I wouldn’t necessarily call any and all of these “hierarchies”, but the error is misinterpreting presumptions about why, whilst denying any valid reasons why at all. ie it’s complicated – but it’s real – hence the need for proper dialogue beyond men = toxic-masculinity.)

The BBC Radio 5 Live JBP piece, hosted by Nihal Arthanayake is worth a listen. Respect, respect, respect, responsibility, ownership, discipline and rules-as-opportunities. It’s all there. Tim Samuels on “Man’s Hour”. Individual experience and identity vs class attributes and definition – good fences – again.

Ridicule is a right, but it comes with a responsibility to follow-up in dialogue. All life is problem-solving, male or female.]