A short note on why we get science wrong

 

Someone on Twitter this week (let's call her Georgie, not her real name) helped me understand why many of us misunderstand science. More particularly, why conservatives, who know what they know and don't like to be told anything different, often distrust science - among them anti-vaxxers and folk who know Apollo 11 didn't land on the moon but was filmed on a backlot in California like Casablanca.

How Georgie and I started on this doesn't matter. It's just that at one point in our little exchange Georgie remarked that "reason" told us Earth is round. 

I couldn't agree with that and pointed out that people who think Earth is flat also have "reasons". Reasons - our reason and reasoning, rationalism and "common sense" - all support things that are incorrect as well as things that are correct, support sense and nonsense alike.

Georgie agreed with that and suggested we should speak of "logic" instead. I felt bad about it, but again I had to disagree. Logic doesn't tell us Earth is round but quite the opposite: logic definitely makes Earth flat because you can walk over it on the level in a straight line. You see the problem?

Actually, the problem is straightforward. The problem is that we think of "science" and "reason" as the same thing when they are not; and we think of both as "logical" when they aren't necessarily. Forget the illogical Cheshire Cat whose grin survives its disappearance: today it's Schrodinger's Cat, alive and dead at the same time.

So many of our mysteries, not to mention our disagreements, are the result of the way we use words, and Georgie helped me find the right words this time. I know because she didn't answer when I wrote:

Science told us Earth is round. Until it did, it was anyone's guess.

What's it like getting older?

It's a question we all face, you'd think inappropriately, from when we are young. 

Most of us seem to agree that, provided your health holds up, you never feel any older; and that time goes more quickly the older you get. They're the common experiences, although I remember my friend Dave saying, 'We're over the hill', and citing as proof - when I denied it - 'Look how quickly it's gone.' We were 27 at the time.

There's another oddity, not so often mentioned. Everything gets younger the older you get. Not just the policemen, as the saying goes: the whole world. Things you once thought of as long ago, as Olden Times - your mum and dad's lives before you came along, the Swinging Sixties or Roaring Twenties, World War, Will Shakespeare and the rest - aren't far-off at all: the past is not another country, but your own. Except for your family childhood, that is. That seems to belong to another life altogether.

Is it just that we know more? Have we simply grown wiser?

We'll all speak for ourselves on that. I personally know a great deal more because I've read more books, seen more plays and movies, gone to lots of places and talked and listened to a lot more people than when I was 15. Obvious enough. 

Does that mean I'm wiser? My youngest daughter sort of asked me that when she was over on a visit this year. It went something like, 'You must know what life's about because you've been around for yonks.'

Swallowing a teaspoonful of resentment at this impudence, I answered promptly, 'Yes, I can definitely tell you everything you need to know about life,' which at least made us both laugh and me think about it afterwards a little more seriously.

No, I don't believe you get wiser, but you do get to know yourself better as long as you care to give it some thought. One view is that we don't exist as a continuous person psychologically throughout life. That is the accepted idea - that we're the same person growing all the time. But that's also believed to be an illusion, created by our memory.

I'm not sure it's an illusion. My review of me seems to show all the seeds are there when you're younger, and of course you don't spot them then because you're not looking for them then. 

Later in life, Jonathan Swift evidently took to saying, 'I am what I am.' It's a long term assignment, to Know Thyself.

In an article or a comment on the internet last week (can't remember which), some rather unfortunate person lamented, 'What's the point of life if you die and everything's lost and that's the end of it?'

Which is no doubt the difference between getting older and being old.

How are we all going to live with it?

People love a mystery, especially a scary one, and the media's making AI a scary mystery. Let's take the mystery out, if not quite the scary. 

Machines are no threat. We're well used to ones that open doors, till the soil, put bridges in place, move us across the land, fly past Jupiter, take us under the ocean, report bank balances, wash and dry dishes, play chess and read us a book. We live with them all.

But now they are working flat out on producing machines that can walk and talk and look like us and are intelligent like us. 'They' are not going to stop. How long have we got?

Certainly our species, said by us to be a higher form by virtue of its intelligence, may meet its end someday. But how could evolution, which is random, end at a kind of apex that humans would endorse or even recognise? An oyster, presumably, is untroubled that oysters over their long years never built Paris; Parisians will shortly have software that translates Mandarin in real time. Evolution may or may not 'progress' in our terms, but the terms are strictly ours.

We must guard against anthropocentrism. The Universe, we found out quite recently, is a very big place.  How could we know higher forms and more advanced societies didn’t survive for millions of years before we and our intelligence came along? Or whether they are still around? 

And then, quite apart from WWIII finishing us off, we're maybe approaching the point where we're able to meddle with evolution itself. That could also be the end of us humans. 'With the advent of artificial life,' wrote Doyne Farmer in Artificial Life: The Coming Evolution, 'we may be the first creatures to create our own successors.' 

But in that event how would we tell?

Stay calm. Carry on. Like everything else, we're going to have to live with AI in the here and now.

Would black humour about the pandemic be beyond a joke?

Boris Johnson's delay in handing over his phone to the UK's Covid inquiry is adding to the seemingly endless controversy enmeshing the former prime minister. 

Even a Daily Mail journalist appearing on a TV programme suggested the reason could be the phone contains black humour, remarks about the pandemic made in the "pressure cooker moment", as the journalist put it, that would come across as insensitive in the cold light of day. But no one knows if that is the reason for withholding the phone. What's interesting are people's reactions to the possibility that it is.

Evidently the journalist himself accepts such a response would not be untypical of Mr Johnson: Mr Johnson is not noted for his gravity. And with that in mind, I followed up with a question about it. 

In a Tweet that is getting well over 8,000 views so far, I asked: 'Why would you make black jokes about deaths in a pandemic? - that is the question. Why? Why would your response to a national disaster be to trivialise it with "pressure cooker" black humour?'

The overwhelming number of 'Likes' for my Tweet suggests people find that joking about the pandemic would at least be out of place. More arresting were the few that found it was 'only human', that 'we all joke about death', or that I was being judgmental about what was in fact 'coping', in the same way that medics and nurses often cope with the awful business of death. In the last case I pointed out, I think fairly, that Boris Johnson is not a medic or a nurse but was the country's prime minister.

No doubt people differ as individuals, use a variety of personal defence mechanisms to get by, and adopt opposing loyalties, especially in respect of the famous and those elected to govern us.

But what was very striking was no one said straight out we should be able to expect better of our politicians, particularly a prime minister and leader, and that more appropriate and reassuring messages to find on the missing phone would be spontaneous sympathy for the people who died and those who suffered their loss.

Who knows? Perhaps it's there.

"Does a tree falling in an empty forest make a sound?"

It's a well known question, generally followed by the instinctive answer, "Of course it does!"

Then, perhaps, a short pause and point taken. "But you're asking how can I myself be sure if I am not there to hear? And if no one is there to hear, how can anyone be sure it makes a sound?"

Well, it's common sense that it would make a sound. 

Common sense? What's that? Common sense like the common sense that tells some people the world is flat - that if it were round, we'd all fall off? Anyway, isn't saying it's common sense just a way of saying what people often say in the first place - that of course it makes a sound?

That's silly. Everyone knows a tree falling in a forest, empty or not, would make a sound and if you weren't there yourself - if no one was there - it would still make a sound. You could easily put a tape recorder or something there to prove it. And when the tree fell you could hear it make a sound. It stands to reason.

But that's not a sound reason - it's just another way of saying it makes a sound. Putting a tape recorder there is just putting ourselves there when we're not there. It's not an answer to the question because we have to be here to put the tape recorder there. We've got to be there or put something we've made there - to prove a tree falling in an empty forest makes a sound.

Look, I've got more important things to do than talk about this. I'm off to stare at a brick wall for an hour.

I know it seems silly, but it's actually important.

Important? What's important about trees falling in empty forests?

It's whether they make a sound. What the question means is we can't prove an external world exists outside us.

What!? Does the world exist ...? That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. Of course it does!

How the referendum made sure Brexit failed

However much they still argue, Leavers and Remainers should be able to admit by now that it wasn't agreed in June 2016 what Brexit involved and was meant to achieve. The Tory government and party was as confused and at odds about it as the Opposition and the bewitched, bothered and bewildered British public. 

Leave, yes. But stay in or get out of the Customs Union and Single Market? Global Britain? Sovereignty? Turbo-charge the economy? Freedom from an unelected EU? Preserve the democracy we fought two world wars for? Solve the Tory party's problems? All and much more found a home in an artful slogan, 'Take Back Control'.

Failure then wasn’t just an Eton mess up, or about a sinister European Union outwitting a feeble UK, or even because Mr Nigel Farage's reputation for only saying what people were thinking proved hollow.

The reason Brexit failed to deliver is 'Take Back Control' became a promise to deliver everyone's fantasy; and the referendum was a fantasy that actually delivered the means to do it.

A couple of clarifications to start.

Look up a dictionary and it will tell you democracy is 'Government by the people'. This strict verbal definition may then be expanded to 'Government by the people either directly or through representatives'. In short, there is direct democracy and indirect or representative democracy. But note these terms are for different forms of democracy. It is essential to remember democracy is first a form of government. 

Democratic government varies by society, but it shares the same broad content of ideas and values everywhere: the separation of the powers; votes for all; equality before the law; freedom of expression and religion; the pursuit of an ever-increasing body of individual freedoms now viewed as human rights; a commitment to peaceful change.  

Put these ideas together with the two forms of democracy and we would need to speak of 'direct democracy democracy' or 'representative democracy democracy' to tell the difference, which would swiftly become unendurable. Normally, the term 'democracy' is assumed to mean the latter and so it is here. Who or what 'the people' are, and their precise role and influence in it, are left open to the usual arguments.

Under British representative democratic government (now 'democracy' for short) problems are not passed to 'the people' at large for an expedient Yes/No solution. To see why that is, consider - Should you change your job? Would you sell your house? Is it okay to marry if you have political differences? Real people expect proper information, a chance to ask questions and to have second thoughts, about important decisions in their lives.

Yet after what is now widely acknowledged to have been a glorified advertising campaign or travelling circus, the referendum gave the British people one shot at it in just such a Yes/No option. The question seems childish, Not Suitable For Adults: 'Should the UK remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?' 

Defenders of the Brexit referendum insist 'the people' were able to answer this question adequately because they are intelligent or act out of self-interest. This may or may not add one uncertainty to another. 

But real people's intelligence or lack of it, like their self-interest, is hardly relevant if they have been denied information or fed false information. Nor is it insulting to real people or 'elitist' to point that out. Statistics - voter turnout, the numbers and percentages voting Yes and No, however both sides quote them for support - are also irrelevant in these circumstances.

All these points challenge our loyalties and will be argued indefinitely in with Brext as part of Britain's history. 

And many other points challenge us: the claim the close vote 52-48% was an 'overwhelming' result; the fact that the referendum was only - and explicitly - advisory; that prime minister Theresa May nonetheless took it as a 'mandate' to action Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty and leave the EU without agreed terms; Boris Johnson's flippant 'oven-ready' deal, Gas Mark Four in the microwave. A dog's dinner or not?

But for all those who stand by the referendum as 'democratic' - who believe that direct democracy is superior, somehow more genuine or 'real' than representative democracy ... who believe in 'the will of the people' - a last point is fatal to these arguments.

When the 52% voted Leave, they could do nothing to get what they voted for done. Even if we suppose 'the people' could know exactly what 'Take Back Control' meant and had the same end in mind when they voted, the problem remains. 'The people' could not make it happen because, whether 'the people' exist or not, they do not govern. 

The referendum breached Britain's democracy to grant an illusionary empowerment to thin air. Fancies and fantasy ran unrestrained. The result was not the dramatic win for Leave that it first seemed, but a guarantee that any future Brexit would fail to meet expectations. Under democracy, all hopes, all aspirations, still come back to government, which will do no more than government can do.  

Polls show people have their doubts about Brexit now; doubts about direct democracy will follow; we are likely to be wary of referendums in future. All is not lost. The good news is if people change their minds and turn against the government for getting things wrong, they can vote that government out. Not in a referendum, though - that doesn't work. An election does. 

Among other benefits, democracy is a form of government that allows for peaceful change. All told, it's probably the best we can get. As long as that means a representative democracy democracy.

"Is Dominic Raab a bully?"

A difficult question indeed, posed on Sky's Sophie Ridge on Sunday this morning to Oliver Dowden, the UK's new Deputy Prime Minister, following Mr Raab's resignation from the post. Mr Dowden did not answer it directly, saying rather that Mr Raab had kept his promise to resign if there were 'adverse findings' against him.

Many on social media found this reply unsatisfactory after Mr Raab's sour letter of resignation, and also duplicitous. Mr Dowden referred to the report of Adam Tolley KC, who had investigated the bullying charge over five months, as an 'interpretation', a term they took as more government double-talk to imply there was something defective if not dismissible about the findings.

In the world of politics, there are always good grounds for this alternative 'interpretation', of course. But let us consider if an honest answer to the question is possible at all, given the context: a loaded question, no doubt justifiable but loaded nonetheless, on a popular and widely reported TV show; Mr Dowden's personal standards under the spotlight as well as his professional duty to his party; and the readiness of opponents to pounce on his every word as evidence of the basest villainy regarding both.

Still Mr Dowden might have started a genuinely honest answer along these lines: "Look, I know I am here to answer questions, not to ask them, but I really can't answer that question. It'd be terribly arrogant of me, grossly judgmental, to do so - lacking in ordinary common decency expected of us all. May I ask - not to be evasive or argumentative - would you comment in public on the character and conduct of some colleague of yours in your field, journalism, on occasions you were not even present? Would anyone, in any field?  No one, not just me, can discuss a colleague in that way."

That may carry weight as an honest answer? Over to you.

Along with which Mr Dowden might be thought to have been fair in what he actually said. He pointed out there had been a long and careful inquiry; he raised no question as to the independence or professional competence of the investigation; and ended by saying Mr Raab had promised to resign if there were any adverse findings and that accordingly Mr Raab had resigned. Contrary to the interpretation of Mr Dowden's reply as suspect, some might say this suggests he accepts the conclusions of the Tolley report.

The problem seems to be whether there's any answer to the question that will satisfy voters' fierce loyalties, whichever side they are on. What can it mean to be 'honest' in politics today? Is it possible for any politician or political party to bring the country together by speaking up for obvious common interests in accountability, probity and fair-minded government, when the country is fundamentally, maybe indefinitely, at odds with itself after Brexit?

What is Paul Whelan Writing about?

Politics, history, philosophy, psychology ... sounds heavy-going, but I don't believe you'll find that's the case, nor the thoughts on music and opera and the occasional personal recollection of this and that. 

My blog does not try to exhaust any subject it deals with, much less to exhaust what else might be said on it from different sides. It has a point of view though. All writing has.

If it tries anything, it is to make some points to think about, whether that is for, against or undecided. You'll judge whether it succeeds at that at all.

Has Rishi Sunak done the trick?

 

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and his team have clearly worked hard to find a decent way round the crisis caused by Boris Johnson's Northern Ireland Protocol, it being perhaps the most disagreed part of the widely disagreed UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement*.

Together with the EU, they have paid due attention to the practicalities, the economic concerns, politics and ideological positions of the different interests the former Prime Minister neglected. By contrast, and subject to no invincible devils hiding in the detail, the resulting Windsor Framework appears as a range of considered proposals and a commendable achievement. 

The questions that will not go away are how and whether this framework can be built on. Is it solid enough to structure lasting arrangements in Northern Ireland or, failing that, how long before it must be dismantled as a makeshift? 

Perhaps more awkwardly, is it entirely fanciful to see a constitutionally devolved region, one foot in the European Union and outperforming economically because of it, becoming a kind of fifth column inside a not-so-United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland? Questions around Brexit, sole cause of this and so many internal divisions and contradictions, are not going away either. 

Long term there seem to be only four dependable ways out of the Northern Ireland dilemma: 1) Defeat or ditch the DUP and Tory Brexit Irreconcilables; 2) A united Ireland; 3) Defeat or ditch the European Union.

An answer to 1) could be closer than we think: Mr Sunak has said there will be a parliamentary vote on the Framework. Tory terror of wipeout in the general election will ensure the Ayes have it and maybe some Brexit hardliners will go along with it and maybe some won't. Either way it's hard to see them carrying the same clout afterwards.

The answer to 2) calls for prophecy, always of doubtful reliability.

And 3) is just one more pipedream of Brexit, which the public are coming to see is a total fantasy. 

Many will also see the Windsor Framework is essentially a sideshow and point to the likeliest way out of the real problem given time: Number 4) Rejoin. 

Some will say it has started already.

*The Unsettled Settlement, December 31 2020

 

Has Sunak's Windsor Framework done the trick?

 

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and his team have clearly worked hard to find a decent way round the crisis caused by Boris Johnson's Northern Ireland Protocol, it being perhaps the most disagreed part of the widely disagreed UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement*.

Together with the EU, they have paid due attention to the practicalities, the economic concerns, politics and ideological positions of the different interests the former Prime Minister neglected. By contrast, and subject to no invincible devils hiding in the detail, the resulting Windsor Framework appears as a range of considered proposals and a commendable achievement. 

The questions that will not go away are how and whether this framework can be built on. Is it solid enough to structure lasting arrangements in Northern Ireland or, failing that, how long before it must be dismantled as a makeshift? 

Perhaps more awkwardly, is it entirely fanciful to see a constitutionally devolved region, one foot in the European Union and outperforming economically because of it, becoming a kind of fifth column inside a not-so-United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland? Questions around Brexit, sole cause of this and so many internal divisions and contradictions, are not going away either. 

Long term there seem to be only four dependable ways out of the Northern Ireland dilemma: 1) Defeat or ditch the DUP and Tory Brexit Irreconcilables; 2) A united Ireland; 3) Defeat or ditch the European Union.

An answer to 1) could be closer than we think: Mr Sunak has said there will be a parliamentary vote on the Framework. Tory terror of wipeout in the general election will ensure the Ayes have it and maybe some Brexit hardliners will go along with it and maybe some won't. Either way it's hard to see them carrying the same clout afterwards.

The answer to 2) calls for prophecy, always of doubtful reliability.

And 3) is just one more pipedream of Brexit, which the public are coming to see is a total fantasy. 

Many will also see the Windsor Framework is essentially a sideshow and point to the likeliest way out of the real problem given time: Number 4) Rejoin. 

Some will say it has started already.

*The Unsettled Settlement, December 31 2020

 

Should we trust what we read in the newspapers?

The tradition among the print and broadcast media is 'balance'. They assume an overriding duty to a public interest commonly taken to be 'the truth'. All news and issues are supposed to be presented objectively, shorn of politics unless it is covered from the two sides, for and against. The media see themselves as being either neutral or fair.

The notion of balance has a powerful audience appeal. We, the people are said to be capable of thinking for ourselves and need only to be given the facts without bias. A favourite saying of politicians is 'the people are not fools' and media professionals repeat the flattery. Everyone agrees we can decide what's true once we have the facts.

It may feel we're all on the same page on this, but the story is unconvincing. The media, on the left or right, plainly do not offer balance. They take sides and press opinions more uncompromisingly than ever because social media can leave them behind now on any tricky topic of the day. 

Distracted if not divided by this though we are, we citizens, as a body, complain unceasingly about the media's wicked ways, whatever their political colours. 

We rail against the influence of press barons and wealth, the glaring omissions and outright lies of MSM news coverage and TV documentaries; we claim the 'woke' have taken over or the fascists have. Across social media there's relief that Donald Trump's once vaunted truth-telling is no longer the force it was; in the UK, the right wing are outraged by the BBC's pushing 'lefty views' and the lefties are outraged by Britain's national broadcaster 'suppressing' them. 

Can some sense be found in this jumble? Rather than look only at what the media are doing, we need to look at the media's audiences. That's all of us.

Aren't we, the people, simply showing 'confirmation bias'? Everyone's heard about confirmation bias today. It's our tendency to seek out opinions that we agree with. Life is less of a problem that way. 

Confirmation bias may be exercised consciously but, much more often, works unconsciously. Either way we're not buying our usual tabloid or tuning into CNN or Fox News because we're looking for balance. We're spending our money and time on confirmation. Far from the media offering balance, it appears the media are telling us what we want to hear.

This cannot be made illegal; people are entitled to their different loyalties; we take sides. That's individual rights and democracy. But it raises questions we can easily overlook.

Do the media manipulate us, pull the strings as the illustration to this article proposes, or do they simply reflect our biases? If the media are biased only because we are, is there any harm in it?

On the other hand, if they are manipulating us, what are they doing it for? If the usual answer is correct - it's for money and power - why don't they make money and grab power by taking the other side? It's equally open to them. What makes them choose?

Whatever the answer to that, we cannot escape our own part here. Confirming time and again that we're right about something - shocking! just like I spotted before! - can convince us we're always right about everything. If that's not good, what's worse is that it makes other people, other opinions, always wrong. Which ones? All of them! They're either hiding some sinister agenda or fools. (The italics indicate irony: the people aren't fools, remember?)

And if we refuse to negotiate because the others are wrong, if we mustn't give in because we're always right, if we scorn to work with fools, how can we or society manage to succeed? What's the answer? 

A start would be never to trust what you read in the papers.

Is Susan's order of noodles not rice a free choice?

 

It was a question in an online Masterclass: was Susan making a free choice when she ordered noodles instead of rice with her Chinese meal?

Most of us would say at once, Of course. She could have ordered rice if she’d chosen to. Or not ordered rice or noodles and asked for chips that were not even on the menu. Susan can do what she likes. Susan has free will.

Well, has she? Science and thinking about it can suggest otherwise.

I answered first that she did not make a free choice. There were alternatives on the menu, but Susan chose noodles because she wanted noodles, not rice. Obviously. That left her, in effect, with no choice.

Then I thought, it’s a question in a Masterclass. They must expect more thought than the obvious. And so I thought some more.

Did Susan choose noodles because she always chooses noodles? Wouldn’t that suggest that she hasn’t got free will, like I said - that she’s just ‘programmed’ to choose noodles? Then I thought, on the other hand, even if she’s programmed like that, she’s still free to break with the programme. She could order something else, including rice, if she chooses to. And so I changed my answer to she has got free will.

But now I examined my reasons more closely. I was seeing this little Masterclass problem in terms of Susan’s choice, which of course begs the question - meaning the question itself assumes she has a choice. (We all assume that, don’t we?) But what if we don’t have a choice? So I changed again and decided, finally, Susan did not make a free choice. What she wanted determined she would choose noodles, at least on that occasion.

Which means my first, instinctive answer was the right answer, though it didn't explain why. In this way.

The choice and the action are not two ‘events’ - that is, first we decide to have noodles as opposed to rice and then we order noodles. The two are one and the same thing. This idea can be confusing at first, contrary to common sense, but becomes clearer with another example.

I choose to raise my left arm .. and it’s raised. I choose not to raise my left arm .. and so it’s not raised. We believe we’re making a choice between two options when our action must plainly be one. Your arm is raised because you’ve chosen to raise it; or it stays put because you’ve chosen not to raise it. The action does not involve any choice; the action is the choice.

Now that still seems strange, even wrong, until we see there's a quite simple explanation for all this.

Susan could have chosen rice, looking back, because free choice and free will are what we have only when we’re looking back or forward, not faculties we exercise at the time. Occasionally we seem to glimpse and confirm this. We say about something we've done, I felt I had no choice. Is freedom merely what we imagine we have, not a reality?