John Gray on Alain de Botton's atheist temple

An interesting article by John Gray on de Botton's new Atheism, which provides some historical insight into the quest for something to capture what religion inspires, without accepting what it implies.

Alain de Botton's atheist temple is a nice idea, but a defunct one
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/feb/02/alain-de-botton-atheist-temple-defunct

but as always the enduring role of religious art and structures as a focal point for human thoughts about existence was I think best put by Larkin in his poem Churchgoing :
A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognized, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.

SciAm : Thinking About Mortality Changes How We Act

"Psychological scientists Laura E. R. Blackie and Philip J. Cozzolino of the University of Essex in England have been exploring the idea that we are all governed by two disparate existential systems, each with its own distinct method of processing the idea of death. Both existential minds have the power to meaningfully change our attitudes and actions, but they work in very different—almost opposite—ways."
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=two-faces-of-death&WT.mc_id=SA_CAT_SP_20120206

Socialists and conservatives may be born not made

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2012/jan/31/socialists-conservatives-born-not-made

This is not the first study I've read about which correlates political leanings to certain dispositions, but it's one that fits into a pet (and half in jest!) stereotyping of mine that people on the right worry more about the undeserving being treated too fairly, and people on the left worry more about the deserving being treated unfairly.

Both of these concerns are valid, since the drives to support and help those we feel as part of our society, and the drives to punish those who we feel act against it, are both I think equally important (and necessary) strands in a moral community. Doing good is not enough, for the system to work we need to also act against 'the bad', and there seems to be a lot of evidence that we have been hard wired by evolution for both these dispositions. While most people will agree about the former (that some people will and should help others despite cost to themselves), it is perhaps less widely known that studies show people will also accept a cost to themselves just to punish other people, and from similar righteous reasons (the classic example of this is the 'ultimatum' game ).

For me it's a bit like worrying which is worse - that nine guilty men go free, or one innocent man goes to jail. My view is that a lot of right wing politics is focused most on the travesty of the nine guilty escaping punishment, or as is more likely the case, nine welfare cheats  getting away with excessive benefits. Of course no one can disagree with being angry about this, and these are real problems which society has to work on, but the question is how important they are. In contrast, I would think it a more left-wing approach to focus most instead on what happens the one innocent, or the deserving welfare recipient who might lose out due to new 'tough' policies.  Of course no one on the right disagrees with this either, the point is not that one side is 'nasty' or the other 'soft' , both agree in principle, but disagree in priority.

The study mentioned in this article seem to indicate that right-leaning/left-leaning people differ in the magnitude of their responses to negative and positive stimuli, and I think this fits in with the theory above, namely that if one gets more charged up about negative things, e.g. moral outrage about cheats, one is more likely to favour a conservative platform, since these issues provoke a deeper response, and hence raise their relative priority. The converse is harder to show, since it's not clear absence of unfair punishment is really a sort of 'positive' stimulus, but my impression is there is something valid in this direction as well.

Given how passionate people can be about politics then the more psychological information we can gather the better, and studies such as this provide promising initial insights.

extract:

"The results showed those with right-wing beliefs had a relatively increased response to disgust and threat, whereas those who vote left-of-centre had a relatively increased response to pleasurable images.

This suggests that left-wing people are relatively more responsive to appetitive than aversive stimuli and that people who are right-of-centre are more responsive to aversive stimuli. Put another way, conservatives are more responsive to negative stimuli whereas those on the left are more responsive to positive stimuli.
The implication is that the same stimuli will evoke polarised responses depending on where you are on the aversive-appetitive spectrum. These different reactions to shared experiences will mean those of politically opposing viewpoints will automatically judge the other as wrong, and no amount of arguing in the House of Commons can change that."

Gossip is good...

Interesting study on the social role of gossip, and how we are hard wired for it..

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/jan/29/gossip-good-research-robb-willer?mobile-redirect=false

Extract:
"[what do you mean by 'prosocial' gossip?]
It is a subset of gossip that involves warning other people about
untrustworthy others. We think it is pretty common. We find generous
people are more likely to engage in it and they report doing so out of a
motivation to help others. It is very different from malicious gossip, which might be driven by a desire to tarnish another's reputation or advance oneself."

Happiness, it's complicated...

In principle definitely good that David Cameron is making "happiness" a government target, since surely this is the end to which all policies are means, but as in everything, the devil is in the details, or more precisely, the definition. What kind of happiness is to be pursued? What is really meant by happiness? An unrealistic ideal or a solid, achievable state? So Labour's Andy Burnham is starting an important debate when he says:
"Cameron and Clegg have done this whole thing about happiness, and I am not against the principle, but I think that is the wrong word. There is a slight danger that it sets people up: 'You have got to be happy. If you are not happy, you are failing'," he said. "So talking about mental health in terms of happiness has become the modern way of talking about mental health: 'Mental health is happiness'. And I don't think it is. It is slightly in danger of being a middle-class construct there, builds a bit of materialism into it. I think what we are talking about is resilience. Are you coping? Are you getting by? That is the bottom line."

Labour scorns Cameron's 'happiness' agenda | Society | The Observer

Divine prejudice

Unfortunately it seems people assume not believing a in deity watching over us makes atheists less trustworthy.  But the article mentions some interesting experiments examining this, not only because the distrust could be reduced (reminding people of secular authorities such as the police made them seemingly more open to the idea that people didn't need a holy policeman) but also seem to provide some insights into how different societies might be more or less condusive to atheism.
In Atheists We Distrust: Scientific American

When people look back on their life in their 30s, 40s and older what are some common regrets they have?

(what follows is a reposting fom Quora, but related is my own blog post on regret HERE) 

QUORA :

From Bradley Voytek, BA in psychology and PhD in neuroscience":

110 votes by Laura Copeland, Emily Altman, Monika Kothari, (more)

In 2011 there was a large, national survey of Americans across all age groups that looked at just this. The paper was called Regrets of the Typical American published by Roese and Morrison in Social Psychological and Personality Science.
http://spp.sagepub.com/content/2...

Here's the main finding, outlined by Vaughan Bell over on the Mind Hacks blog:
http://mindhacks.com/2011/03/27/...


The main sources of regret were, in order:

1. romance
2. family
3. education
4. career
5. finance
6. parenting
7. health
8. "other"
9. friends
10. spirituality
11. community
12. leisure
13. self

They also looked at differences between sexes:

Women, who tend to value social relationships more than men, have more regrets of love (romance, family) compared to men. Conversely, men were more likely to have work-related (career, education) regrets. Those who lack either higher education or a romantic relationship hold the most regrets in precisely these areas.


Americans with high levels of education had the most career-related regrets. Apparently, the more education obtained, the more acute may be the sensitivity to aspiration and fulfillment. Moreover, the youngest and least-educated people in our sample, who most likely possess the greatest capability of fixing their regrets, were indeed the most likely to provide fixable regrets.

Vaughan also has some great insight into this work:

The study also found that regrets about things you haven’t done were equally as common as regrets about things you have, no matter how old the person.


The difference between the two is often a psychological one, because we can frame the same regret either way – as regret about an action: 'If only I had not dropped out of school'; or as a regret about an inaction: 'If only I had stayed in school'.


Despite the fact that they are practically equivalent, regrets framed as laments about actions were more common and more intense than regrets about inactions, although inaction regrets tended to be longer lasting.

This was the easiest source to find, but from what I recall from psychology courses, for older adults without children, not having a family is the primary regret, which is corroborated by #2 from the larger group in this study.

update 10 April 2011 : 
another related article is Top 5 Regrets of the dying

1. I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
2. I wish I hadn't worked so hard. 
3. I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings 
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends 
5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

 

Atheism 2.0

I've often felt that even if one doesn't accept the mysterious supernatural tenets of religions, they are such developed and functional institutions that there is a lot to be reclaimed from then. Not only because religions have arisen and persisted because they tap into important elements of our nature, feelings of community and awe etc., but also because they have perfected many techniques that means they can harnass significant power to have an effect (albeit for bad as well as good) on the world. As this lecture discusses, this is in stark contrast to their generally individual and uncoordinated secular counterparts (artists, philosophers, even film makers) who also try to provide comment and guidance about 'higher' things, but often with much less effect.  As de Botton says, there is a lot secular society can learn, and religion is too important to be left to the religious...

TED: Alain de Botton: Atheism 2.0 - Alain de Botton (2011)

Claiming success....

Interesting survey on country differences on the question of fatalism...or how much success is determined by forces outside our control :

"Just 36 percent of Americans believe in this fatalistic statement, while the vast majority of their compatriots are greater believers in self-determination. Put another way, Americans are (not surprisingly) more likely to believe in the American dream.
Americans with less education are more fatalistic..."


http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/23/fatalism-and-the-american-dream/

Words with word

Am very interested in the possible influence of the tools we use to write on the writing itself, so an interesting article on Microsoft word:

Has Microsoft Word affected the way we work? | Technology | The Observer

an extract:
But has word processing changed the way we write? There have been lots of inconclusive or unconvincing studies of how the technology has affected, say, the quality of student essays – how it facilitates plagiarism. The most interesting academic study I looked at found that writers using computers "spent more time on a first draft and less on finalising a text, pursued a more fragmentary writing process, tended to revise more extensively at the beginning of the writing process, attended more to lower linguistic levels [letter, word] and formal properties of the text, and did not normally undertake any systematic revision of their work before finishing".

Memory, more author than authentic

Interesting article on the narrative nature of memory

The story of the self | Life and style | guardian.co.uk

An extract:
What should we do about this troublesome mental function? For one thing, I don't think we should stop valuing it. Memory can lead us astray, but then it is a machine with many moving parts, and consequently many things that can go awry. Perhaps even that is the wrong way of looking at it. The great pioneer of memory research, Daniel Schacter, has argued that, even when it is failing, memory is doing exactly the thing it is supposed to do. And that purpose is as much about looking into the future as it is about looking into the past. There is only a limited evolutionary advantage in being able to reminisce about what happened to you, but there is a huge payoff in being able to use that information to work out what is going to happen next. Similar neural systems seem to underpin past-related and future-related thinking. Memory is endlessly creative, and at one level it functions just as imagination does.

That's how I think we should value memory: as a means for endlessly rewriting the self. It's important not to push the analogy with storytelling too far, but it's a valuable one.

Work less, so can live more, and more can live

The idea of a shorter working week is something which should be much more discussed. While anathema in our growth based systems, at some stage do need to ask when enough is enough. It's a true point that despite technological advances improving productivity, we work more. Furthermore in times of hardship and unemployment, work sharing would indeed seem like a civilized solution, and one that could be win-win: more free time as a result of helping others, l and an improved society as the social divisions are reduced, surely good?

The fundamental problem is I think psychological. The role of possessions and improvement in our personalities in modern consumer culture is so strong, restricting this would be hard for people to handle, provoking material influenced moral indignation and quandary. But for many reasons it might be time to learn how to work to live, not live to work, and reduced working his might play a role in this

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/jan/08/cut-working-week-urges-thinktank.

every neural pathway has its silver lining

interesting extract from a book on the hard wired nature of optimism :

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/jan/01/tali-sharot-the-optimism-bias-extract

some example points (direct quotes) :

• "Scientists who study memory proposed an intriguing answer: memories are susceptible to inaccuracies partly because the neural system responsible for remembering episodes from our past might not have evolved for memory alone. Rather, the core function of the memory system could in fact be to imagine the future ? to enable us to prepare for what has yet to come. The system is not designed to perfectly replay past events, the researchers claimed. It is designed to flexibly construct future scenarios in our minds. As a result, memory also ends up being a reconstructive process, and occasionally, details are deleted and others inserted."
• "Once people started imagining the future, even the most banal life events seemed to take a dramatic turn for the better."
• "While mental time travel has clear survival advantages, conscious foresight came to humans at an enormous price ? the understanding that somewhere in the future, death awaits. Ajit Varki, a biologist at the University of California, San Diego, argues that the awareness of mortality on its own would have led evolution to a dead end. The despair would have interfered with our daily function, bringing the activities needed for survival to a stop. The only way conscious mental time travel could have arisen over the course of evolution is if it emerged together with irrational optimism. Knowledge of death had to emerge side by side with the persistent ability to picture a bright future."
• "research shows that most of us spend less time mulling over negative outcomes than we do over positive ones. When we do contemplate defeat and heartache, we tend to focus on how these can be avoided."
• "People with mild depression are relatively accurate when predicting future events. They see the world as it is. In other words, in the absence of a neural mechanism that generates unrealistic optimism, it is possible all humans would be mildly depressed."
• "According to social psychologist Leon Festinger, we re-evaluate the options post-choice to reduce the tension that arises from making a difficult decision between equally desirable options. True, sometimes we regret our decisions; our choices can turn out to be disappointing. But on balance, when you make a decision ? even if it is a hypothetical choice ? you will value it more and expect it to bring you pleasure. This affirmation of our decisions helps us derive heightened pleasure from choices that might actually be neutral. Without this, our lives might well be filled with second-guessing. Have we done the right thing? Should we change our mind? We would find ourselves stuck, overcome by indecision and unable to move forward."
• "by scanning the brains of people as they process both positive and negative information about the future. The findings are striking: when people learn, their neurons faithfully encode desirable information that can enhance optimism but fail at incorporating unexpectedly undesirable information."
  
  

Attention and the web

Fittingly brief article on attention and technology:
Untangling the web: attention | Technology | The Observer

References a book on the typic, with a collection of pieces from the likes of Steven Pinker etc., but also points out jury is still very much out in terms of hard evidence (at least for the moment).
But I do like her closing comment:
" Over the last year I've insisted again and again that the web is not doing anything to us; that it merely presents us with a mirror that challenges us to face ourselves. The only way we can untangle ourselves from the web is to pay attention to this, and to reflect on what it is, in the 21st century, we do to ourselves and to one another."

I personally don't concur that the web is not doing anything to us, since I think any such significant change in how we organize, evaluate and manage not only our lives but our self and social image, must result in some cognitive changes, just as countless other things do. But I agree with the idea that what really is required to deal with this is not just better analysis and understanding of the technology, but of ourselves as well. As the title of Charlie Brooker's new TV drama  suggests, it is a "black mirror", a glass through which we see ourselves, albeit sometimes darkly.

don't regret regret

Nice little talk on the subject of regret on TED : www.ted.com/talks/kathryn_schulz_don_t_regret_regret.html


I especially liked the phrase 'control-Z culture' (as in ctrl-z, the computer 'undo' command), since there is some truth that in the modern world we do desire, and even expect, to be able to 'undo' mistakes. I think there is a way in which the often awe inspiring 'progress' and development (in technology, science, wealth etc.) which surrounds us leads to the subconcious belief almost that everything is always possible, and nothing is ever permanent, or at least the bad stuff anyway.
 
While such optimism is of course often a good thing, there is an element of immaturity to it, since it means we at some level always appeal to some global 'mother' to come and make things all right again. But the harsh reality of adult life is things happen and stay happened, and maybe our culture is less adept at acknowledging that, and hence dealing with it.

What was also interesting in the talk was the list of areas in which people have the most regrets, with the top 5 being : Eductation (32%),  Career (22%), Romance (15%), Parenting (10%) and Self (5%), and I think this is unsurprising, but also informative, since these, are all domains in which we envisage goals for ourselves, rather than experience them.  We want 'to have' a better education, career, be better parents, as a sort of extension of our selves, but ultimately they are only means to an end - so why not regret the actual ends? Romance may be an exception, since this is something which is perhaps an end in itself (we live relationships, not just have them) , but when viewed as  regret, then maybe it is also rather ethereal and 'idealistic' - since we are wishing for what never was, which might never be as we expect. This I think strikes at a fundamental conflict in our lives - we dream of being certain kinds of people, generic types of levels of career, education, and even partners, but we live as specific individuals. A professor, or a CEO still lives through the daily actions we all do, and it is these actions that ultimately constitute their lives. The higher labels only provide means, not ends.
So I think it is unfortunate that these top our regrets list, because even though we may care about them more, maybe they ultimately matter less, They are about the self image we have of who we want to be,  not who we actually are. Though of course another point is to just dea with the brute fact of this tendency also means we need to consider decisions in these areas much more carefully, since they are the ones which will haunt us, rightly or wrongly. And there is some consolation in that, perversely, the things we fret about most, which might actually have most tangible effect on our lives, the financial worries, the minor social worries, are actually the things we will forget about sooner.
One final point from the talk which is worth mentioning, since forewarned is perhaps forearmed : we regret the things we just miss more than those we had less chance of achieving. Missing a plane by 3 minutes feels worse than missing it by twenty. The reason seems to be that in the closer case, we can imagine how other actions could have made the difference, and this imagination is an important element of regret. Knowing this, maybe we can be more rational and handle it better. As the ctrl-z idea shows, the point is not to banish regret, but to deal with it.

Study indicates no news is really good news, or at least better than FOX news

While it goes without saying that there are serious questions about Fox news' journalistic balance, it could be assumed that even biased opinions on reported events would raise awareness about those events themselves. Unfortunately this might not be the case, as a study by Fairleigh Dickerson University suggests.

In response to questions about middle east events, people who watched FOX news were less able to judge how things had actually turned out, than people with no news source at all.

Since naturally this has prevoked a response (albeit the ones I saw were mainly of the blog with US-flag-and-rattlesnake-logo variety, which does indicate a certain disposition to start with) it is worth checking out the original survey results themselves, available here on the university website.

This should help counter any superficial rejections of the study's methodology. For example, said rattlesnake website claimed that the figures presented didn't show FOX news as the ONLY news source, but only perhaps as one of many. The logic being that then FOX news couldn't be solely blamed. Alas this blogger probably knows less about logic and statistics than actual rattlesnakes, but maybe a simple analogy would help explain the situation. If I put my hand into 3 boxes,  with rabbits and hamsters, rabbits and rattlesnakes, and rabbits, rattlesnakes and hamsters, respectively, and get bitten in the last 2 but not the first, then it doesn't take much of a jump of logic to know which pet not to get my kids.

The main point to be drawn from this is I think not that FOX news is a terrible news source (this is more obvious than the pet question), but that its style of news is not just uninformative, but actually detrimental, which is not something even I would have expected.  More studies would be needed to tease out exactly why this is the case, but several possibilities come to mind.

Overall tone overrides the message
Just as the imagery in adverts etc. can be shown to override any accompanying (and even contradictory) verbal message, it could be the overall tone of FOX news drowns out any factual reporting. Maybe  the average viewer is aware of US diplomatic battles with Syria, and so assumes any revolt against Assad has succeeded (with God, or at least Uncle Sam on their side how could it not?), whereas there is no such preconception informing the Egyptian uprising. Indeed maybe something like Obama's famous speech in Cairo linked him to Egypt, and hence any average FOX-viewer prejudice against him would feed into other questions.

The unmentioned better than the dismissed.
Another possibility is that since things like the Egyptian revolt (successful Islamic overthrow of dictator without foreign intervention) didn't fit the FOX narrative, it was so played down on the channel that its viewers also absorbed a distain and active un-interest in it, and hence were basically purely guessing when asked. People without an admitted, chosen, news source of course don't live in an isolationist bubble, and are still going to be aware indirectly of world events, just by channel surfing, or even seeing news headlines on paper stands etc. So even if they don't actively care, it may still be able to catch their attention momentarily, and thus inform them, raising their chance to answer the question, above chance. I.e. maybe FOX news turns people off certain things, and hence makes them more ignorant.

Suits us, but still means something
Of course, the reason this study has gone viral has to be admitted to be largely to the antipathy and disgust with which most people view FOX news, and so any scientific evidence confirming our opinions is going to be jumped on. But regardless of this, the bottom line is there is statistical evidence to show bad news is worse than no news, and this goes beyond FOX, but ties into the wider debate about how important matters are handled by society.

pink vs. blue, really boys toys?

The famous Hamley's toy store in London has decided to scrap its traditional separation of boys and girls toys and instead arrange the sections by type of toy. Apparently until now some floors were floral and pink for the 'girls stuff', and 'boys toys' were in their own levels , all noise and action.
This has prompted a couple of interesting news articles about what, if any, real gender taste differences there are. The bottom line is it's very hard to be sure either way, since nature and nurture are so intertwined, and initial environmental nudging can result in the same reinforced feedback loops as inate disposition. What does seem likely is there is no genetic female preference for pink (something which makes sense given that in previous times pink was considered a boy's colour!) but there is probably some tendency for boys to prefer vehicles and machines, and girls to prefer more role based toys, such as dolls. As someone with both a daughter and a son I can definitely provide ample supporting anecdotal evidence for this one, but despite this was still impressed recently to see in a documentary that this gender preferene is also visible in chimpanzees, even so far as the more masculine (as indicated by testosterone) the chimp was, the more likely it was to choose a toy car over a doll.
What follows are three articles from the Guardian. 

Pink vs, Blue - the initial piece that caught my attention:


Are pink toys turning girls into passive princesses  - an artcle by Kat Arny who argues against the matter

Out of the blue and into the pink  - by master debunker Ben Goldacre who turns his attention to spurious evolutionary reasonings

When people are paid by results their attitudes change

In reading about child motivation I have often come across the thesis that motivating children by means of rewards (basically payment) was not only not more effective, but might actually discourage them from the desired behaviour in general. I think the common example given is children being offered a reward to play with a certain toy (but one which would appeal to them anyyway) and then are monitored when they are left alone later with the same toy. The studies showed that children who had been provided with an incentive then didn't play much with that toy when the incentive was removed, whereas control children continued to do so. The interpretation was that the children now viewed playing with the toy almost as 'work', and hence had it was somehow excluded then from what there normal behaviour. The implication of course being that if such a reward mechanism is used, it will fail once the reward is removed, and does nothing to encourage the child to 'internalize' the behaviour, which is obviously what is actually needed.

But it is interesting to see that the same conclusion can apply to adults as well, and even more specifically, adults in the domain of economics, where rationality is still, even if bounded, largely assumed. Aditya Chakrabortty's Guardian article "When people are paid by results their attitudes change" is primarily focuses on how English rugby seems to have descended into selfish money grabbing, but references some interesting studies on this general phenomenon.

For example :
"Researchers now know a fair bit about how that shift works. Well over 100 tests have been carried out in which subjects are split in two and set some puzzles, next to a table with some glossy magazines. One group is paid $1 for each puzzle solved; the other does it for free. Time after time, the group working for nothing devote themselves to solving the puzzles. Those getting paid finish fast, then flick through the mags"

Or how when an Israeli daycare centre started charging parents for late drop-offs, the problem actually got worse:
"With tardiness now costing 10 shekels a pop, more parents should have turned up on time. But no. They came even later, because they saw the late pick-up now not as social embarrassment but as a service. And even when the centres stopped charging, the latenesses remained permanently higher. The introduction of a market norm had made its participants permanently more selfish."

In a society based on incentives and deterrents, this is something that needs to be taken seriously.

References (from Chakrabortty's article) :

A book review of "Not Just for the Money: An Economic Theory of Motivation" (Bruno Frey) which suggests:
"Extrinsic motivation involves external rewards, most usually associated by economists with the price system. Intrinsic motivation, or "behavioral motivation" as Frey also refers to it, comes from within. For both extrinsic and intrinsic motivation taken separately, the more we are motivated, the more effort we will put into a task. But research has shown that there may be situations when the two do not necessarily work together.
Frey invokes a familiar term to economists, ?crowding out? to describe the worst-case scenario. Crowding out occurs when the negative effect on intrinsic motivation of offering a monetary reward outweighs the positive extrinsic motivation. To use the labor market as an example, the result would be  reduction of work effort despite more pay. The profundity of this finding is that the result runs counter to the predictions of economic theory."

The paper on the Israeli daycare centre.
Abstract :
"The deterrence hypothesis predicts that the introduction of a penalty that leaves everything else unchanged will reduce the occurrence of the behavior subject to the fine. We present the result of a field study in a group of day-care centers that contradicts this prediction. Parents used to arrive late to collect their children, forcing a teacher to stay after closing time. We introduced a monetary fine for late-coming parents. As a result the number of late-coming parents increased significantly. After the fine was removed no reduction occurred. We argue that penalties are usually introduced into an incomplete contract, social or private. They may change the information that agents have and therefore the effect on behavior may be opposite than expected. If this is true, the deterrence hypothesis loses its predictive strength, since the clause 'everything else is left unchanged' might be hard to satisfy. "

The swype is mightier than the sword

Due to a broken shoulder I'm down to one working hand at the moment and as a result have been writing a lot on my phone using swype. Apart from finding it actually easier and more efficient than trying to stab away on a laptop, once again I find myself thinking about the method itself, and whether there might be a qualitative difference in using it. 

Writing with swype is actually very much like writing with a pen, in that one sweeps gracefully through the word one letter at a time, and I could imagine that this involves a different mental focus when compared to proper double handed typing (or even its two fingered virtual keyboard cousin). With typing, the word is pumped out almost as a unit, via an automatic burst of key strokes which are almost in parallel, and there is little thought or feeling of the individual letters that constitute it (which might explain my tendency in emails to mix up similarly sounding words, like "are", "our" and "or"). But when writing with a pen, or swype, one must deliberately spell out the word, letter by letter, and this must involve slightly different thinking? If only because one must wait until each word has fully resolved itself, and made that bit more of an impression, before one can fully turn one's attention to the next. Maybe it is even similar to the difference between the old way in which reading was taught, with the focus on the full word as a whole, and the new phonics method of teaching, which is supposed to be more effective. The fact that the two styles of instruction differ in effectiveness  indicates a difference in mental processing, between gulping the word down  as a block, and slowly sipping it in in chunks.

It must be possible to devise studies that could analyse this,  e.g. by comparing paragraphs written with the different methods, and it would be interesting to see if there is any variation in style, flow or word choice. For example, maybe the rapid fire of typing encourages free association, with words and ideas leading almost unconsciously to the next, and maybe in contrast the slow plodding pen (or swype) results in more deliberate thought. I'm not suggesting this is the case, but think our mental processing can be so influenced by subtle things, that such phenomena are definitely possible. And, since digital writing is now the norm, even being common place in schools etc. , replacing the centuries old tradition of inscription, then it is surely a topic worthy of study.  Online and in archives we are what we write, so it is important to know if how we write matters.
Of course, maybe we just haven't developed the same proficiency in swype as have in typing, and lost that proficiency through disuse in writing by hand, so even if mental differences now, maybe would converge over time. Again this is something which could be tested, for example by comparing types and swypes of subjects with varying skill.

However, I think it will always be true that swype/pen is slower and requires more effort, since the letters come out serially while typing is more parallel, and maybe this contains the significant difference. And this extra effort is I think a good thing -  I am reminded of the Ents in the Lord of the Rings, with their excruciatingly labourious language, which was so drawn and took so long to say anything with, that they only ever said something if it was worth taking a long time to say.

What also might be relevant is that writing never used be as natural  as speaking (even if not our biological default it is of course still in some way "natural" if we do it all, like wearing clothes), and maybe proficient typing, in being almost automatic, is actually closer to speaking. Which then raises questions about whether 'new' writing is different to 'old', and whether there are any consequences of this.

Or is this maybe changing, at least in certain domains? And should we be aware of this, and maybe learn when each style is more appropriate? The productivity of modern technology also means easier to generate more rubbish, and the sheer volume of comment and statement we can produce might dilute what actually matters, and result in reduced quality, particularly through lack of clarity. Because no  matter how effortless it is, speaking relies on accompanying elements beyond the words, such as tone, facial demeanour and expressive sounds,  which help convey subtlety and nuance, tools which writing must do without, and hence requires more care and effort to avoid misinterpretation.
Which is why of course rapid text/chat speak was accompanied by the invention of emoticons like smileys, but these are relatively weak aids given the complexity of human expression.

So while we should think before we speak, we must think even more before we write, and maybe slower, serial input methods further this. The pen is mightier than the sword, but the qwerty keyboard is double edged.

Cutting Edge : anonymous accountability?

Real not reality
I really like Channel 4's documentary series Cutting Edge, even though its subject matter is generally much more mundane than the topics that normally catch my eye (or DVR). Indeed it's probably because its topics are often so seemingly everyday and normal (for example comparing different pubs with the same name or the day of a bin man etc.) that it stands out, because it consistently manages to capture illuminating and interesting facets in seemingly ordinary situations.

As I've often said, I am definitely not a people person, and hate reality TV, but even I am often intrigued and drawn to the unusual individuals that it uncovers in every day life. These are 'real' not 'reality' people, and I have to admit there is something cheering about encountering such characters, and to be impressed with unexpected qualities of the average 'man in the street' (the classic example of which was the binman who quoted socrates in between emptying trash cans). What I think differentiates these people primarily from the type who appear on reality TV, is that in reality TV, they actively want to be on it, and are generally projecting a vain and vacuous image for that purpose, whereas in the documentaries such as Cutting Edge, the participants are simply observed going about their daily lives, and even if there might inevitably be some playing to the camera, it seems minimal.

Who guards the advisors
This weeks episode (Channell 4's webpage is here, and also seems to be available on youtube here) was on the problem (or promise) of the burdgeoning phenomena of online reviewing, and in particular Trip Advisor. On one side were the hotel owners who claimed they were powerless in the face of anonymous and unaccountable damaging reviews, and on the other were examples of the more prolific of trip advisor contributers, self-confessed fanatics who saw it as their duty to inform and warn others. 

Apart from the classic Cutting Edge characters captured (the 'basil fawlty' style hotel manager, or the nerdy reviewer who reads everything he writes out to his grandmother over the telephone) it was an interesting expose of a complicated area which is symbolic of the modern internet age. On the one hand it is definitely a good thing that the service industry can be constantly reviewed, and potential tourists can inform themselves, yet on the other there is the significant power without responsibility wielded by the commentators.

Personally, from the small set of examples in the programme, I would tend to be on the side of the hoteliers, since they were visibly hurt (emotionally and economically) by the reviews they were receiving, and did seem to really want to provide a good service. In addition, some of the reviewers seemed an unlikeable lot, obsessed with finding things wrong, or in the case of one particularly annoying woman, refusing even to debate on camera what she had written. But it was not as clear cut as that, since there was bad behaviour by some owners out of view, and some of the reviewers were cheerful and witty about their work, and more than happy to defend it in person.

What makes this interesting, is that I think it is an illustrative example of how we need to adapt to the new world order of an online culture of commentary. What I think needs to be accepted is that there is no going back to the days of a handful of 'elite' reviewers, and both sides will have to live with this new phenomenon. To do this, what I think is required is education and increased awareness on both sides. The hotel owners need to accept that there can now be instant, widespread and yet possibily groundless publication about any mistakes they make, but also the tourists themselves, who use Trip Advisor, need to factor in that the person making the review may not be reliable or unbiased.

For the hoteliers, now that they know everyone can write a review afterwards, they need to establish feedback mechanisms, or even simply ask, to allow visitors to vent any frustration (if only partly) without resorting to the net.

And for tourists, they have to realise that the type of person who writes a review is more likely to be either the kind of person who makes a hobby out of nitpicking, or was spurred to write by a particularly bad experience, and hence any collection of reviews will probably be biased to the negative. In addition, as studies such as the Stanford Prison Experiment have shown, anonymity is conducive to abusive behaviour, especially the exertion of arbitary power over others, which is exactly the power that online reviewers wield. As these dynamics become so prevalent in our society, we need to become more adept at recognizing and compensating for them.

At the end of the day, what I think is the real problem, is not anonymity, but accountability, or the lack of. Being anonymous may be problematic in how it enables irresponsible behaviour, but it is also advantageous, and not just for the extreme cases of people living in repressive regimes. The presence of malicious 'trolls' on the internet, and the damage they can inflict, means it is often advisable not to reveal ones identity, since online it is so easy to upset someone, and so hard to reconcile with them. Unfortunately there are plenty of (generally young male) people out there who are itching to take offence, and then take revenge (there are some horrific stories of people being smeared paedophiles etc. simply due to a simple onlin spat in a forum).

What I think is needed is some form of anonymous accountability, some way in which identities can be protected, but still held to account. One possible solution for this would be a registered anonymous identity, an online persona which would not be traceable back to one's real world name, but which would be a consistent persona on the internet. The idea would be that all comments and online activity would be made under the same psuedonym, allowing the history of what that person did to be seen, and judged. Of course this would not prevent malicious behaviour, since the person would still be untouchable, but it would encourage consistency, and reduce one-off attacks.

The main problem would be how to encourage people to actually maintain the same online identity, and not just switch and change, but one mechanism for this would be to have some central site which allocates these names, and restricts how many/often it does so, and for it to become appealing to have this particular name. For example an online newspaper might allow anonymous commenting, but only with registered names, and ensure one per use, with (appealable) banning for misuse. And of course the ideal version of this would be one (or a few) well respected social network sites issuing names, which would then be accepted by various other organizations (e.g. if a site facelessbook issued reliable usernames, then all newspapers might allow anonymous commenting under its login name).

The point is if a person's online history is available, then not only will they be induced to be consistent, and maybe think more about what they're doing, but also it will allow others to judge them by their previous actions. If someone only makes miserable reviews or indulges in trolling on various websites, then one would know to discount their comments. Similarly if someone DOESN'T use this mechanism, then maybe they've something to hide, or are at least not prepared to stand by what they said, so why listen to them.

There could even be things like an online 'reputation' credit rating service, whereby if you wanted to check up on a particular user's history, a web site would search the internet for all postings (all travel review sites, all newspapers) etc. to show what kind of person they were. It is important to note that this would not compromise privacy, people would 'opt in' by using the same name, but it could be setup in a way that most normal people would want to. And of course there ultimate identity would be secure (although maybe some protection would be needed to prevent indirect identification, e.g. google might well be able to link real named gmail accounts with IPs posting under particular pseudonyms).

My basic point is this phenomenon of online commentary is here to stay, and we as the technical generation need to work out new mechanisms to preserve the potential and avoid the pitfalls.