One would hardly think it, but seems indeed still a few ‘uncontacted’ communities in the world, with a previously unknown tribe in the Amazon jungle having been spotted from the air recently.
The first reaction I think is, cool, good for them, let’s leave them alone – but is that really justified? Given the history of exploitation of indigenous peoples, the taking of their land and destruction of their way of life, then it would seem to be. But, I think there is also an element of the myth of the ‘noble savage’ involved, that somehow this simple, primitive life is worthy, and should be preserved. But for whose sake is it really then being preserved? For the people involved, who must live it out in its harsh reality, or for us who like the idea of some preserved speciments of the life we long lefy behind. They may be spared the hedonism of the modern world, but it’s a valid question as to whether the inevitable Hobbesianisms of primitive life don’t outweigh that…the transience of modern desires versus a transience of existence when life is poor, nasty, brutish and short.
Of course maybe their society is above average as undeveloped communities go, maybe it isn’t racked by the famine and conflict that our pre-history most certainly was – a sparser population with more natural resources may indeed facilitate a more bucolic lifestyle. But for sure they will lack modern medicines, modern technology, and modern education. Looked at as individuals, who must suffer any injury without anaesthetic, who must perhaps stand helplessly by as a child dies of some preventable disease, things are a lot less clear. Even beyond sheer physical well being, who of us would rather live a permanently closed life, knowing nothing of the wonders of the wider world, barred from ever accessing the means and technology to broaden our minds, to read, write, and even surf the internet. Or even if we would rather, who would be righteous and selfconfident enough to impose that life on someone else, not some abstract person but someone we know and care about, like a child. Surely our philosophy is that for better or worse everyone has a right to live life to the fullest, even with it’s inherent downsides.
And of course, as mentioned before, the track record on ‘first contacts’ is not something we can be proud of. But it is also probably true to say that this is more due to the people doing the first contact, rather than it being necessarily detrimental. Surely some form of gradual contact, slowly opening the outside world to these people, and importantly, their future generations, could be successfully done? And since eventually some contact is inevitable, better it’s on the right terms, than from some random loggers or miners who stumble across them?
Apart from our rosy notions of primitive man, I think there is also at work the moral disjunct between sins of action, and sins of omission. Moral judgement is always harshest on actions we specifically choose to take, rather than those we simply fail to. To push someone into the path of a car is viewed as more morally reprehensible than to fail to push them out of it. In both cases the result is the same, the person might die because of our choices, but in one we are murderers, in the other just callous. I must explore this further some time, but I guess at root there are an infinite number of actions we can fail to take, so morality could not function if we could be blamed for them all, and so intuitively we view such omissions as less blameworthy. But at the society level, where we debate what is best to do, then intuitions must be tempered with rationality, and in this case leaving them alone is just as much an action as contacting them, and therefore should be weighed in terms of advantages and disadvantages, and importantly from the perspective of their physical and mental well being, not just from that of our emotional one.
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Blink, or you'll miss it
Another interesting book from Gladwell, and as usual contains a feast of fascinating psychological insights. However, in this particular case, there is a dark side to these cognitive titbits,and while he does qualify his recommendations in light of this, there are questions raised as well as answered. This food for thought requires some chewing...
The power of blink
The focus of the book is what I am could be labelled 'blink thinking' - the rapid cognition which 'we' do automatically, but also unconciously. The stuff that happens in a blink of an eye, but fittingly which we also don't see or even realise.
The classic example of this is what is known as 'thin slicing' - extracting a wealth of information and judgment from a very thin segment of experience. That this can be a surprisingly powerful technique is clear from the many examples Gladwell provides. For instance there is the the marriage counseller John Gottmann, who can predict, after just an hour of conversation, with 95% accuracy whether a married couple will be still together in 15 years; or there is the fact that people who rate a professor's teaching ability based on just a few seconds of video clip reach similar conclusions to those of students who experienced an entire semester of classes.
It seems that in many such cases, there is a behavioural 'signature' which is always present, carries great significance, and which we are remarkably adept at (subconsciously) picking up on, even with minimal exposure to it. This is of course impressive, but does make sense, in that pattern recognition is a major feature of our mental apparatus and we are constantly finding out new ways in which it excels. While we might like to think the prowess of the human mind is in rationality and logical ability, as the field of Artificial Intelligence shows, the real challenge in replicating human behaviour lies not in implementing such calculations, but in recreating our power to identify and process patterns, even in such a seemingly 'simple' area as vision. Furthermore, as social creatures, it also makes sense that we have specialized pattern identification powers in this area as well. However Gladwell also shows how such social observations are not just interesting in their own right, but may lead to seemingly unconnected consequences. For example a study showed that the chances of a doctor being sued could be more reliably estimated from 'thin slicing' conversations with patients than by analyzing how many actual mistakes he/she made. It turns out a doctor who used a patronizing or dominant tone in conversatio would be more likely to be sued than one who actually made more medical mistakes. Again, in retrospect this can be seen to make sense, since suing is in a way a legal expression of what is at root a moral reaction - the feeling of being wronged and apportioning blame, so it is understandable that the patient's personal relationship with the doctor plays a major role; however, it does highlight how our social and emotional subconscious reactions may underlie what might be assumed to be rational areas of action. As a side note it is also perhaps comforting that the statistics bear this emotional influence out, since it shows the majority of lawsuits are then actually based on real feelings of indignation, not just an opportunistic chance to make a quick buck, which would be the case if people sued whenever the doctor made a mistake.
Manpulating Blink, and manipulating us
The story starts to get into darker territory though, when Gladwell shows us how this powerful subconcious mechanism can be influenced, and also (more disturbingly) how it can then influence our conscious, 'chosen', behaviour.
There are of course many examples these days of 'priming', whereby situational elements can be used to tilt the balance between one unconcious interpretation and another. What is unnerving about the example Gladwell gives though is how the effects can be seen to percolate into other areas which we would like to think are sacrosanct. So, for example, having people think about either being a professor or being a hooligan had a marked impact on their ability to answer general knowledge questions. One can literally put oneself into a 'smart' frame of mind by imagining being a smart person - or not, as the case may be. Much as we like to think of ourselves as our own person, this raises the issue of how identifying with someone else can change such subtle elements of our character. While the study seemed to focus on the positive effects of imagining a professor, one can assume there would be similar negative effects brought to the fore when taking on the role of a hooligan. Such 'social' mental states affecting us social creatures is one thing, but,perhaps more surprisingly, there are also examples of seemingly trivial physical factors playing a detectable, mental role. So for example in one study subjects found a cartoon more or less funny, depending on whether they held a pen between their lips, or between their teeth. This particular result is linked to the feedback-loop that is now being thought to exist between our emotions and our physical manifestations of them - in this case smiling (which is inhibited by a pen between the lips, but forced by a pen between the teeth).
We like to think such things are personal mental qualities and experiences, not something which can be manipulated by something as trivial as biting on a pen, but more and more research shows how misconceived this might be. This is a fascinating area, and I've read recently quite a few articles on the subject - for example in this sciam article frowning one's brow while working on a problem makes one think in an analytic manner, whereas puffing out one's cheeks has the opposite effect. While to make things even more bizarre, this article shows how daydreaming about love puts one in a creative frame of mind, whereas thinking about sex makes one more analytical!
Normally priming is I think associated with loading a judgment balance, pre-placing facts into our mind which then tip the scales faster in one direction than another, but it is I think a different, darker, ballgame if it influences not just 'what' goes into our decision, but 'how' that decision is made - how creatively or analytically, how smartly or how humourously.
Unknown unknowns
This is all quite surprising and disturbing, because by and large our subconscious processes are not just impenetrable to us, but we don't even know what we don't know. As often is the case absence of evidence is I think assumed to be evidence of absence : we don't feel our decisions to be moulded in this way, so assume they are not. This then is particularly deterimental when combined with our need to have a consistent narrative for our actions, to rationalize them, even after the event. When it comes to explaining our behaviour, our nature abhors a vacuum, so when the governing factors occur under our radar, we invent irrelevant reasons and justifications. We then not only confuse ourselves, but when confronted with this confusion we don't try to correct it, rather to bolster it.
An example Gladwell gives is asking both normal people and expert food tasters to rate jams. If just asked to give gut feelings, both groups produce roughly similar results. But if the non-experts are also asked to explain their decisions, then their preferences change and get all mixed up relative to the experts and even inconsistent relative to themselves. Trying to figure out why we like something ends up disturbing the what we think we like as well! Releated is the example of how, if we are shown a face, and later have to pick it out of a line up, we normally do quite well; however, if in between we are asked to describe that face, then we become much worse at actually identifying it later. Apart from being a useful tip on how to confuse a witness if ever accused of a crime, this raises an important issue : consideration can confuse! What seems actually to be happening is that if asked to explain/describe our choices/experiences, then we replace the automatic reaction with conciously (re-)constructed information, and in these sort of domains, that might not be appropriate, and hence something gets lost. The cliche of a picture painting a thousand words might apply here, since we are trying to convert a complex pattern into conscious 'words', and fail miserably.
If this was just about recognizing faces and choosing jams, then this wouldn't much cause for concern. However our instinctive social evaluations are also being shown to play a role in more serious areas, like prejudice. The most unnerving example of this is the Implicit Association Test, or the IAT. I think its instructive for everyone to try out this test, especially the racial version, and a good example is available online at https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit. This test measures how fast we are at pairing two items, for example in the race test between a black/white face and a postive/negative word. The premise of this test is that we pair things faster when we already associate them together, and any change in response time indicates a conflict between rational choice and implicit association. So for example if someone takes longer to pair a black face with a positive term, then this is claimed to reveal implicit negative associations with black people.
I remember when I tried that test a while back, I was shocked to see I had a variation in response time, but thankfully (for my pride, but alas not for society) I am not alone in this (and hence not a closet racist!) since even Gladwell himself wasn't as implicitly fair minded as he thought he would be.
What this shows is regardless of our conscious attitudes to things like racial equality, we also have unconscious attitudes which, while not playing the major role, colour our initial impressions and interpretations, and these first reactions can be corrosive.
This chillingly reveals how prone we can be to stereotyping at a deep level, and this can of course be detrimental not just via unfair negative biases, but through misplaced positive ones as well. Gladwell gives an example of the latter in the 'Warren Harding Error' whereby in one election, a lot of US voters seem basically to have wrongly assumed a distinguished and intelligent looking candidate would make a distinguished and intelligent president. A similar bias probably explains why business leaders tend to be significantly taller than average, since we seem to automatically associate physical stature with leadership ability. We might dismiss such biases consciously, but they lurk on under the surface.
Conscious counter actions
But there's some light at the end of our tunnel vision. As Gladwell points out "just because something is outside of awareness doesn't mean it's outside of control". While it's true that we can't control the first impressions which are shaped by our experiences and environment, we can however change those external factors (change some of our experiences etc.) so as to foster and reinforce the more preferrable impressions.
Taking the Race IAT again and again doesn't change our performance, no matter how much we consciously will ourselves to be 'fair'. What does change our performance though, is thinking beforehand of examples of black people we know of and respect - for example famous figures like Nelson Mandella or Martin Luther King. This is of course basically priming, which might seem somehow manipulative, and to some extent it is, but only in so far as it is needed to counteract the pre-existing priming effects of our society being awash with negative stereotyping. If we remind ourselves of how the stereotypes don't hold true, then we prevent ourselves from falling back on them as automatic default assumptions.
The change in IAT results shows how this can be effective, and the changes can also be shown at a biological level. I unfortunately can't find the study anymore, but I remember reading of a brain scan experiment which showed how the amygdala (very much involved in fear and threat perception) would automatically light up when a subject was shown a foreign face. However the study seemed also to suggest that priming the subject to think of the person as an individual (this is a postman, father etc.), and I guess somehow identify with them, reduced this activation. So there is definitely some hope and comfort to be taken from this all. We may not be able to change our hard wired circuits to react to an 'other' (which can be configured by ignorance or by culture) but we can de-tune the inputs to those circuits to prevent them firing.
Sadly, this ability to prime our reactions also shows the lie in the cliche "sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me". Name calling, stereotypes and even 'mere' jokes, all help tune these circuits in the wrong way. An example of the tangible and serious consequences of this is seen in a study by Albert Bandura in 'which students delivered much higher electric shocks to another group of participants merely if they had overheard someone saying that those students from the other college seemed like "animals" ' (see http://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/getArticle.cfm?id=2032). Names may not break bones, but they break moral barriers, which opens the door to evil acts. Similarly this is why we should never tolerate villifying or objectifying rhetoric from politicians and others, because even 'free speech' is never free from effect. Despite how it reinforces and inflames those who are that way inclined anyway, it also sets the tone of debate and has a priming effect even on those who think they can just rationally discard it.
So as Gladwell points out "to really be a fair minded person, it is not enough to rationally act that way, but we also need to develop the related automatic mindset, by exposure to counter-examples to stereotypes". Put bluntly, we can't trust ourselves to act as we'd like to, unless we train for it.
And of course there are other types of 'priming that we need to be careful of. Gladwell discusses how simply being overstimulated can lead us to act in blinkered, blink-dominated ways. As a real life example of preventive measures against it, he points out how many police forces have now banned high speed chases. Not just due to the danger of 'collateral damage' during the chase, but mainly to avoid the over/misguided reactions of officers that can often arise after such exhileration (many riots over police brutality were actually triggered by events following a car chase).
Accept blink yes, but...
Overall, I think Gladwell makes a persuasive and interesting case for the power of 'blink'. His examples are illuminating, and he delivers an important lesson: there is more to our actions and even choices than we think, and we ignore this at our peril. Furthermore it's an especially important point that outside of awareness does not mean outside of control. It's one thing to make the spirit willing but we also can, and must, train the flesh not to be weak.
What makes me feel uncomfortable though is he seems to me a little over-enthusiastic about this unconscious power. He gives several examples of how blink thinking is better than trying to rationally decide, trying to list pros and cons etc., which can lead to what he terms 'paralysis through analysis'. While flashes of insight are of course always necessary, and I agree we should always try to leave some room for it in our deliberations, I also think that he sometimes risks encouraging too much reliance on 'intuition'. So, for example, in a story about Cook Country ER, he explains how doctors were taking too much information into account when trying to decide which people complaining of chest pains might really be on the verge of having a heart attack, and should be allocated scarce hospital beds, and which should be sent home. It turns out that there were just a few simple variables which were most predictive, and these weren't being spotted in the wealth of analysis undertaken. The implication is: too much needless thought.
But in such a situation could one really ever recommend the approach of not taking everything into consideration? The whole point is no one really knew what mattered, so they tried to factor in everything that might. It turns out this wasn't necessary, but only after a lengthy computer analysis of statistics. Human blink thinking wouldn't have ever reached this conclusion, and it would in my view be wrong to trust it, even if we thought it might. Our powers of pattern recognition are amazing, but such mechanisms have no corrective/evaluative feedback - hunches may be right, but it's irresponsible to take serious action based on them, since if we can't identify the grounds for our conclusions, we can't judge how shaky the foundations are. Being hard wired to see patterns means we might also see them where they aren't. Burying ourselves in data might stop us seeing the wood for the trees, but it also stops us seeing the crop circles.
What is true however is that, due to our inherent confirmation bias, more information might raise our confidence, but not our accuracy. Gladwell gives an example of psychologists reviewing a case history becoming more and more convinced of their (wrong) diagnoses the more they learned about the subject. This is something we for sure need to be aware of, but it would be ludicrous to reject more information just because of this risk!
And I think this argument is relevant in the other examples he gives - the successful 'spontaneous' wargame strategy, the higher success rate in problem solving tests if subjects didn't try to explain their ideas and so on. In such cases there are for sure times when blink thinking might come out on top, but the point is if we can't be sure it will, the we have to take the less successful but more responsible conscious path. This wisdom is embedded in our culture - don't act without thinking, don't be impetuous, look before you leap etc. And this is I think the reason why we can be shown so much about blink, because we grow up learning to overcome it, and as things like the race IAT show, for good reason. It's also not just about being pragmatic - there is a sense that we only truly 'own' an action if we consciously decide to take it. We would be much more scathing of someone who thought through an evil action in detail, than of someone who acted in a moment of madness.
Gladwell does actually touch on this notion of ownership, and who we feel ourselves to be, when he points out that a round package actually will make us rate ice cream as tasting better than it would in a square package. He correctly points out that it's hard to really justify why we would consider this as less relevant to the 'taste', to the experience of the ice cream, than, say, bigger chocolate chips. There is indeed a hard truth that we aren't the simple rational beings we think we are, and while this is an area worthy of much more discussion, I think it still doesn't take away from the value of trying to be such beings. Rational deliberation might not be the approach that always produces the best action but will consistently produce the most defensible ones. So while recognizing the need to factor in our gut reactions, I would be very wary of over-reliance, even if this reduces the advantage that can sometimes be gained from them.
Finally, while it probably isn't a major factor, it does I think merit saying that the very fact that this powerful mechanism is unconscious means we need to be careful in saying what really arose from it alone. So, in the opening example about the statue that 'didn't look right', all the experts said they felt misgivings from the start - from their first 'gut reactions'. But this is them recalling these 'gut' events later, and surely then there is at least some risk that the very rationalizing impulse Gladwell criticizes elsewhere, was also playing a role here?
Daniel Dennett and others have discussed conscious awareness as being something that might be retrospectively applied, and involve 'filling in' as the current situation requires. So for example we might suddenly tune in to a conversation when our name is heard, and be aware of the the entire preceding sentance, but in fact what was said before our name popped up would have not been in our consciousness otherwise. I.e. It seems to have been almost pulled into our consciousness afterwards, and only once we realized it was about us . I suspect there is room for something similar happening with these recalled first impressions : there might have been various subconcious ideas bubbling away, which were only later, perhaps with the overlay and product of some conscious thinking, then woven into the final narrative. I'm not trying to discount the fact that these experts probably did have gut pattern recognition which picked up on something being wrong, but to be consistent we also need to allow for the possibiliy of some element of 'storytelling' being present here as well.
So, overall another fascinating book, but one I think which requires some caveats and qualifications before taking fully on board. Like it or not, we need to acknowledge and appreciate blink thinking in our lives. However we need to harnass and tame it, not let it carry us away.
Links to related Scientific American articles
Does falling in love make us more creative?
How fantasies effect focus
Rapid thinking makes people happy
Of two minds when making a decision?
The power of blink
The focus of the book is what I am could be labelled 'blink thinking' - the rapid cognition which 'we' do automatically, but also unconciously. The stuff that happens in a blink of an eye, but fittingly which we also don't see or even realise.
The classic example of this is what is known as 'thin slicing' - extracting a wealth of information and judgment from a very thin segment of experience. That this can be a surprisingly powerful technique is clear from the many examples Gladwell provides. For instance there is the the marriage counseller John Gottmann, who can predict, after just an hour of conversation, with 95% accuracy whether a married couple will be still together in 15 years; or there is the fact that people who rate a professor's teaching ability based on just a few seconds of video clip reach similar conclusions to those of students who experienced an entire semester of classes.
It seems that in many such cases, there is a behavioural 'signature' which is always present, carries great significance, and which we are remarkably adept at (subconsciously) picking up on, even with minimal exposure to it. This is of course impressive, but does make sense, in that pattern recognition is a major feature of our mental apparatus and we are constantly finding out new ways in which it excels. While we might like to think the prowess of the human mind is in rationality and logical ability, as the field of Artificial Intelligence shows, the real challenge in replicating human behaviour lies not in implementing such calculations, but in recreating our power to identify and process patterns, even in such a seemingly 'simple' area as vision. Furthermore, as social creatures, it also makes sense that we have specialized pattern identification powers in this area as well. However Gladwell also shows how such social observations are not just interesting in their own right, but may lead to seemingly unconnected consequences. For example a study showed that the chances of a doctor being sued could be more reliably estimated from 'thin slicing' conversations with patients than by analyzing how many actual mistakes he/she made. It turns out a doctor who used a patronizing or dominant tone in conversatio would be more likely to be sued than one who actually made more medical mistakes. Again, in retrospect this can be seen to make sense, since suing is in a way a legal expression of what is at root a moral reaction - the feeling of being wronged and apportioning blame, so it is understandable that the patient's personal relationship with the doctor plays a major role; however, it does highlight how our social and emotional subconscious reactions may underlie what might be assumed to be rational areas of action. As a side note it is also perhaps comforting that the statistics bear this emotional influence out, since it shows the majority of lawsuits are then actually based on real feelings of indignation, not just an opportunistic chance to make a quick buck, which would be the case if people sued whenever the doctor made a mistake.
Manpulating Blink, and manipulating us
The story starts to get into darker territory though, when Gladwell shows us how this powerful subconcious mechanism can be influenced, and also (more disturbingly) how it can then influence our conscious, 'chosen', behaviour.
There are of course many examples these days of 'priming', whereby situational elements can be used to tilt the balance between one unconcious interpretation and another. What is unnerving about the example Gladwell gives though is how the effects can be seen to percolate into other areas which we would like to think are sacrosanct. So, for example, having people think about either being a professor or being a hooligan had a marked impact on their ability to answer general knowledge questions. One can literally put oneself into a 'smart' frame of mind by imagining being a smart person - or not, as the case may be. Much as we like to think of ourselves as our own person, this raises the issue of how identifying with someone else can change such subtle elements of our character. While the study seemed to focus on the positive effects of imagining a professor, one can assume there would be similar negative effects brought to the fore when taking on the role of a hooligan. Such 'social' mental states affecting us social creatures is one thing, but,perhaps more surprisingly, there are also examples of seemingly trivial physical factors playing a detectable, mental role. So for example in one study subjects found a cartoon more or less funny, depending on whether they held a pen between their lips, or between their teeth. This particular result is linked to the feedback-loop that is now being thought to exist between our emotions and our physical manifestations of them - in this case smiling (which is inhibited by a pen between the lips, but forced by a pen between the teeth).
We like to think such things are personal mental qualities and experiences, not something which can be manipulated by something as trivial as biting on a pen, but more and more research shows how misconceived this might be. This is a fascinating area, and I've read recently quite a few articles on the subject - for example in this sciam article frowning one's brow while working on a problem makes one think in an analytic manner, whereas puffing out one's cheeks has the opposite effect. While to make things even more bizarre, this article shows how daydreaming about love puts one in a creative frame of mind, whereas thinking about sex makes one more analytical!
Normally priming is I think associated with loading a judgment balance, pre-placing facts into our mind which then tip the scales faster in one direction than another, but it is I think a different, darker, ballgame if it influences not just 'what' goes into our decision, but 'how' that decision is made - how creatively or analytically, how smartly or how humourously.
Unknown unknowns
This is all quite surprising and disturbing, because by and large our subconscious processes are not just impenetrable to us, but we don't even know what we don't know. As often is the case absence of evidence is I think assumed to be evidence of absence : we don't feel our decisions to be moulded in this way, so assume they are not. This then is particularly deterimental when combined with our need to have a consistent narrative for our actions, to rationalize them, even after the event. When it comes to explaining our behaviour, our nature abhors a vacuum, so when the governing factors occur under our radar, we invent irrelevant reasons and justifications. We then not only confuse ourselves, but when confronted with this confusion we don't try to correct it, rather to bolster it.
An example Gladwell gives is asking both normal people and expert food tasters to rate jams. If just asked to give gut feelings, both groups produce roughly similar results. But if the non-experts are also asked to explain their decisions, then their preferences change and get all mixed up relative to the experts and even inconsistent relative to themselves. Trying to figure out why we like something ends up disturbing the what we think we like as well! Releated is the example of how, if we are shown a face, and later have to pick it out of a line up, we normally do quite well; however, if in between we are asked to describe that face, then we become much worse at actually identifying it later. Apart from being a useful tip on how to confuse a witness if ever accused of a crime, this raises an important issue : consideration can confuse! What seems actually to be happening is that if asked to explain/describe our choices/experiences, then we replace the automatic reaction with conciously (re-)constructed information, and in these sort of domains, that might not be appropriate, and hence something gets lost. The cliche of a picture painting a thousand words might apply here, since we are trying to convert a complex pattern into conscious 'words', and fail miserably.
If this was just about recognizing faces and choosing jams, then this wouldn't much cause for concern. However our instinctive social evaluations are also being shown to play a role in more serious areas, like prejudice. The most unnerving example of this is the Implicit Association Test, or the IAT. I think its instructive for everyone to try out this test, especially the racial version, and a good example is available online at https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit. This test measures how fast we are at pairing two items, for example in the race test between a black/white face and a postive/negative word. The premise of this test is that we pair things faster when we already associate them together, and any change in response time indicates a conflict between rational choice and implicit association. So for example if someone takes longer to pair a black face with a positive term, then this is claimed to reveal implicit negative associations with black people.
I remember when I tried that test a while back, I was shocked to see I had a variation in response time, but thankfully (for my pride, but alas not for society) I am not alone in this (and hence not a closet racist!) since even Gladwell himself wasn't as implicitly fair minded as he thought he would be.
What this shows is regardless of our conscious attitudes to things like racial equality, we also have unconscious attitudes which, while not playing the major role, colour our initial impressions and interpretations, and these first reactions can be corrosive.
This chillingly reveals how prone we can be to stereotyping at a deep level, and this can of course be detrimental not just via unfair negative biases, but through misplaced positive ones as well. Gladwell gives an example of the latter in the 'Warren Harding Error' whereby in one election, a lot of US voters seem basically to have wrongly assumed a distinguished and intelligent looking candidate would make a distinguished and intelligent president. A similar bias probably explains why business leaders tend to be significantly taller than average, since we seem to automatically associate physical stature with leadership ability. We might dismiss such biases consciously, but they lurk on under the surface.
Conscious counter actions
But there's some light at the end of our tunnel vision. As Gladwell points out "just because something is outside of awareness doesn't mean it's outside of control". While it's true that we can't control the first impressions which are shaped by our experiences and environment, we can however change those external factors (change some of our experiences etc.) so as to foster and reinforce the more preferrable impressions.
Taking the Race IAT again and again doesn't change our performance, no matter how much we consciously will ourselves to be 'fair'. What does change our performance though, is thinking beforehand of examples of black people we know of and respect - for example famous figures like Nelson Mandella or Martin Luther King. This is of course basically priming, which might seem somehow manipulative, and to some extent it is, but only in so far as it is needed to counteract the pre-existing priming effects of our society being awash with negative stereotyping. If we remind ourselves of how the stereotypes don't hold true, then we prevent ourselves from falling back on them as automatic default assumptions.
The change in IAT results shows how this can be effective, and the changes can also be shown at a biological level. I unfortunately can't find the study anymore, but I remember reading of a brain scan experiment which showed how the amygdala (very much involved in fear and threat perception) would automatically light up when a subject was shown a foreign face. However the study seemed also to suggest that priming the subject to think of the person as an individual (this is a postman, father etc.), and I guess somehow identify with them, reduced this activation. So there is definitely some hope and comfort to be taken from this all. We may not be able to change our hard wired circuits to react to an 'other' (which can be configured by ignorance or by culture) but we can de-tune the inputs to those circuits to prevent them firing.
Sadly, this ability to prime our reactions also shows the lie in the cliche "sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me". Name calling, stereotypes and even 'mere' jokes, all help tune these circuits in the wrong way. An example of the tangible and serious consequences of this is seen in a study by Albert Bandura in 'which students delivered much higher electric shocks to another group of participants merely if they had overheard someone saying that those students from the other college seemed like "animals" ' (see http://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/getArticle.cfm?id=2032). Names may not break bones, but they break moral barriers, which opens the door to evil acts. Similarly this is why we should never tolerate villifying or objectifying rhetoric from politicians and others, because even 'free speech' is never free from effect. Despite how it reinforces and inflames those who are that way inclined anyway, it also sets the tone of debate and has a priming effect even on those who think they can just rationally discard it.
So as Gladwell points out "to really be a fair minded person, it is not enough to rationally act that way, but we also need to develop the related automatic mindset, by exposure to counter-examples to stereotypes". Put bluntly, we can't trust ourselves to act as we'd like to, unless we train for it.
And of course there are other types of 'priming that we need to be careful of. Gladwell discusses how simply being overstimulated can lead us to act in blinkered, blink-dominated ways. As a real life example of preventive measures against it, he points out how many police forces have now banned high speed chases. Not just due to the danger of 'collateral damage' during the chase, but mainly to avoid the over/misguided reactions of officers that can often arise after such exhileration (many riots over police brutality were actually triggered by events following a car chase).
Accept blink yes, but...
Overall, I think Gladwell makes a persuasive and interesting case for the power of 'blink'. His examples are illuminating, and he delivers an important lesson: there is more to our actions and even choices than we think, and we ignore this at our peril. Furthermore it's an especially important point that outside of awareness does not mean outside of control. It's one thing to make the spirit willing but we also can, and must, train the flesh not to be weak.
What makes me feel uncomfortable though is he seems to me a little over-enthusiastic about this unconscious power. He gives several examples of how blink thinking is better than trying to rationally decide, trying to list pros and cons etc., which can lead to what he terms 'paralysis through analysis'. While flashes of insight are of course always necessary, and I agree we should always try to leave some room for it in our deliberations, I also think that he sometimes risks encouraging too much reliance on 'intuition'. So, for example, in a story about Cook Country ER, he explains how doctors were taking too much information into account when trying to decide which people complaining of chest pains might really be on the verge of having a heart attack, and should be allocated scarce hospital beds, and which should be sent home. It turns out that there were just a few simple variables which were most predictive, and these weren't being spotted in the wealth of analysis undertaken. The implication is: too much needless thought.
But in such a situation could one really ever recommend the approach of not taking everything into consideration? The whole point is no one really knew what mattered, so they tried to factor in everything that might. It turns out this wasn't necessary, but only after a lengthy computer analysis of statistics. Human blink thinking wouldn't have ever reached this conclusion, and it would in my view be wrong to trust it, even if we thought it might. Our powers of pattern recognition are amazing, but such mechanisms have no corrective/evaluative feedback - hunches may be right, but it's irresponsible to take serious action based on them, since if we can't identify the grounds for our conclusions, we can't judge how shaky the foundations are. Being hard wired to see patterns means we might also see them where they aren't. Burying ourselves in data might stop us seeing the wood for the trees, but it also stops us seeing the crop circles.
What is true however is that, due to our inherent confirmation bias, more information might raise our confidence, but not our accuracy. Gladwell gives an example of psychologists reviewing a case history becoming more and more convinced of their (wrong) diagnoses the more they learned about the subject. This is something we for sure need to be aware of, but it would be ludicrous to reject more information just because of this risk!
And I think this argument is relevant in the other examples he gives - the successful 'spontaneous' wargame strategy, the higher success rate in problem solving tests if subjects didn't try to explain their ideas and so on. In such cases there are for sure times when blink thinking might come out on top, but the point is if we can't be sure it will, the we have to take the less successful but more responsible conscious path. This wisdom is embedded in our culture - don't act without thinking, don't be impetuous, look before you leap etc. And this is I think the reason why we can be shown so much about blink, because we grow up learning to overcome it, and as things like the race IAT show, for good reason. It's also not just about being pragmatic - there is a sense that we only truly 'own' an action if we consciously decide to take it. We would be much more scathing of someone who thought through an evil action in detail, than of someone who acted in a moment of madness.
Gladwell does actually touch on this notion of ownership, and who we feel ourselves to be, when he points out that a round package actually will make us rate ice cream as tasting better than it would in a square package. He correctly points out that it's hard to really justify why we would consider this as less relevant to the 'taste', to the experience of the ice cream, than, say, bigger chocolate chips. There is indeed a hard truth that we aren't the simple rational beings we think we are, and while this is an area worthy of much more discussion, I think it still doesn't take away from the value of trying to be such beings. Rational deliberation might not be the approach that always produces the best action but will consistently produce the most defensible ones. So while recognizing the need to factor in our gut reactions, I would be very wary of over-reliance, even if this reduces the advantage that can sometimes be gained from them.
Finally, while it probably isn't a major factor, it does I think merit saying that the very fact that this powerful mechanism is unconscious means we need to be careful in saying what really arose from it alone. So, in the opening example about the statue that 'didn't look right', all the experts said they felt misgivings from the start - from their first 'gut reactions'. But this is them recalling these 'gut' events later, and surely then there is at least some risk that the very rationalizing impulse Gladwell criticizes elsewhere, was also playing a role here?
Daniel Dennett and others have discussed conscious awareness as being something that might be retrospectively applied, and involve 'filling in' as the current situation requires. So for example we might suddenly tune in to a conversation when our name is heard, and be aware of the the entire preceding sentance, but in fact what was said before our name popped up would have not been in our consciousness otherwise. I.e. It seems to have been almost pulled into our consciousness afterwards, and only once we realized it was about us . I suspect there is room for something similar happening with these recalled first impressions : there might have been various subconcious ideas bubbling away, which were only later, perhaps with the overlay and product of some conscious thinking, then woven into the final narrative. I'm not trying to discount the fact that these experts probably did have gut pattern recognition which picked up on something being wrong, but to be consistent we also need to allow for the possibiliy of some element of 'storytelling' being present here as well.
So, overall another fascinating book, but one I think which requires some caveats and qualifications before taking fully on board. Like it or not, we need to acknowledge and appreciate blink thinking in our lives. However we need to harnass and tame it, not let it carry us away.
Links to related Scientific American articles
Does falling in love make us more creative?
How fantasies effect focus
Rapid thinking makes people happy
Of two minds when making a decision?
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
surveys and data gathering
Every now and then I get a call to my mobile, asking me to take part in some survey or other. There's something intrusive about cold calling, so I invariably tell them I'm don't have time, and if they're too slow or persistant to realise i'm just trying to be polite (would you have time tomorrow?) then of course I rachet up my refusal!
However, when I think about it, as someone who loves reading the results of the latest pscychological or societal study, which often rely on mass surveys, this isn't reasonable behaviour on my part. After all, if everyone had my attitude, and there would be no one to answer the needed questions. So perhaps I should view it as one of those necessary tasks we all should undertake to help society at large - things which sometimes seem to be not just an inconvenience but an irrelevance to us, and yet which may have real value to the community as a whole.
Of course, another mental excuse which often comes into play is the idea that it is probably anyway commercial, and why should I help some marketeer in his targetting of me and my disposable cash. But this also doesn't make a lot of sense, since in essence what I'm saying is, how dare they try to figure out what I might want! Surely it is in general a good thing not only that the products we want are available, but (to reduce waste and energy consumption) those we don't want, aren't!
I suppose the source of hostility arises from an association of such practices with advertising, but this can't really be the case. Advertising is about creating a want without a need, but this doesn't work if you do the asking first!
This is I think related to the more general practice of questionaires and data gathering. While normally this is again just at the level of inconvenience, there are also times when it involves issues of privacy.
For example in Kindergarten they now I think do do some questioning/assessment of the kids and their behaviour and abilities. The problem which some people then see is, such data sets can be used to build up a profile/history of a child over its school life. And the problem with that is, maybe something from a child's past will influence how it's later actions/behaviour are viewed. If a child had learning/behavioural problems at an early age, then this might colour later interpretations. In an extreme view there might be the idea that a child is pre-judged based on supposed 'early indicators'. I.e. because he/her exhibited such and such in pre-school, then he/she *must* have such and such a disposition or disability.
However, being honest, I think the potential for good is much more than the potential for harm. Even if such a link between early traits and later behaviours was possible, it could never be a conclusive one. So its use in a negative manner is limited. However, the link only needs to be probable for it to justify 'pre-emptive' actions at an early age - which even if over-applied based on such data analysis, would mean it would reach the kids who really need it, and would be very unlikely harm the one's who didn't (who would be harmed by extra tuition etc.?).
Of course if this was used as a basis of 'streaming' kids at too early an age then this would be another matter - but again the point is the scientific evidence wouldn't be strong enough to make a conclusive judgement, which would be required to impose such measures. But for supportive extra measures no one is going to require it to be shown 'beyond reasonable doubt'.
The point is such data gathering really only has 'forward-looking' uses - what things will be sold, what behaviours might appear in the future etc. It is statistical prediction, and as such only has proper validity, and use, at the group level. At the individual, specific level, what someone will really do or why they really did, can't be extrapolated from that
So I guess it's a case of don't ask what your society might want to do to you, but what you can do for your society, when it asks you.
However, when I think about it, as someone who loves reading the results of the latest pscychological or societal study, which often rely on mass surveys, this isn't reasonable behaviour on my part. After all, if everyone had my attitude, and there would be no one to answer the needed questions. So perhaps I should view it as one of those necessary tasks we all should undertake to help society at large - things which sometimes seem to be not just an inconvenience but an irrelevance to us, and yet which may have real value to the community as a whole.
Of course, another mental excuse which often comes into play is the idea that it is probably anyway commercial, and why should I help some marketeer in his targetting of me and my disposable cash. But this also doesn't make a lot of sense, since in essence what I'm saying is, how dare they try to figure out what I might want! Surely it is in general a good thing not only that the products we want are available, but (to reduce waste and energy consumption) those we don't want, aren't!
I suppose the source of hostility arises from an association of such practices with advertising, but this can't really be the case. Advertising is about creating a want without a need, but this doesn't work if you do the asking first!
This is I think related to the more general practice of questionaires and data gathering. While normally this is again just at the level of inconvenience, there are also times when it involves issues of privacy.
For example in Kindergarten they now I think do do some questioning/assessment of the kids and their behaviour and abilities. The problem which some people then see is, such data sets can be used to build up a profile/history of a child over its school life. And the problem with that is, maybe something from a child's past will influence how it's later actions/behaviour are viewed. If a child had learning/behavioural problems at an early age, then this might colour later interpretations. In an extreme view there might be the idea that a child is pre-judged based on supposed 'early indicators'. I.e. because he/her exhibited such and such in pre-school, then he/she *must* have such and such a disposition or disability.
However, being honest, I think the potential for good is much more than the potential for harm. Even if such a link between early traits and later behaviours was possible, it could never be a conclusive one. So its use in a negative manner is limited. However, the link only needs to be probable for it to justify 'pre-emptive' actions at an early age - which even if over-applied based on such data analysis, would mean it would reach the kids who really need it, and would be very unlikely harm the one's who didn't (who would be harmed by extra tuition etc.?).
Of course if this was used as a basis of 'streaming' kids at too early an age then this would be another matter - but again the point is the scientific evidence wouldn't be strong enough to make a conclusive judgement, which would be required to impose such measures. But for supportive extra measures no one is going to require it to be shown 'beyond reasonable doubt'.
The point is such data gathering really only has 'forward-looking' uses - what things will be sold, what behaviours might appear in the future etc. It is statistical prediction, and as such only has proper validity, and use, at the group level. At the individual, specific level, what someone will really do or why they really did, can't be extrapolated from that
So I guess it's a case of don't ask what your society might want to do to you, but what you can do for your society, when it asks you.
Thursday, January 20, 2011
The psychology of charity
came across three interesting articles recently regarding what factors influence charitable donation.
The most unsurprising finding was that knowing someone with a similar issue would make people more likely to donate to a related charity but it was interesting that this seemed to simply focus their sympathy on certain areas, not increase their sympathy overall.
What was more interesting was the evidence that even though highlighting the personal/individual nature of a victim it was only really effective if the intended audience could identify with that victim. Otherwise such an approach was actually less effective than a more general marketing campaign.
But most thought provoking of all was the evidence from another study that even in cases of clear disaster, our charitable instincts are also infused with a desire to attribute blame.
This is interesting stuff, since it shows how even charity is not a simple case of wanting to do good - but like all moral behaviour infused with our own sense of identity and justice. Such attitudes are of course crucial to normal moral judgement of peoples actions, but while we would rationally think we don't apply them to obvious cases of misfortune such as natural disasters or impact of wars, we emotionally still do.
The significance of this is twofold. It means that even charitable individuals should always be ready to appraise their behaviour, and secondly that charities themselves need to put more thougth and focus into their campaigns.
I also wonder does it apply to other areas in society where 'how much we care' sometimes seems to be quite irrational. For example the difference in emphasis between say the rarity of a plane crash, and the constant carnage on our roads. It always amazes me that society is prepared to put the time and resources into something like airport security, but not for example bring in laws whereby cars won't start if seatbelts aren't on, or if the driver hasn't blown into an onboard breathalyzer. Such measures, though not cheap, would pale in cost and effort in comparison to some other 'high profile' safety measures we willingly enforce, and yet would probably result in many more lives saved.
Apart from the normal psychological ideas of 'availability' (if a plane crash happens anywhere in the world we see it on the news and thus subconcsiously think they happen often) and 'habituation' (we hear of road deaths so often we just tune out) I think there is also for these areas a background influence from this 'Just world' idea. There is something particularly helpless about an individual in a plane crash, so it would be unusual if we judged them to blame for it. In contrast, road accidents always involve action as well as luck, and so even when we don't know the details, we might assume there was still some 'fault' involved. Apart from how much we care about how these issues affect others I think such reasoning is then also involved in how we consider the risk to ourselves. Our chances of dieing in a car crash are much higher than a lot of other things, but we probably think it won't happen to us, because we think we would be in control. of course the reality of most car accidents is the opposite, but we don't normally appreciate that.
Again this has relevance for us at a personal level (how we evaluate risk, appropriate blame) but also at a societal one. Maybe news reports of car crashes, disease outbreaks etc. should also learn from these studies, and for example highlight the unpreventable and unlucky sides to the stories.
It can only help...
The most unsurprising finding was that knowing someone with a similar issue would make people more likely to donate to a related charity but it was interesting that this seemed to simply focus their sympathy on certain areas, not increase their sympathy overall.
What was more interesting was the evidence that even though highlighting the personal/individual nature of a victim it was only really effective if the intended audience could identify with that victim. Otherwise such an approach was actually less effective than a more general marketing campaign.
But most thought provoking of all was the evidence from another study that even in cases of clear disaster, our charitable instincts are also infused with a desire to attribute blame.
Dr Hanna Zagefka, from the Department of Psychology at Royal Holloway, explains: "In line with the 'Just World Belief' hypothesis, people have an inherent need to believe that the world is just, and so the suffering of innocents calls into question this just world belief. In order to protect it, people try to construe suffering as just whenever possible, and generally humanly caused events provide more opportunity for victim blame than naturally caused events. In addition, the research shows that victims of natural disasters are generally also perceived to make more of an effort to help themselves, and people like to 'reward' those who are proactive by donating to them."
This is interesting stuff, since it shows how even charity is not a simple case of wanting to do good - but like all moral behaviour infused with our own sense of identity and justice. Such attitudes are of course crucial to normal moral judgement of peoples actions, but while we would rationally think we don't apply them to obvious cases of misfortune such as natural disasters or impact of wars, we emotionally still do.
The significance of this is twofold. It means that even charitable individuals should always be ready to appraise their behaviour, and secondly that charities themselves need to put more thougth and focus into their campaigns.
I also wonder does it apply to other areas in society where 'how much we care' sometimes seems to be quite irrational. For example the difference in emphasis between say the rarity of a plane crash, and the constant carnage on our roads. It always amazes me that society is prepared to put the time and resources into something like airport security, but not for example bring in laws whereby cars won't start if seatbelts aren't on, or if the driver hasn't blown into an onboard breathalyzer. Such measures, though not cheap, would pale in cost and effort in comparison to some other 'high profile' safety measures we willingly enforce, and yet would probably result in many more lives saved.
Apart from the normal psychological ideas of 'availability' (if a plane crash happens anywhere in the world we see it on the news and thus subconcsiously think they happen often) and 'habituation' (we hear of road deaths so often we just tune out) I think there is also for these areas a background influence from this 'Just world' idea. There is something particularly helpless about an individual in a plane crash, so it would be unusual if we judged them to blame for it. In contrast, road accidents always involve action as well as luck, and so even when we don't know the details, we might assume there was still some 'fault' involved. Apart from how much we care about how these issues affect others I think such reasoning is then also involved in how we consider the risk to ourselves. Our chances of dieing in a car crash are much higher than a lot of other things, but we probably think it won't happen to us, because we think we would be in control. of course the reality of most car accidents is the opposite, but we don't normally appreciate that.
Again this has relevance for us at a personal level (how we evaluate risk, appropriate blame) but also at a societal one. Maybe news reports of car crashes, disease outbreaks etc. should also learn from these studies, and for example highlight the unpreventable and unlucky sides to the stories.
It can only help...
Friday, January 14, 2011
Whose space is it anyway
(this might belong more in my "random thoughts" page, but am posting it here since I think our online presence is now a real element of our society, and maybe even our psychology)
There's been a lot of talk recently about the demise of My Space, eclipsed as it now is by the behemoth that is Facebook. Initially I admit my attitude was more of a "good riddance to bad rubbish", since I never really liked the site, and although I did register, think abandoned it pretty much from the start. Having read some recent articles though, like this one , I've changed my mind somewhat, and would agree that its fall from grace is a loss for the web, but also says something about how it is evolving, and maybe not for the good.
The point made is that My Space pages were much more unique and personal than Facebook pages are. This meant a lot of them were pretty confusing, even awful, but I realise now that at least the setup encouraged an independent and distinct self-expression, which Facebook doesn't. Instead there's more of a box ticking approach, pidgeon-holing us all into pre- selected (and marketable) classes ( This is another relevant article ). And as Facebook becomes more and more the default everybody, this is something to ponder. It could be of the way the internet is starting to "solidify" into a few basic streams, losing its earlier swirling flexibility. Like in the way the use of app stores might replace general searching of the webb at large, this might be another example of people starting to "settle down" with some limited set technologies, and , since these technologies work for them, they look for and try out new things less, and their horizons slowly narrow. Whether this is really happening is debatable, but it is indeed possible, and worthth of investigation. It would make sense too, that as the majority come online, the web dynamic changes, since most people will be just joining by default at it were, and will just want to quickly join in with the main activities that are already ongoing, and that everybody else is doing. This would be in contrast to the earlier days of the web,when most of those involved would have had the awareness of, and zeal for, the openness and mutability of it all. The earlier generations would have been younger, or involved in the "new" economy or other areas that would have let them experience the web as a place of constant change and possibility, and in retrospect the idea of carving out "my space" in cyber space fitted well with that. Joining Facebook is now I think more about checking in to a"communal" space, and hence the orientation is different. Not that it isn't good in its own right - "community" is good, even online ones-but something is lost in the uniform homogeneity.
My Space was really more of a personal website or blog hoster, not a standardized notice board like Facebook. Ironically that was why I didn't like, but not because of what it tried to do, but because it didn't do it well enough. Ever since I've had decent constant internet access, since say,1997, I've tried to maintain my own web page, and at the time geocities or whatever suited me better. However, at least My Space tried to foster that general idea of each poison having their own "site", and I'm not aware of any major trend that replaces it in that respect.
Though, actually, there are plenty of free simple web hosting sites, (i use one myself!), so it is probably more to do with the prevailing will of the web, not the means.
I guess just like not everyone wants to write their own book, not everyone wants to create their own piece of space in the digital/social domain. What My Space represents though is the fact that, thanks to the internet, in both cases, everyone now can,and long may this continue. My Space may be dead, but long live our spaces!
Posted from phone via Blogaway (so excuse any typos!)
There's been a lot of talk recently about the demise of My Space, eclipsed as it now is by the behemoth that is Facebook. Initially I admit my attitude was more of a "good riddance to bad rubbish", since I never really liked the site, and although I did register, think abandoned it pretty much from the start. Having read some recent articles though, like this one , I've changed my mind somewhat, and would agree that its fall from grace is a loss for the web, but also says something about how it is evolving, and maybe not for the good.
The point made is that My Space pages were much more unique and personal than Facebook pages are. This meant a lot of them were pretty confusing, even awful, but I realise now that at least the setup encouraged an independent and distinct self-expression, which Facebook doesn't. Instead there's more of a box ticking approach, pidgeon-holing us all into pre- selected (and marketable) classes ( This is another relevant article ). And as Facebook becomes more and more the default everybody, this is something to ponder. It could be of the way the internet is starting to "solidify" into a few basic streams, losing its earlier swirling flexibility. Like in the way the use of app stores might replace general searching of the webb at large, this might be another example of people starting to "settle down" with some limited set technologies, and , since these technologies work for them, they look for and try out new things less, and their horizons slowly narrow. Whether this is really happening is debatable, but it is indeed possible, and worthth of investigation. It would make sense too, that as the majority come online, the web dynamic changes, since most people will be just joining by default at it were, and will just want to quickly join in with the main activities that are already ongoing, and that everybody else is doing. This would be in contrast to the earlier days of the web,when most of those involved would have had the awareness of, and zeal for, the openness and mutability of it all. The earlier generations would have been younger, or involved in the "new" economy or other areas that would have let them experience the web as a place of constant change and possibility, and in retrospect the idea of carving out "my space" in cyber space fitted well with that. Joining Facebook is now I think more about checking in to a"communal" space, and hence the orientation is different. Not that it isn't good in its own right - "community" is good, even online ones-but something is lost in the uniform homogeneity.
My Space was really more of a personal website or blog hoster, not a standardized notice board like Facebook. Ironically that was why I didn't like, but not because of what it tried to do, but because it didn't do it well enough. Ever since I've had decent constant internet access, since say,1997, I've tried to maintain my own web page, and at the time geocities or whatever suited me better. However, at least My Space tried to foster that general idea of each poison having their own "site", and I'm not aware of any major trend that replaces it in that respect.
Though, actually, there are plenty of free simple web hosting sites, (i use one myself!), so it is probably more to do with the prevailing will of the web, not the means.
I guess just like not everyone wants to write their own book, not everyone wants to create their own piece of space in the digital/social domain. What My Space represents though is the fact that, thanks to the internet, in both cases, everyone now can,and long may this continue. My Space may be dead, but long live our spaces!
Posted from phone via Blogaway (so excuse any typos!)
Saturday, October 30, 2010
The big Apple
Apple could soon be the largest public company in America - overtaking the current biggest, Exon - and think says something interesting about our society, i.e. that the biggest US company is no longer a fossil fuel 'old economy' giant, but a company whose current success is based not just on modern technology, but personalized consumer gadgets. Talk about the 'me' age having arrived when i-this and i-that can be such big business!
Apart from the fact that personalized, completely new gadgets can take (modern,western) society by storm so rapidly (iphone only around 3 years), it is significant that non-necessities can be such an economic powerhouse. A positive take on this is (modern, western) society is so well equipped in the basics, it has money to burn on such non-essentials, but perhaps a more negative view is in order, since what does this say about that society, that it is so obsessed with the latest gimmick, especially given the fact that it is not so homogenously wealthy as the fact suggests (without even considering the poverty which is the norm in a lot of the rest of the world).
Still though, no company is going to succeed to such a scale by being angelic, and I overall think it quite cool that a company such as Apple (much as I still disagree with their restrictive approach) can be bigger than an oil company. Neither are exactly pinnacles of worthiness, but at least Apple is state of the art technology focused more on enjoyment than exploitation. If world peace and deep universal satisfaction are out of reach for now - I think i'd rather show off an Ipad to the universe than an oil refinery. We may not have a great idea where to go, but we're heading there in style...
Apple poised to become largest public company in America
Success of iPhone and iPad could boost Apple past Exxon to the top of the Standard & Poor's 500 by market capitalisation
As Apple prepares to announce its fourth-quarter results tonight, analysts are forecasting that it will have sold another 5m iPads, and around 12m more of the iPhone 4 it released in June.
If the numbers are good, then it is quite possible that the share price will jump further above the $300 (£190) mark that it broke last week – and the company could become the most valuable in the world, measured by market capitalisation, surpassing Exxon, and capping its remarkable rebirth under the aegis of founder Steve Jobs.
Though at the end of last week, the gulf in valuations seemed large – Exxon's $331bn, against Apple's $274bn – the gap has been closing for more than a year. Even if tonight's results are not enough to propel Apple to the top spot, many on Wall Street think it is just a matter of time. Its profits will get another boost in January when Apple will begin selling iPhones through the largest network, Verizon, as well as AT&T, its partner since 2007.
Apple is forecast to show revenues of around $19bn for the quarter and $5bn of profit – with the iPhone and iPad, products you could not buy four years ago, generating about $10bn of sales.
It is a dramatic reversal from May 1997, when Jobs – who had recently rejoined the company after been fired in 1985 – was manoeuvring to take over again as chief executive. The share price put a total value on the company of just $2bn, "reflecting Apple's loss of market share in an increasingly Windows-dominated world", as analysts put it. Jobs told a team of software coders at the time: "You've got to start with the customer experience and work back to the technology – not the other way around."
He drove out the dead wood, his new recruit from PC-maker Compaq, Tim Cook (now the chief operating officer) streamlined its supply chain, and the company did as Jobs suggested, focusing relentlessly on its customers.
He also set targets – such as surpassing Dell. Asked in October 1997 what he would do in Jobs's position, Michael Dell retorted: "What would I do? I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders." Jobs chastised Dell privately – and then celebrated with an email to staff when in January 2006, with a value of $72.1bn, it did finally pass Dell . In May this year, Apple achieved a huge milestone, passing Microsoft in market capitalisation, at £222bn against £219bn.
Apple's computer business has steadily improved, coming third behind HP and Dell in the personal computer market in the US in the three months to September, according to research firm Gartner, although it still has a relatively small share of the global market.
But it has been the newer products that have driven growth. Apple took ownership of the MP3 market with the iPod, where the integration of hardware and the iTunes software proved to be a success and baffled those who had expected Microsoft to at some stage overwhelm it with an "iPod killer" – based on software from one company, hardware from a second, and music from a third.
Then in January 2007 Jobs unveiled the iPhone, and Apple began to eat into the smartphone market – previously the sole preserve of Nokia, Research In Motion (with its BlackBerry) and Microsoft, with Windows Mobile. Sales took off again, and Jobs's comparatively modest target of 10m phones sold by the end of 2008 was easily surpassed, with 13m sold by September of that year.
The latest hit is the iPad. Launched in April, analysts think it could sell 25m in 2011. Gartner has made dramatic forecasts for the growth of the tablet computer market, which it said would triple in size next year to 54.8m units. The technology research firm is predicting that the market will grow to 103.4m in 2012 and 154.2m units in 2013. And despite intensifying competition, Gartner reckons the iPad will keep its lead until then.
Apple's longtime rival Microsoft (presently still valued at £219bn) became the largest company in the world by market capitalisation, for two years in the late 1990s during the PC boom. At the time, Microsoft did not pay dividends, though it does now. Apple still does not pay dividends but if it does reach the top, it might have to find some other way to make its stock look more attractive than simply the chance that it will keep rising in value.
However being the top-valued stock brings other rewards: billions of dollars invested in index-tracking funds will switch from Exxon to Apple if the Cupertino-based company does hit the top – and the switch could push down Exxon's value further, accelerated by hedge funds and technical traders who make bets based on the rebalancing of major indexes, and would be ready to short the oil company's shares.
Apple will come under increasing pressure to do something with its enormous cash pile of roughly $50bn, which was a necessary buffer when times were lean, but now looks like wasted opportunity. "Apple needs to do something with all of that capital," said Toan Tran, an analyst at Morningstar. "I could understand wanting to have something in reserve, but $50bn is such a ridiculous number that they should seriously consider returning some of it to shareholders in the form of share buybacks."
If Apple does surpass Exxon, it would mark a changing of the guard in the Standard & Poor's 500, where the top spot has been shared by companies including General Electric, General Motors, AT&T (before it was broken up in a monopoly investigation), and – 20 years ago – by IBM, which was also hit by antitrust investigations.
With suggestions that the world is approaching 'peak oil' as supplies begin to dwindle and increasing concern over the role that fossil fuels play in climate change, Exxon looks set to be replaced by perhaps the most potent symbol of the digital age.
Thursday, October 21, 2010
The UK 'spending review' - ideology or practicality?
The UK has at last announced it's 'spending review'. Given that all countries have deficit problems, but also need to somehow keep what recovery there is alive, how they approach it has major significance for our societies, so something worth giving some first impression comments. The future will show how close/far off the mark they are!
From what I've read recently am sceptical and actually concerned about the depth and type of cuts. It seems a lot of economists think it a dangerous thing to do given the world economy,and this makes a lot of sense to me. The idea of the private sector magically stepping in to fill the breach sounds very optimistic given the private sector isn't exactly booming currently. And I also suspect the overall approach is really ideologically rather than pragmatiically driven. The idea of freeing the private sector so it can come to our rescue reminds me very much of the idea of 'trickle down' wealth, i.e. justifications of conservative policies that we might (rightly) suspect of just benefiting the well off, but that we're assurred are actually good for everyone!
The bottom line is I can't see how the loss of half a million jobs,and decimating what people get from the government can lead to anything but dampened economy....and a vicious cycle downward. So even just from a practical self serving point of view, think a very dangerous approach, and risks prolonging the crises, not just in the UK but everywhere through knock on effects (it is the 6th largest economy).
And morally, it seems even worse. Since the focus is on cuts and not tax rises, then obviously hits the less well off who receive most from the government, which is not just unprogressive, but particularly unfair since it was the upper echelons in society, the banks and the financiers that caused the problem (and also probably practically worse as well, since has more of an effect on their spending power since they would have less disposable income to start with)..
So for all the talk of 'in this together' and 'for our future' think while some measures needed, the extent show it is largely the conservatives seizing an opportunity to decimate the state for ideological reasons and justify it as 'necessary'. Am just amazed the libdems are sticking with it. It really makes them seem a pointless joke -at least the conservatives are doing what they believe in!
The irony is the UK, being such a large economy, and with it's own currency, surely has more options than say for example Ireland, which is really broke and in a fix. I really think this is going to be a disaster for them. I hope I'm wrong, and hope even more if I'm not that the consequences are contained there and don't spread to continental Europe (and Austria in particular!). Though I guess what the big eurozone countries do is much more relevant to my own selfish position. Still sad to see such conservative ideology with such a free hand in Britain.
From what I've read recently am sceptical and actually concerned about the depth and type of cuts. It seems a lot of economists think it a dangerous thing to do given the world economy,and this makes a lot of sense to me. The idea of the private sector magically stepping in to fill the breach sounds very optimistic given the private sector isn't exactly booming currently. And I also suspect the overall approach is really ideologically rather than pragmatiically driven. The idea of freeing the private sector so it can come to our rescue reminds me very much of the idea of 'trickle down' wealth, i.e. justifications of conservative policies that we might (rightly) suspect of just benefiting the well off, but that we're assurred are actually good for everyone!
The bottom line is I can't see how the loss of half a million jobs,and decimating what people get from the government can lead to anything but dampened economy....and a vicious cycle downward. So even just from a practical self serving point of view, think a very dangerous approach, and risks prolonging the crises, not just in the UK but everywhere through knock on effects (it is the 6th largest economy).
And morally, it seems even worse. Since the focus is on cuts and not tax rises, then obviously hits the less well off who receive most from the government, which is not just unprogressive, but particularly unfair since it was the upper echelons in society, the banks and the financiers that caused the problem (and also probably practically worse as well, since has more of an effect on their spending power since they would have less disposable income to start with)..
So for all the talk of 'in this together' and 'for our future' think while some measures needed, the extent show it is largely the conservatives seizing an opportunity to decimate the state for ideological reasons and justify it as 'necessary'. Am just amazed the libdems are sticking with it. It really makes them seem a pointless joke -at least the conservatives are doing what they believe in!
The irony is the UK, being such a large economy, and with it's own currency, surely has more options than say for example Ireland, which is really broke and in a fix. I really think this is going to be a disaster for them. I hope I'm wrong, and hope even more if I'm not that the consequences are contained there and don't spread to continental Europe (and Austria in particular!). Though I guess what the big eurozone countries do is much more relevant to my own selfish position. Still sad to see such conservative ideology with such a free hand in Britain.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Facebook and my many faces
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, recently made the following comment : "You have one identity. The days of you having a different image for your work friends or co-workers and for the other people you know are probably coming to an end pretty quickly ... Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity."
It's an outlook like this which I think explains Facebooks ongoing problems with privacy. If the head of the company really believes that we are simple one-dimensional social creatures (and coincidentally more easily mappable and manipulatible for advertising, then it never really will be the ultimate social networking solution. What I would love in facebook is exactly the opposite, a layered identity which I can tweak for various levels of acquaintance. Does that mean I have a 'lack of integrity'? I don't think so, because simply wanting to not publicize certain information to certain people, does not mean I have malicious intent. What Zuckerberg seemingly fails to understand is the boundary of the private sphere is not simply between me and everyone in the world I have had no contact with, rather it is specifically an intricate layering of relationships within the network of people I do know, but with varying degrees. Indeed, since I have no contact and may never meet the 'everybody else' then I actually care less about them knowing my 'private' stuff, since it will have no impact on my life. It would be as if keeping things 'private' meant keeping them secret from aliens or people in the past or distance future - it makes the term meaningless. Which of course would make things a lot easier for the likes of facebook!
Similarly, private does not mean 'secret'. The point of a 'secret' is it is restricted but useful knowledge. The recipe for coke is a 'secret' but whether I have a loose toenail is not. In both cases the possessor has information others do not, and is reluctant to share it with others, but in the latter case it is 'information' only to me, and not is irrelevant to them. And this is another element of private affairs - it is not that they are necessarily hidden from others, they are just more comfortably kept that way, since they are nobody elses business. Of course, just as I don't ultimately care if soimeone on the other side of the planet who I will never meet knows about my daily life, if it's not relevant for others, and they don't care, then the logic could be that they then won't pay attention, so it doesn't need to be private in the first place. But the reason this is not the case highlights perhaps the main reason why we want to keep things private, and this is not about our integrity, but the integrity of others.
Being honest, I am perfectly 'ok' with what I do in all my social levels. At the end of the day, I personally am not going to be embarrassed or regret what happened in any sphere; however, I wouldn't want all levels open to everyone, because I would worry about how others would view it, and how it would affect their interaction with me. Take for example political or religious views. I stand by my viewpoints, so if it came to it, would defend them in front of everyone. But, I also know not all people would agree with me, some might take offence, or (more the issue) some might disagree, and being less than perfect individuals, might act in hostile or malicious ways, or even just handle me differently. Now of course, for my closest friends this is not the case (they wouldn't be my close friends if it were), but I know am involved with much more people than this. To most it may not matter, but to some it does, and one reason why private spheres exist and are respected (in some societies anyway) is they allow us to interact and deal with others who may not agree with us, since for day to day practical matters this agreement is not necessary. Maybe if we all lived in some gigantic commune where everybody knew everything about everybody else then we'd all adapt and attitudes would change, but we don't. And a reason why we aren't likely to in any near future is that information is open to interpretation, and widespread disemination runs the risk of people getting the wrong end of the stick. To have a functioning society, made up of different individuals, requires bubbles of private space, but mechanisms for them to interact. For Zuckerbergs Utopia to exist society would either have to be very homogenous, or very small, and the web community is about as low scoring on both these counts as is imaginable.
I really think that just as social networking (and hats off to facebook for making the most of it) taps into a major force in the modern world, the game is for the taking for the company that can really tune it to how people really view it. Roll on diaspora!
It's an outlook like this which I think explains Facebooks ongoing problems with privacy. If the head of the company really believes that we are simple one-dimensional social creatures (and coincidentally more easily mappable and manipulatible for advertising, then it never really will be the ultimate social networking solution. What I would love in facebook is exactly the opposite, a layered identity which I can tweak for various levels of acquaintance. Does that mean I have a 'lack of integrity'? I don't think so, because simply wanting to not publicize certain information to certain people, does not mean I have malicious intent. What Zuckerberg seemingly fails to understand is the boundary of the private sphere is not simply between me and everyone in the world I have had no contact with, rather it is specifically an intricate layering of relationships within the network of people I do know, but with varying degrees. Indeed, since I have no contact and may never meet the 'everybody else' then I actually care less about them knowing my 'private' stuff, since it will have no impact on my life. It would be as if keeping things 'private' meant keeping them secret from aliens or people in the past or distance future - it makes the term meaningless. Which of course would make things a lot easier for the likes of facebook!
Similarly, private does not mean 'secret'. The point of a 'secret' is it is restricted but useful knowledge. The recipe for coke is a 'secret' but whether I have a loose toenail is not. In both cases the possessor has information others do not, and is reluctant to share it with others, but in the latter case it is 'information' only to me, and not is irrelevant to them. And this is another element of private affairs - it is not that they are necessarily hidden from others, they are just more comfortably kept that way, since they are nobody elses business. Of course, just as I don't ultimately care if soimeone on the other side of the planet who I will never meet knows about my daily life, if it's not relevant for others, and they don't care, then the logic could be that they then won't pay attention, so it doesn't need to be private in the first place. But the reason this is not the case highlights perhaps the main reason why we want to keep things private, and this is not about our integrity, but the integrity of others.
Being honest, I am perfectly 'ok' with what I do in all my social levels. At the end of the day, I personally am not going to be embarrassed or regret what happened in any sphere; however, I wouldn't want all levels open to everyone, because I would worry about how others would view it, and how it would affect their interaction with me. Take for example political or religious views. I stand by my viewpoints, so if it came to it, would defend them in front of everyone. But, I also know not all people would agree with me, some might take offence, or (more the issue) some might disagree, and being less than perfect individuals, might act in hostile or malicious ways, or even just handle me differently. Now of course, for my closest friends this is not the case (they wouldn't be my close friends if it were), but I know am involved with much more people than this. To most it may not matter, but to some it does, and one reason why private spheres exist and are respected (in some societies anyway) is they allow us to interact and deal with others who may not agree with us, since for day to day practical matters this agreement is not necessary. Maybe if we all lived in some gigantic commune where everybody knew everything about everybody else then we'd all adapt and attitudes would change, but we don't. And a reason why we aren't likely to in any near future is that information is open to interpretation, and widespread disemination runs the risk of people getting the wrong end of the stick. To have a functioning society, made up of different individuals, requires bubbles of private space, but mechanisms for them to interact. For Zuckerbergs Utopia to exist society would either have to be very homogenous, or very small, and the web community is about as low scoring on both these counts as is imaginable.
I really think that just as social networking (and hats off to facebook for making the most of it) taps into a major force in the modern world, the game is for the taking for the company that can really tune it to how people really view it. Roll on diaspora!
Faith schools and the role of indoctrination
Watching Richard Dawkin's "faith school menace" raised again for me the whole topic of the difference issue of the role of indoctrination in education.
For me, the are two intertwined themes involved in the program. Firstly, at a macro level, there is the problem of society self-segregating on the basis of faith. This I think is clearly a significant issue for any multicultural society, since it at best merely fosters an insular and closed-mind outlook, at worst is actively divisive and detrimental to social cohesion and integration. The second issue is the question of, within those faiths and faith schools, what is the impact on the individual education and development of the children. The program illustrated the first of these themes by referring to the sectarianism in Northern Ireland, and the second by a subtle ridiculing of a faith guided science teacher's understanding of evolution (and her only slightly less confused pupils).
In both examples however, there were some statements which went to the heart of the issue, namely, the concept of indoctrination.
In the Northern Ireland example, one of his inerviewees demanded to know whether Dawkins thought it was a basic human right for parents to determine how their children are educated. This at first seems something hard to disgree with, but Dawkins repeatedly dodged the question. His problem I think was, while it sounds like an intuitive right of the parents, for him the rights of the child are also involved, and he is aware that the power of education to mould and shape our personalities means it is a double-edged sword. Passing on values and outlook is not only a desirable thing but arguably also a duty, but things become more complicated if the values are unacceptable. Would we tolerate domineering and cult-style parents 'brainwashing' their children with horrific views? I doubt it, and if not, then we, like Dawkins, could not agree to the interviewee's point, no matter how sensible it first sounds.
Simply put, Dawkins (and again I would largely agree with him) actually has issues with some people's values, whether these are explicitly important to them, or merely bundled into their declared faith without much thought on their part.
But this then leads into a much larger and complicated area - namely how much society as whole should do to influence the values which are propagated to the next generation. While a simple liberal assumption might be that it shouldn't do anything, and doesn't, the reality is it most definitely does, especially through it's educational insitutions. Hence if those institutions have differing value sets, then it is a problem.
I don't however want to go deeper into this topic here (even if I knew what to say), but in this instance we can extricate ourselves because normally, fundamentalists and some religious doctrines excepted, the moral values transmitted in faith schools do not vary so much from society's in general, at least not enough to cause a problem. Also (again fundamentalists apart) while parents might like their children having the same 'background' as they did, and hence feel some identification with a faith school which openly touts being of their background, I seriously doubt moral value education plays much of a role in their choice of school (again, because for the most part the values are so coherent across schools, even of different faiths). What is surely most important for them is the 'practical' education their child receives, and how it prepares it for one particular social role - a job.
It is from this perspective that faith schools are particularly worrying. Again it was one of the interviewees that crystalized this point, although this time it was Dawkins asking the question, and his point being proven without him saying anything. At a muslim school, he was interested to know how they were being taught certain areas of science which their teacher openly admitted disagreeing with on grounds of faith. The teachers were claiming each student independently weighed up the arguments and they all invariably came down on the side of faith. This fact showed how powerful the influence of faith teaching is, since even when they were being taught (albeit one couldn't tell how well) the scientific knowledge, they were uniformly rejecting it. It was however when he asked one student for some examples, and got some ridiculous non-scientific 'fact' about how salt and fresh water don't mix, that one saw just how worrying the practical implications are. It was summed up poignanlty by his simple but sad follow up : "and you're the one who wants to be a doctor isn't it?". The poor girl probably didn't see the ridiculousness of her situation, but the point was clear to us - if this she was going to come out of school with such a confused and useless understanding of simple physics, then what hope had she of ever achieving such a job. As a side not it is important too not to think it is an islamic only issue (no other faith school was brave enough to let him in) since Christian and other religions also have many views contrary to science. In the Christian case lay people might think these are not really seriously taken, but they are part of the catechism and the teachers are inevitably more devout.
For me the point is that indoctrination IS involved, but a special kind of indoctrination. In the case of science etc. it is an indoctrination into the world view that our society uses and relies upon. Even a relativist has to agree that whatever about the ultimate superiority of any particular world view, WITHIN a given system, such as our society, then there is a hierarchy. Believing salt water separates from fresh might be your own perogative, but is not going to help you get a job. Of course, as the revolutions in science have shown, even the 'establishment' views are not perfect, but they are the best there is at any given time for the roles and functions around at the time. And, most most importantly, and what massively differentiates this kind of indoctrination from the religious type, is it has an inbuilt self-correction mechanism, which allows these revolutions to take place. Again, at an abstract level it migth be argued whether it might be better to live in blissful ignorance with unchanging truths out of an ancient book, but again 'better' here would need not to include wanting a job.
So the question really is not whether education should be indoctrination, it is and it must be, but what, and how much, indoctrination is justified in the context of schooling. I.e. which values should be impressed on all (via a mandatory curriculum), which should be supported but not overly dictated, and which should be excluded.
My view is that government should be more open about what values it is promoting, and encourage debate and support; however this active behaviour needs to be tempered with a restraint as to which values are covered. But since there is promotion going on anyway, directly or indirectly, planned or not, then this can only be a change for the better. In the case of faith schools then, for subjects such as science a national curriculum should be mandatory, and contradictory teaching not supported (it might be a step too far to outright ban it!). The science example shows how sometimes faith values are simply not compatible with the purpose of the insitution. This is not to force the values on people outside of that setting, but inside the government funded institution it should call the shots.
This is particularly important given the evidence presented that children generally tend to prefer the most fantastical (and purposeful -i.e. theological) explanation for a problem, so modern world view has already it's work cut out (and probably exactly why it is a modern one, since it probably took so long to overcome our childlike tendencies).
A point worth making is that faith in schools per se is not necessarily a problem - many people, possibly Dawkins himself - have emerged unscathed from schools run by religious orders. However it may be in the past there was less interference in secular subjects. It could well be that with religious partipation on the wane, some religious bodies are more proactive involved outside of their initial domains, and this is a new and growing problem. Or, as seems to be the case in the UK, schools, 'acadamies' are being setup by people with a very clear agenda.
So just because faith schooling wasn't an issue in the past, doesn't mean it isn't one now.
For me, the are two intertwined themes involved in the program. Firstly, at a macro level, there is the problem of society self-segregating on the basis of faith. This I think is clearly a significant issue for any multicultural society, since it at best merely fosters an insular and closed-mind outlook, at worst is actively divisive and detrimental to social cohesion and integration. The second issue is the question of, within those faiths and faith schools, what is the impact on the individual education and development of the children. The program illustrated the first of these themes by referring to the sectarianism in Northern Ireland, and the second by a subtle ridiculing of a faith guided science teacher's understanding of evolution (and her only slightly less confused pupils).
In both examples however, there were some statements which went to the heart of the issue, namely, the concept of indoctrination.
In the Northern Ireland example, one of his inerviewees demanded to know whether Dawkins thought it was a basic human right for parents to determine how their children are educated. This at first seems something hard to disgree with, but Dawkins repeatedly dodged the question. His problem I think was, while it sounds like an intuitive right of the parents, for him the rights of the child are also involved, and he is aware that the power of education to mould and shape our personalities means it is a double-edged sword. Passing on values and outlook is not only a desirable thing but arguably also a duty, but things become more complicated if the values are unacceptable. Would we tolerate domineering and cult-style parents 'brainwashing' their children with horrific views? I doubt it, and if not, then we, like Dawkins, could not agree to the interviewee's point, no matter how sensible it first sounds.
Simply put, Dawkins (and again I would largely agree with him) actually has issues with some people's values, whether these are explicitly important to them, or merely bundled into their declared faith without much thought on their part.
But this then leads into a much larger and complicated area - namely how much society as whole should do to influence the values which are propagated to the next generation. While a simple liberal assumption might be that it shouldn't do anything, and doesn't, the reality is it most definitely does, especially through it's educational insitutions. Hence if those institutions have differing value sets, then it is a problem.
I don't however want to go deeper into this topic here (even if I knew what to say), but in this instance we can extricate ourselves because normally, fundamentalists and some religious doctrines excepted, the moral values transmitted in faith schools do not vary so much from society's in general, at least not enough to cause a problem. Also (again fundamentalists apart) while parents might like their children having the same 'background' as they did, and hence feel some identification with a faith school which openly touts being of their background, I seriously doubt moral value education plays much of a role in their choice of school (again, because for the most part the values are so coherent across schools, even of different faiths). What is surely most important for them is the 'practical' education their child receives, and how it prepares it for one particular social role - a job.
It is from this perspective that faith schools are particularly worrying. Again it was one of the interviewees that crystalized this point, although this time it was Dawkins asking the question, and his point being proven without him saying anything. At a muslim school, he was interested to know how they were being taught certain areas of science which their teacher openly admitted disagreeing with on grounds of faith. The teachers were claiming each student independently weighed up the arguments and they all invariably came down on the side of faith. This fact showed how powerful the influence of faith teaching is, since even when they were being taught (albeit one couldn't tell how well) the scientific knowledge, they were uniformly rejecting it. It was however when he asked one student for some examples, and got some ridiculous non-scientific 'fact' about how salt and fresh water don't mix, that one saw just how worrying the practical implications are. It was summed up poignanlty by his simple but sad follow up : "and you're the one who wants to be a doctor isn't it?". The poor girl probably didn't see the ridiculousness of her situation, but the point was clear to us - if this she was going to come out of school with such a confused and useless understanding of simple physics, then what hope had she of ever achieving such a job. As a side not it is important too not to think it is an islamic only issue (no other faith school was brave enough to let him in) since Christian and other religions also have many views contrary to science. In the Christian case lay people might think these are not really seriously taken, but they are part of the catechism and the teachers are inevitably more devout.
For me the point is that indoctrination IS involved, but a special kind of indoctrination. In the case of science etc. it is an indoctrination into the world view that our society uses and relies upon. Even a relativist has to agree that whatever about the ultimate superiority of any particular world view, WITHIN a given system, such as our society, then there is a hierarchy. Believing salt water separates from fresh might be your own perogative, but is not going to help you get a job. Of course, as the revolutions in science have shown, even the 'establishment' views are not perfect, but they are the best there is at any given time for the roles and functions around at the time. And, most most importantly, and what massively differentiates this kind of indoctrination from the religious type, is it has an inbuilt self-correction mechanism, which allows these revolutions to take place. Again, at an abstract level it migth be argued whether it might be better to live in blissful ignorance with unchanging truths out of an ancient book, but again 'better' here would need not to include wanting a job.
So the question really is not whether education should be indoctrination, it is and it must be, but what, and how much, indoctrination is justified in the context of schooling. I.e. which values should be impressed on all (via a mandatory curriculum), which should be supported but not overly dictated, and which should be excluded.
My view is that government should be more open about what values it is promoting, and encourage debate and support; however this active behaviour needs to be tempered with a restraint as to which values are covered. But since there is promotion going on anyway, directly or indirectly, planned or not, then this can only be a change for the better. In the case of faith schools then, for subjects such as science a national curriculum should be mandatory, and contradictory teaching not supported (it might be a step too far to outright ban it!). The science example shows how sometimes faith values are simply not compatible with the purpose of the insitution. This is not to force the values on people outside of that setting, but inside the government funded institution it should call the shots.
This is particularly important given the evidence presented that children generally tend to prefer the most fantastical (and purposeful -i.e. theological) explanation for a problem, so modern world view has already it's work cut out (and probably exactly why it is a modern one, since it probably took so long to overcome our childlike tendencies).
A point worth making is that faith in schools per se is not necessarily a problem - many people, possibly Dawkins himself - have emerged unscathed from schools run by religious orders. However it may be in the past there was less interference in secular subjects. It could well be that with religious partipation on the wane, some religious bodies are more proactive involved outside of their initial domains, and this is a new and growing problem. Or, as seems to be the case in the UK, schools, 'acadamies' are being setup by people with a very clear agenda.
So just because faith schooling wasn't an issue in the past, doesn't mean it isn't one now.
Thursday, August 26, 2010
When progress runs backward
I always find it quite sad when I read about the moon landings, or more precisely how the ambitions of space travel have fallen sharply back to Earth since the days of the Apollo program. Perhaps Icarus might have been a better moniker, since it seems man flew so high, only to crash back down for a long time.
The recent trigger for this was an article in the Observer on the 4oth anniversary of the landings. Apart from the fact that the moon is again beyond our reach, it was also somehow depressing to be reminded that with the space shuttle being retired, then even the options of just getting into orbit are being reduced. There is of course a new program talked about, but without real and new funding it's unlikely it'll be actually realized.
Given how space is the epitome of what is beyond our natural reach, and hence illustrates the triumph of collective humanity over given nature, there's something tragic in the fact that I could say to my son, when his grandfather was young they put men on the moon, when his father was young they put people in space...and when in the coming years while he is still young, they probably won't do either. Surely technology, progress even, was supposed to run the other way?
However, when one thinks about it, it all makes sense. Brutally put, glamour and one upmanship aside (which was after all a large part of the drive for the apollo mission) there isn't a lot of advantage in putting humans in space, and a hell of a lot of cost and risk. What always astonishes me, after the fact that the Apollo crew were using slide rules and sextants, and t below even the most basic smartphone, is just how hard getting out of orbit really still is. getFrom my understanding getting to the moon is another ballgame entirely to just the 'standard' trips to the space station etc. I.e. it's not just because we can't be bothered, it's just that it's still damn hard and dangerous! Which of course makes the original achievement all the more impressive.
And being honest, nostalgia (even if I missed Apollo, I played with space Lego in the shuttle heyday) and wow factor apart, I also don't think it's worth it. The pinacle of humanity's power it might represent, but it didn't do a whole lot of good for that humanity tself. While such projects of course have real technological offshoots, and spawn perhaps even more important aspiration, the sums involved are mind blowing, and given the problems here on earth, one has to weigh up the morality of it all. Of course a dollar not sent into space does not mean a dollar on malaria research, but still blood and treasure are spent which could be used for other things.
Aspiration is needed, and makes more of this world than we are given, but a balance in what we aim for is needed, so we waste our time neither in the gutter nor the stars. As Daedalus said to his son, I guess I could now say to mine : "Don't fly to low, or the waves will weigh down your wings, nor too high, lest the sun may burn them".
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