Showing posts with label respect. Show all posts
Showing posts with label respect. Show all posts
Wednesday 14 December 2022
Monday 10 January 2022
Monday 13 September 2021
Saturday 5 December 2020
Mandated ‘respect’ for others’ opinions hurts free speech
A polite but deadly serious Cambridge university row over the issue shows the need for ‘tolerance’ instead writes CAMILLA CAVENDISH in The FT
If you wander down Trumpington Street in Cambridge, you will find yourself at one of the birthplaces of the English Reformation. It was here, at The White Horse Inn, that scholars secretly met to debate the smuggled works of Martin Luther. By preaching Luther’s heretical belief that ordinary people should read the Bible for themselves, and not just accept the word of priests, Cambridge was one of the places that helped to transform European thought. So it is especially sad that the University of Cambridge is now pushing proposals which could undermine free speech.
If you wander down Trumpington Street in Cambridge, you will find yourself at one of the birthplaces of the English Reformation. It was here, at The White Horse Inn, that scholars secretly met to debate the smuggled works of Martin Luther. By preaching Luther’s heretical belief that ordinary people should read the Bible for themselves, and not just accept the word of priests, Cambridge was one of the places that helped to transform European thought. So it is especially sad that the University of Cambridge is now pushing proposals which could undermine free speech.
The university’s governing body, the Regent House, is voting until Tuesday on a new code of conduct which demands that staff, students and visitors be “respectful” of different opinions. This harmless-sounding clause is meant to support free speech. It was drawn up partly in response to faculty who were alarmed after a student backlash led to the rescinding of a fellowship to the psychologist Jordan Peterson, a self-styled “professor against political correctness”. But the row also demonstrates how dangerous it can be when well-meaning people try to please everyone. “Respect” is a soft-edged word that means different things to different people. It can easily morph into a prohibition against giving offence.
“There’s no limit to how far this could go,” I was told by Arif Ahmed, the young philosopher at Gonville and Caius college who is leading a rebellion of academics against the code. “Did the Charlie Hebdo cartoons respect Islam? Was [18th-century Scottish philosopher] David Hume a respecter of religion? Who decides? A word like ‘respect’ is worse than useless. You can slide all the way from civility to a kind of deference which would refrain from attacking Islam, Christianity or Judaism.”
The new code defends “robust and challenging” debate, and “free speech within the law”. However, it seems to undermine those clauses with the demand that staff, students and visitors be “free to express themselves without fear of disrespect or discrimination”.
The problem is that there is no limit to what any individual might define as disrespect. Furthermore, while all beliefs should get a hearing they cannot, as Stephen Fry has said, command the heart. That is why Oxford university’s concise policy on free speech says that not all theories deserve equal respect. Cambridge’s proposal threatens the lifeblood of academic progress: the right to argue, challenge and, potentially, change minds.
Strangely, Cambridge’s authorities seem unable to see the problem. Over the summer, concerned academics asked its executive body, the Council, if it would replace the word “respect” with “tolerance”. This would promote courtesy but ensure that people could openly disagree. The Council refused. At that point, a polite but deadly serious war broke out. A growing number of academics now support amendments to the proposed policy, including philosopher Simon Blackburn, economist Diane Coyle and statistician Sir David Spiegelhalter.
Mystified why the Council rejected the seemingly helpful “tolerance” proposal, I asked the university’s vice-chancellor, Stephen Toope. He doesn’t remember the rebels’ proposal being “so clearly articulated at the time”. He told me, robustly, that “free speech is utterly central, and if we don’t uphold it we’re not doing our job”. He also warned against “overinterpreting what is meant to be a very high level statement”. Professor Toope has chaired meetings with the neutrality expected of his role. “I am not taking a position on ‘respect’ or ‘tolerance’,” he said, “though I have heard some people say they don’t like the word ‘tolerance’ as it makes it seem as if other views are to be discredited.”
This, surely, goes to the heart of the issue. Tolerance is an ancient concept, and the best protector of free speech when people strongly disagree with each other: it allows issues to be aired and weaknesses exposed. I happen to deplore the pro-life movement. I have marched against it in the US and donated to pro-choice campaigns. But I defend pro-lifers’ right to make their case. I also note that pro-life charities have become vociferous in favour of free speech, along with some Jewish and feminist groups. Proponents of unfashionable causes often discover the importance of freedom of expression, which underlines its value.
The Cambridge row shows how hard it is for institutions to keep their footing in this new world of outrage. Twenty years ago, English universities felt little responsibility towards students beyond the lecture hall. Today, they are beset by activism, and demands for censorship from the political left and right.
The way to navigate these choppy waters is surely with the rigour and precision that characterise the best academic work. The vagueness of language in Cambridge’s new code lacks both. Some academics worry that it will have a chilling effect on who they invite and what they say, and that this may extend to their own contracts. “If the respect agenda becomes entrenched in disciplinary and grievance procedures, and arguments which used to be sorted out by people saying ‘grow up and stop being silly’ fall to intervention by HR busybodies, that will mean the end of academic tenure as we know it,” Ross Anderson, Cambridge Professor of Security Engineering, told me.
Such fears may be exaggerated. But the code’s fudge is dangerous. Do we really want to risk returning to a world where enquiring minds huddle together in secret, debating banned works and wondering if they dare say what they believe? If universities don’t do everything in their power to prevent such a reversal, they are not worthy of the title.
Sunday 30 June 2019
The science of influencing people: six ways to win an argument
Hidebound views on subjects such as the climate crisis and Brexit are the norm – but the appliance of science may sway stubborn opinions writes David Robson in The Guardian
Illustration: Getty Images/Observer Design
“I am quite sure now that often, very often, in matters of religion and politics a man’s reasoning powers are not above the monkey’s,” wrote Mark Twain.
Having written a book about our most common reasoning errors, I would argue that Twain was being rather uncharitable – to monkeys. Whether we are discussing Trump, Brexit, or the Tory leadership, we have all come across people who appear to have next to no understanding of world events – but who talk with the utmost confidence and conviction. And the latest psychological research can now help us to understand why.
Consider the “illusion of explanatory depth”. When asked about government policies and their consequences, most people believe that they could explain their workings in great detail. If put to the test, however, their explanations are vague and incoherent. The problem is that we confuse a shallow familiarity with general concepts for real, in-depth knowledge.
Besides being less substantial than we think, our knowledge is also highly selective: we conveniently remember facts that support our beliefs and forget others. When it comes to understanding the EU, for instance, Brexiters will know the overall costs of membership, while remainers will cite its numerous advantages. Although the overall level of knowledge is equal on both sides, there is little overlap in the details.
Simply asking why people support or oppose a policy is pointless. You need to ask how something works to have an effect
Politics can also scramble our critical thinking skills. Psychological studies show that people fail to notice the logical fallacies in an argument if the conclusion supports their viewpoint; if they are shown contrary evidence, however, they will be far more critical of the tiniest hole in the argument. This phenomenon is known as “motivated reasoning”.
A high standard of education doesn’t necessarily protect us from these flaws. Graduates, for instance, often overestimate their understanding of their degree subject: although they remember the general content, they have forgotten the details. “People confuse their current level of understanding with their peak knowledge,” Prof Matthew Fisher of Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, says. That false sense of expertise can, in turn, lead them to feel that they have the licence to be more closed-minded in their political views – an attitude known as “earned dogmatism”.
Little wonder that discussions about politics can leave us feeling that we are banging our heads against a brick wall – even when talking to people we might otherwise respect. Fortunately, recent psychological research also offers evidence-based ways towards achieving more fruitful discussions.
“I am quite sure now that often, very often, in matters of religion and politics a man’s reasoning powers are not above the monkey’s,” wrote Mark Twain.
Having written a book about our most common reasoning errors, I would argue that Twain was being rather uncharitable – to monkeys. Whether we are discussing Trump, Brexit, or the Tory leadership, we have all come across people who appear to have next to no understanding of world events – but who talk with the utmost confidence and conviction. And the latest psychological research can now help us to understand why.
Consider the “illusion of explanatory depth”. When asked about government policies and their consequences, most people believe that they could explain their workings in great detail. If put to the test, however, their explanations are vague and incoherent. The problem is that we confuse a shallow familiarity with general concepts for real, in-depth knowledge.
Besides being less substantial than we think, our knowledge is also highly selective: we conveniently remember facts that support our beliefs and forget others. When it comes to understanding the EU, for instance, Brexiters will know the overall costs of membership, while remainers will cite its numerous advantages. Although the overall level of knowledge is equal on both sides, there is little overlap in the details.
Simply asking why people support or oppose a policy is pointless. You need to ask how something works to have an effect
Politics can also scramble our critical thinking skills. Psychological studies show that people fail to notice the logical fallacies in an argument if the conclusion supports their viewpoint; if they are shown contrary evidence, however, they will be far more critical of the tiniest hole in the argument. This phenomenon is known as “motivated reasoning”.
A high standard of education doesn’t necessarily protect us from these flaws. Graduates, for instance, often overestimate their understanding of their degree subject: although they remember the general content, they have forgotten the details. “People confuse their current level of understanding with their peak knowledge,” Prof Matthew Fisher of Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, says. That false sense of expertise can, in turn, lead them to feel that they have the licence to be more closed-minded in their political views – an attitude known as “earned dogmatism”.
Little wonder that discussions about politics can leave us feeling that we are banging our heads against a brick wall – even when talking to people we might otherwise respect. Fortunately, recent psychological research also offers evidence-based ways towards achieving more fruitful discussions.
Ask ‘how’ rather than ‘why’
Thanks to the illusion of explanatory depth, many political arguments will be based on false premises, spoken with great confidence but with a minimal understanding of the issues at hand. For this reason, a simple but powerful way of deflating someone’s argument is to ask for more detail. “You need to get the ‘other side’ focusing on how something would play itself out, in a step by step fashion”, says Prof Dan Johnson at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia. By revealing the shallowness of their existing knowledge, this prompts a more moderate and humble attitude.
FacebookTwitterPinterest Anti-Brexit protester Steve Bray and a pro-Brexit protester face off outside parliament earlier this year. Photograph: Jack Taylor/Getty Images
In 2013, Prof Philip Fernbach at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and colleagues asked participants in cap-and-trade schemes – designed to limit companies’ carbon emissions – to describe in depth how they worked. Subjects initially took strongly polarised views but after the limits of their knowledge were exposed, their attitudes became more moderate and less biased.
It’s important to note that simply asking why people supported or opposed the policy – without requiring them to explain how it works – had no effect, since those reasons could be shallower (“It helps the environment”) with little detail. You need to ask how something works to get the effect.
If you are debating the merits of a no-deal Brexit, you might ask someone to describe exactly how the UK’s international trade would change under WTO terms. If you are challenging a climate emergency denier, you might ask them to describe exactly how their alternative theories can explain the recent rise in temperatures. It’s a strategy that the broadcaster James O’Brien employs on his LBC talk show – to powerful effect.
Fill their knowledge gap with a convincing story
If you are trying to debunk a particular falsehood – like a conspiracy theory or fake news – you should make sure that your explanation offers a convincing, coherent narrative that fills all the gaps left in the other person’s understanding.
Consider the following experiment by Prof Brendan Nyhan of the University of Michigan and Prof Jason Reifler of the University of Exeter. Subjects read stories about a fictional senator allegedly under investigation for bribery who had subsequently resigned from his post. Written evidence – a letter from prosecutors confirming his innocence – did little to change the participants’ suspicions of his guilt. But when offered an alternative explanation for his resignation – to take on another role – participants changed their minds. The same can be seen in murder trials: people are more likely to accept someone’s innocence if another suspect has also been accused, since that fills the biggest gap in the story: whodunnit.
FacebookTwitterPinterest Boris Johnson, Jeremy Hunt, Michael Gove, Sajid Javid and Rory Stewart taking part in a BBC TV debate earlier this month. Photograph: Jeff Overs/BBC/PA
The persuasive power of well-constructed narratives means that it’s often useful to discuss the sources of misinformation, so that the person can understand why they were being misled in the first place. Anti-vaxxers, for instance, may believe a medical conspiracy to cover up the supposed dangers of vaccines. You are more likely to change minds if you replace that narrative with an equally cohesive and convincing story – such as Andrew Wakefield’s scientific fraud, and the fact that he was set to profit from his paper linking autism to MMR vaccines. Just stating the scientific evidence will not be as persuasive.
Reframe the issue
Each of our beliefs is deeply rooted in a much broader and more complex political ideology. Climate crisis denial, for instance, is now inextricably linked to beliefs in free trade, capitalism and the dangers of environmental regulation.
Attacking one issue may therefore threaten to unravel someone’s whole worldview – a feeling that triggers emotionally charged motivated reasoning. It is for this reason that highly educated Republicans in the US deny the overwhelming evidence.
You are not going to alter someone’s whole political ideology in one discussion, so a better strategy is to disentangle the issue at hand from their broader beliefs, or to explain how the facts can still be accommodated into their worldview. A free-market capitalist who denies global warming might be far more receptive to the evidence if you explain that the development of renewable energies could lead to technological breakthroughs and generate economic growth.
Appeal to an alternative identity
If the attempt to reframe the issue fails, you might have more success by appealing to another part of the person’s identity entirely.
Someone’s political affiliation will never completely define them, after all. Besides being a conservative or a socialist, a Brexiter or a remainer, we associate ourselves with other traits and values – things like our profession, or our role as a parent. We might see ourselves as a particularly honest person, or someone who is especially creative. “All people have multiple identities,” says Prof Jay Van Bavel at New York University, who studies the neuroscience of the “partisan brain”. “These identities can become active at any given time, depending on the circumstances.”
You are more likely to achieve your aims by arguing gently and kindly. You will also come across better to onlookers
It’s natural that when talking about politics, the salient identity will be our support for a particular party or movement. But when people are asked to first reflect on their other, nonpolitical values, they tend to become more objective in discussion on highly partisan issues, as they stop viewing facts through their ideological lens.
You could try to use this to your advantage during a heated conversation, with subtle flattery that appeals to another identity and its set of values; if you are talking to a science teacher, you might try to emphasise their capacity to appraise evidence even-handedly. The aim is to help them recognise that they can change their mind on certain issues while staying true to other important elements of their personality.
Persuade them to take an outside perspective
Another simple strategy to encourage a more detached and rational mindset is to ask your conversation partner to imagine the argument from the viewpoint of someone from another country. How, for example, would someone in Australia or Iceland view Boris Johnson as our new prime minister?
Prof Ethan Kross at the University of Michigan, and Prof Igor Grossmann at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, have shown that this strategy increases “psychological distance” from the issue at hand and cools emotionally charged reasoning so that you can see things more objectively. During the US presidential elections, for instance, their participants were asked to consider how someone in Iceland would view the candidates. They were subsequently more willing to accept the limits of their knowledge and to listen to alternative viewpoints; after the experiment, they were even more likely to join a bipartisan discussion group.
FacebookTwitterPinterest The front pages of two New York newspapers on Friday 2 June 2017, as Donald Trump pledged to withdraw the US from the Paris climate agreement. Photograph: Richard B Levine/Alamy
This is only one way to increase someone’s psychological distance, and there are many others. If you are considering policies with potentially long-term consequences, you could ask them to imagine viewing the situation through the eyes of someone in the future. However you do it, encouraging this shift in perspective should make your friend or relative more receptive to the facts you are presenting, rather than simply reacting with knee-jerk dismissals.
Be kind
Here’s a lesson that certain polemicists in the media might do well to remember – people are generally much more rational in their arguments, and more willing to own up to the limits of their knowledge and understanding, if they are treated with respect and compassion. Aggression, by contrast, leads them to feel that their identity is threatened, which in turn can make them closed-minded.
Assuming that the purpose of your argument is to change minds, rather than to signal your own superiority, you are much more likely to achieve your aims by arguing gently and kindly rather than belligerently, and affirming your respect for the person, even if you are telling them some hard truths. As a bonus, you will also come across better to onlookers. “There’s a lot of work showing that third-party observers always attribute high levels of competence when the person is conducting themselves with more civility,” says Dr Joe Vitriol, a psychologist at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. As Lady Mary Wortley Montagu put it in the 18th century: “Civility costs nothing and buys everything.”
Sunday 25 June 2017
What the Kohli-Kumble saga tells us
Ian Chappell in Cricinfo
Pakistan soundly beat India in the Champions Trophy final, and it has been interesting, to say the least, to witness the aftermath.
Firstly, the Indian coach, Anil Kumble, resigned. Then the Pakistan players - not surprisingly - were welcomed home as heroes. This was followed by an ICC announcement that Afghanistan and Ireland have been added to the list of Test-playing nations, increasing the number to 12.
Kumble's resignation was no great surprise, as he's a strong-minded individual and the deteriorating relationship between him and the captain, Virat Kohli, had reached the stage of being a distraction. Kumble's character is relevant to any discussion about India's future coaching appointments. The captain is the only person who can run an international cricket team properly, because so much of the job involves on-field decision making. Also, a good part of the leadership role - performed off the field - has to be handled by the captain, as it helps him earn the players' respect, which is crucial to his success.
Consequently a captain has to be a strong-minded individual and decisive in his thought process. To put someone of a similar mindset in a position where he's advising the captain is inviting confrontation.
The captain's best advisors are his vice-captain, a clear-thinking wicketkeeper, and one or two senior players. They are out on the field and can best judge the mood of the game and what advice should be offered to the captain and when.
The best off-field assistance for a captain will come from a good managerial type. Someone who can attend to duties that are not necessarily related to winning or losing cricket matches, but done efficiently, can contribute to the success of the team.
The last thing a captain needs is to come off the field and have someone second-guess his decisions. He also doesn't need a strong-minded individual (outside his advisory group) getting too involved in the pre-match tactical planning. Too often I see captaincy that appears to be the result of the previous evening's planning, and despite ample evidence that it's hindering the team's chances of victory, it remains the plan throughout the day.
This is generally a sure sign that the captain is following someone else's plan and that he, the captain, is the wrong man for the job.
India is fortunate to have two capable leaders in Kohli and the man who stood in for him during the Test series with Australia, Ajinkya Rahane.
It's Kohli's job as captain to concentrate on things that help win or lose cricket matches, and his off-field assistants' task is to ensure he is not distracted in trying to achieve victory.
India's opponents in the final, Pakistan, were unusually free of any controversies during the tournament. They were capably led by Sarfraz Ahmed, who appeared to become more and more his own man as the tournament progressed.
Pakistan soundly beat India in the Champions Trophy final, and it has been interesting, to say the least, to witness the aftermath.
Firstly, the Indian coach, Anil Kumble, resigned. Then the Pakistan players - not surprisingly - were welcomed home as heroes. This was followed by an ICC announcement that Afghanistan and Ireland have been added to the list of Test-playing nations, increasing the number to 12.
Kumble's resignation was no great surprise, as he's a strong-minded individual and the deteriorating relationship between him and the captain, Virat Kohli, had reached the stage of being a distraction. Kumble's character is relevant to any discussion about India's future coaching appointments. The captain is the only person who can run an international cricket team properly, because so much of the job involves on-field decision making. Also, a good part of the leadership role - performed off the field - has to be handled by the captain, as it helps him earn the players' respect, which is crucial to his success.
Consequently a captain has to be a strong-minded individual and decisive in his thought process. To put someone of a similar mindset in a position where he's advising the captain is inviting confrontation.
The captain's best advisors are his vice-captain, a clear-thinking wicketkeeper, and one or two senior players. They are out on the field and can best judge the mood of the game and what advice should be offered to the captain and when.
The best off-field assistance for a captain will come from a good managerial type. Someone who can attend to duties that are not necessarily related to winning or losing cricket matches, but done efficiently, can contribute to the success of the team.
The last thing a captain needs is to come off the field and have someone second-guess his decisions. He also doesn't need a strong-minded individual (outside his advisory group) getting too involved in the pre-match tactical planning. Too often I see captaincy that appears to be the result of the previous evening's planning, and despite ample evidence that it's hindering the team's chances of victory, it remains the plan throughout the day.
This is generally a sure sign that the captain is following someone else's plan and that he, the captain, is the wrong man for the job.
India is fortunate to have two capable leaders in Kohli and the man who stood in for him during the Test series with Australia, Ajinkya Rahane.
It's Kohli's job as captain to concentrate on things that help win or lose cricket matches, and his off-field assistants' task is to ensure he is not distracted in trying to achieve victory.
India's opponents in the final, Pakistan, were unusually free of any controversies during the tournament. They were capably led by Sarfraz Ahmed, who appeared to become more and more his own man as the tournament progressed.
Saturday 1 March 2014
Warner's honesty deserves respect
Illustration: Jim Pavlidis
Greg Baum in The Age
Upon being given out lbw one day, W.G.Grace fixed the umpire with a stare and barked: ''Play on. They came to see me bat, not you umpire.'' That night, ICC match referee the Earl of Sheffield convened a hearing, where it was deemed that Grace had breached article 2.1.7 of the code of conduct, concerning ''public criticism or inappropriate comment'' about a player or official. He was fined half his match fee, which became a problem because he had already spent it on port for himself and kibble for his beagles.
''It was disrespectful for WG to publicly denigrate an official,'' said Lord Sheffield. ''I'm sure he will be careful when making public comments in the future.''
Fifty years later, at the Adelaide nadir of Bodyline, battered and bruised Australian captain Bill Woodfull refused to accept the sympathy of England manager Pellham Warner, saying curtly: ''I don't want to see you, Mr Warner. There are two teams out there. One is playing cricket. The other is making no attempt to do so.''
This was leaked to the media, prompting ICC match referee Sir Henry Leveson Gower to summons Woodfull, fine him and impose a two-match suspended sentence. Woodfull accepted his punishment stoically, but wondered as he sipped his bedtime cup of tea that night which of Don Bradman and Jack Fingleton was responsible for the leak.
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''It was disrespectful of Mr Woodfull to publicly denigrate an opponent and imply that the opponent was engaging in sharp practice,'' intoned Sir Henry. ''I'm sure Mr Woodfull will be careful when making public comments in the future.''
Some people never learn. This week, David Warner hinted in a radio interview that South Africa might have done more than simply take the rough with the smooth to achieve deadly reverse swing to win the second Test. ''We were actually questioning whether or not A.B.de Villiers would … with his glove, wipe the rough side every ball,'' he said.
Cue ICC match referee Roshan Mahanama, cue a fine of a quarter of Warner's match fee, cue reprimand: ''It was disrespectful for David to publicly denigrate an opponent, and imply that a South African player was engaging in sharp practice. I'm sure David will be careful when making public comment in the future.''
If anything is disrespectful in cricket, it is the reconfiguring of the concept of respect, turning it into some sort of state room carpet under which all tensions and spiritedness and debate must be augustly swept so as not to offend cricket's graven self-image of a game on a higher moral plane.
Even as England and Australia beat each other up in turn in the Ashes, they ''respected'' one another. After the Stuart Broad non-walking drama at Trent Bridge, Kevin Pietersen said: ''Aleem Dar is a fantastic umpire, and we respect his decisions.'' KP: home-wrecker in the change room, but ever ''respectful'' in public. Michael Clarke threatened Jimmy Anderson with physical harm in the gloaming in Brisbane, then said later: ''All of the England players know that we respect them.''
At the same press conference, Warner raised eyebrows when he talked of the Johnson-ed English batsmen and their ''scared eyes''. However much retrospective offence was taken, the sentiment beneath the momentary silence in the room then was that here was a rare cricketer, prepared to engage with the issue of the moment, not gloss over it in the name of respect, vainly taken.
It was not diplomatic, because it is not in Warner to be diplomatic. In this, the cricketer he most resembles is old WG, as described by Geoffrey Moorhouse in Wisden 1988: ''A hand of whist appears to have marked the limit of his capacity for cerebration, and if one wished to be rude to suburbia one might identify Grace as suburban man incarnate.''
Not every cricketer can be Rahul Dravid. Not ever cricketing utterance can be a Mike Brearley-style dissertation, nor should be a Clarke-esque circumlocution. Warner, unable to dissemble, most often tells his see-ball-hit-ball truth, and pastiche notions of ''respect'' be damned. The least that can be said of his approach is that it is crazy-brave: it is he who stands in the 22-yard front line, facing an attack doubly rearmed by a new ball and fresh slight.
As long as Warner's gibes are not personal, nor demean innocents, what harm is in them, except to a spurious ideal of respect? Impugning professionalism is as old as professionalism. Separately, it is mystifying that work to coax a ball to reverse swing is regarded as a sin. Ryan Harris, in distancing himself from Warner's stance, inadvertently bore him out. ''You've got to do something with the ball, everyone does it,'' he said. ''They handled the ball better than us.''
Ahead of Cape Town and its 47-all-out ghosts, South African coach Russell Domingo said: ''I'm sure [Australia] will look at the highlights … to see what happened here last time, and there will be a little bit of anxiety, I suppose.'' Like de Villiers' glove, it was meant to rub Australia up the wrong way. Disrespectfully. Fortunately, the ICC match referee was on a day off.
Sunday 19 May 2013
Daniel Dennett's seven tools for thinking
Cognitive scientist and philosopher Daniel Dennett is one of America's foremost thinkers. In this extract from his new book, he reveals some of the lessons life has taught him
Daniel Dennett: 'Often the word "surely" is as good as a blinking light locating a weak point in the argument.' Photograph: Peter Yang/August
1 USE YOUR MISTAKES
We have all heard the forlorn refrain: "Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time!" This phrase has come to stand for the rueful reflection of an idiot, a sign of stupidity, but in fact we should appreciate it as a pillar of wisdom. Any being, any agent, who can truly say: "Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time!" is standing on the threshold of brilliance. We human beings pride ourselves on our intelligence, and one of its hallmarks is that we can remember our previous thinking and reflect on it – on how it seemed, on why it was tempting in the first place and then about what went wrong.
I know of no evidence to suggest that any other species on the planet can actually think this thought. If they could, they would be almost as smart as we are. So when you make a mistake, you should learn to take a deep breath, grit your teeth and then examine your own recollections of the mistake as ruthlessly and as dispassionately as you can manage. It's not easy. The natural human reaction to making a mistake is embarrassment and anger (we are never angrier than when we are angry at ourselves) and you have to work hard to overcome these emotional reactions.
Try to acquire the weird practice of savouring your mistakes, delighting in uncovering the strange quirks that led you astray. Then, once you have sucked out all the goodness to be gained from having made them, you can cheerfully set them behind you and go on to the next big opportunity. But that is not enough: you should actively seek out opportunities just so you can then recover from them.
In science, you make your mistakes in public. You show them off so that everybody can learn from them. This way, you get the benefit of everybody else's experience, and not just your own idiosyncratic path through the space of mistakes. (Physicist Wolfgang Pauli famously expressed his contempt for the work of a colleague as "not even wrong". A clear falsehood shared with critics is better than vague mush.)
This, by the way, is another reason why we humans are so much smarter than every other species. It is not so much that our brains are bigger or more powerful, or even that we have the knack of reflecting on our own past errors, but that we share the benefits our individual brains have won by their individual histories of trial and error.
I am amazed at how many really smart people don't understand that you can make big mistakes in public and emerge none the worse for it. I know distinguished researchers who will go to preposterous lengths to avoid having to acknowledge that they were wrong about something. Actually, people love it when somebody admits to making a mistake. All kinds of people love pointing out mistakes.
Generous-spirited people appreciate your giving them the opportunity to help, and acknowledging it when they succeed in helping you; mean-spirited people enjoy showing you up. Let them! Either way we all win.
2 RESPECT YOUR OPPONENT
Just how charitable are you supposed to be when criticising the views of an opponent? If there are obvious contradictions in the opponent's case, then you should point them out, forcefully. If there are somewhat hidden contradictions, you should carefully expose them to view – and then dump on them. But the search for hidden contradictions often crosses the line into nitpicking, sea-lawyering and outright parody. The thrill of the chase and the conviction that your opponent has to be harbouring a confusion somewhere encourages uncharitable interpretation, which gives you an easy target to attack.
But such easy targets are typically irrelevant to the real issues at stake and simply waste everybody's time and patience, even if they give amusement to your supporters. The best antidote I know for this tendency to caricature one's opponent is a list of rules promulgated many years ago by social psychologist and game theorist Anatol Rapoport.
How to compose a successful critical commentary:
1. Attempt to re-express your target's position so clearly, vividly and fairly that your target says: "Thanks, I wish I'd thought of putting it that way."
2. List any points of agreement (especially if they are not matters of general or widespread agreement).
3. Mention anything you have learned from your target.
4. Only then are you permitted to say so much as a word of rebuttal or criticism.
One immediate effect of following these rules is that your targets will be a receptive audience for your criticism: you have already shown that you understand their positions as well as they do, and have demonstrated good judgment (you agree with them on some important matters and have even been persuaded by something they said). Following Rapoport's rules is always, for me, something of a struggle…
3 THE "SURELY" KLAXON
When you're reading or skimming argumentative essays, especially by philosophers, here is a quick trick that may save you much time and effort, especially in this age of simple searching by computer: look for "surely" in the document and check each occurrence. Not always, not even most of the time, but often the word "surely" is as good as a blinking light locating a weak point in the argument.
Why? Because it marks the very edge of what the author is actually sure about and hopes readers will also be sure about. (If the author were really sure all the readers would agree, it wouldn't be worth mentioning.) Being at the edge, the author has had to make a judgment call about whether or not to attempt to demonstrate the point at issue, or provide evidence for it, and – because life is short – has decided in favour of bald assertion, with the presumably well-grounded anticipation of agreement. Just the sort of place to find an ill-examined "truism" that isn't true!
4 ANSWER RHETORICAL QUESTIONS
Just as you should keep a sharp eye out for "surely", you should develop a sensitivity for rhetorical questions in any argument or polemic. Why? Because, like the use of "surely", they represent an author's eagerness to take a short cut. A rhetorical question has a question mark at the end, but it is not meant to be answered. That is, the author doesn't bother waiting for you to answer since the answer is so obvious that you'd be embarrassed to say it!
Here is a good habit to develop: whenever you see a rhetorical question, try – silently, to yourself – to give it an unobvious answer. If you find a good one, surprise your interlocutor by answering the question. I remember a Peanuts cartoon from years ago that nicely illustrates the tactic. Charlie Brown had just asked, rhetorically: "Who's to say what is right and wrong here?" and Lucy responded, in the next panel: "I will."
5 EMPLOY OCCAM'S RAZOR
Attributed to William of Ockham (or Ooccam), a 14th-century English logician and philosopher, this thinking tool is actually a much older rule of thumb. A Latin name for it is lex parsimoniae, the law of parsimony. It is usually put into English as the maxim "Do not multiply entities beyond necessity".
The idea is straightforward: don't concoct a complicated, extravagant theory if you've got a simpler one (containing fewer ingredients, fewer entities) that handles the phenomenon just as well. If exposure to extremely cold air can account for all the symptoms of frostbite, don't postulate unobserved "snow germs" or "Arctic microbes". Kepler's laws explain the orbits of the planets; we have no need to hypothesise pilots guiding the planets from control panels hidden under the surface. This much is uncontroversial, but extensions of the principle have not always met with agreement.
One of the least impressive attempts to apply Occam's razor to a gnarly problem is the claim (and provoked counterclaims) that postulating a God as creator of the universe is simpler, more parsimonious, than the alternatives. How could postulating something supernatural and incomprehensible be parsimonious? It strikes me as the height of extravagance, but perhaps there are clever ways of rebutting that suggestion.
I don't want to argue about it; Occam's razor is, after all, just a rule of thumb, a frequently useful suggestion. The prospect of turning it into a metaphysical principle or fundamental requirement of rationality that could bear the weight of proving or disproving the existence of God in one fell swoop is simply ludicrous. It would be like trying to disprove a theorem of quantum mechanics by showing that it contradicted the axiom "Don't put all your eggs in one basket".
6 DON'T WASTE YOUR TIME ON RUBBISH
Sturgeon's law is usually expressed thus: 90% of everything is crap. So 90% of experiments in molecular biology, 90% of poetry, 90% of philosophy books, 90% of peer-reviewed articles in mathematics – and so forth – is crap. Is that true? Well, maybe it's an exaggeration, but let's agree that there is a lot of mediocre work done in every field. (Some curmudgeons say it's more like 99%, but let's not get into that game.)
A good moral to draw from this observation is that when you want to criticise a field, a genre, a discipline, an art form …don't waste your time and ours hooting at the crap! Go after the good stuff or leave it alone. This advice is often ignored by ideologues intent on destroying the reputation of analytic philosophy, sociology, cultural anthropology, macroeconomics, plastic surgery, improvisational theatre, television sitcoms, philosophical theology, massage therapy, you name it.
Let's stipulate at the outset that there is a great deal of deplorable, second-rate stuff out there, of all sorts. Now, in order not to waste your time and try our patience, make sure you concentrate on the best stuff you can find, the flagship examples extolled by the leaders of the field, the prize-winning entries, not the dregs. Notice that this is closely related to Rapoport's rules: unless you are a comedian whose main purpose is to make people laugh at ludicrous buffoonery, spare us the caricature.
7 BEWARE OF DEEPITIES
A deepity (a term coined by the daughter of my late friend, computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum) is a proposition that seems both important and true – and profound – but that achieves this effect by being ambiguous. On one reading, it is manifestly false, but it would be earth-shaking if it were true; on the other reading, it is true but trivial. The unwary listener picks up the glimmer of truth from the second reading, and the devastating importance from the first reading, and thinks, Wow! That's a deepity.
Here is an example (better sit down: this is heavy stuff): Love is just a word.
Oh wow! Cosmic. Mind-blowing, right? Wrong. On one reading, it is manifestly false. I'm not sure what love is – maybe an emotion or emotional attachment, maybe an interpersonal relationship, maybe the highest state a human mind can achieve – but we all know it isn't a word. You can't find love in the dictionary!
We can bring out the other reading by availing ourselves of a convention philosophers care mightily about: when we talk about a word, we put it in quotation marks, thus: "love" is just a word. "Cheeseburger" is just a word. "Word" is just a word. But this isn't fair, you say. Whoever said that love is just a word meant something else, surely. No doubt, but they didn't say it.
Not all deepities are quite so easily analysed. Richard Dawkins recently alerted me to a fine deepity by Rowan Williams, the then archbishop of Canterbury, who described his faith as "a silent waiting on the truth, pure sitting and breathing in the presence of the question mark".
I leave the analysis of this as an exercise for you.
Friday 12 April 2013
Thursday 14 February 2013
When did being lowly paid become a criminal offence?
Increasingly, corporations and politicians treat the poor with distrust. That's why this week's ruling on workfare was important
‘In the ruling in favour of Cait Reilly and Jamieson Wilson the judges were clear: these people were treated dishonestly.' Illustration by Matt Kenyon
Inside Amazon's flagship factory in Rugeley, Staffordshire, a new way of working is evolving. There is a strong topnote of distrust, evinced by the full-body scanners that workers have to pass, every time they leave, to prove they haven't stolen anything. The profound insecurity built into the employment model is dressed up as discipline – which is to say, Amazon expects huge seasonal fluctuations in the number of people it needs, yet likes to mask their dismissals behind a misdeameanour, so a lot of people get axed for crimes like being ill. There's a lifesized blonde lady made of cardboard at the entrance, with a think bubble coming out of her head that says, "This is the best job I've ever had!" If that detail alone is enough to make your blood run cold, marry it to the testimony of the chairman of nearby Lea Hall Miners Welfare Centre and Social Club: "The feedback we're getting is that it's like being in a slave camp."
Of all the details revealed by the Financial Times, the one that sank my spirits was the electronic tagging – workers have a handheld device directing them to goods. But these devices also measure their productivity in real time. If they lag behind, the machine bugs them. They are issued with constant warnings not to talk to one another or tarry for any reason. A lot of people find it quite stressful. Call them crazy. (Amazon counters: "Like most companies, we have performance expectations for every Amazon employee, and we measure actual performance against those expectations.")
Meanwhile, in Tesco's Donabate distribution centre in Dublin, workers wearing these tags are awarded percentages for their speediness (100% if they perform a task in the time estimated, 200% if they're twice as fast, and so on), but claim they are docked if they take a loo break; afterwards, they find they have to work much faster – to get back up to their 100%. To put it in context, workers routinely scoring 110% are reported to be sweating quite hard for most of the day. So making up your targets is no walk in the park. Tesco insists that their tag is turned off while workers are in the toilet.
Anybody who's ever worked in a very repetitive, menial job will recognise this suspicious atmosphere – the less enjoyable a job is, the more people there are who suspect you of trying to get out of it. That's reasonable, I suppose, though if people were treated less like robots to begin with, they might not need so much surveillance. But the fabled "innovation" of the private sector never seems to be able to extend itself towards making jobs more self-determining and satisfying. Presumably this is because there's always a danger that self-determining, satisfied people might distinguish themselves in some way, might cease to be interchangeable and might want – indeed, deserve – more than the paltry wage they might be being paid.
But there is innovation here, in a new shamelessness. Let's be honest, tagging is what you do to criminals. Criminals often don't mind this, because the alternative for them is prison. The understanding, however, is that there's already been a significant breakdown of respect between the authority and the person before anybody's movements are electronically monitored. It used to be taken as read that you wouldn't do that to a person until you already had good reason to suspect that they wouldn't tell you the truth.
I am reminded here of the Conservative MP Alec Shelbrooke calling for people's benefits to be delivered on a card, rather than cash, for the easier prohibition of the purchase of booze, fags, Sky+ and trips to Tenerife. Again, the government has form with this idea –certain categories of asylum seeker are given their sustenance on a card, with which they are banned from buying condoms and (obscurely) sanitary products.
A friend of mine stood behind an asylum seeker once while she was turned down for the purchase of some crayons. It's not a system I'd want on my conscience, but its development has some deterrence rationale to it: that is, to make conditions so unpleasant that the bogus claimant gives up of his or her own accord. So when did that become OK – to exclude benefit claimants from the mainstream economy, to humiliate them? Does Shelbrooke hope to deter them all from living here? Where does he propose they go?
What I cannot help noticing is a failure of normal human respect for the people at the bottom of the heap – Tuesday's ruling in favour of Cait Reilly and Jamieson Wilson has had its bones picked over for what it does or doesn't say about slavery, and yet the judges were clear: these people were treated dishonestly. They were treated as though, being unemployed, they could be parcelled about at the whim of the secretary of state.
A similar belief pervades the suggestion that those on benefits need to be ritually humiliated every time they go into a shop; or those on low wages, by dint of their low status, need to be monitored like criminals. Across the piece, having a low financial status is now elided, by politicians and by corporations, with being untrustworthy.
They may have different motives; Shelbrooke is hoping to make political capital out of the contempt in which he holds the poor; Tesco and Amazon's contempt is just a byproduct of their drive for profit. But the wellspring doesn't matter; what matters is that this is a frighteningly divisive worldview.
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