Bloodless Coop

Birthday update

2008-08-08T10:54:00.003Z

Resurrected for a day!

Nice.

Um, birthday plans are looking ropey, due to the weather. The contingency plan is the following:

1. Arrive at my place from 12.30 onwards. Still bring picnicky stuff, we will do an indoor picnic and other fun stuff.

2. At some point, we may then stretch our legs out to a nearby pub, probably The White Horse on Brixton Hill around the corner.

I will confirm on-blog and on Facebook later today....

More in a Series of Fortunate Events

2006-12-22T18:48:00.000Z

Today was a landmark day, a little sad; I said goodbye to my research unit and my position as a postdoc. The place and people prised their way into my heart and, unlike many of their patients, I will never forget them.

But every event has its echo, and this one carries backward - to an interview and offer last month - and forward, to a new job in the new year. More details as I get them, loyal readers.

Tomorrow is also a landmark day; we move into a house that we own.

The day after is Christmas Eve (you might know that one), with all the busyment that follows.

All in all, 2006 is making a big exit.

Speak in... 07?

A rant on progressive social programs

2006-12-22T12:23:00.000Z

Not mine, but a quote I mined:

It might be right to say that the "true" cause of poverty and lack of life chances is ignorance, malnutrition, antisocial behaviour etc, but as Chris Dillow often says, you don't cure a pedestrian with a broken leg by sending the bus backwards over him.

From the comments to this provoking post.

Mad tidings we bring?

2006-12-18T13:59:00.000Z

Something to do with the combination of dark nights, fairy lights, jingly sleigh-bell music and heavy-rotation advertising going on in the background means there's a palpable whiff of greasy hysteria in the air. A feeling that everything's about to shut down and hibernate, so you've got to get your oar in now while there's still time. It's all bells and tinsel and unhinged grinning urgency. No wonder Die Hard was set at Christmas. Watching Bruce Willis crashing through windows and machine-gunning terrorists would have seemed downright boring if he'd been doing it on pancake day.

Charlie Brooker at Comment is Free

A Series of Fortunate Events

2006-12-18T13:58:00.000Z

Part One. Disa passed her PhD viva with flying colours. She's the top squirrel in the park!

More to come.

I will pay to do your work for you.

2006-11-20T17:18:00.000Z

Speaker: Luis von Ahn is an assistant professor in the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University.
Snippet of Abstract: "Tasks like image recognition are trivial for humans, but continue to challenge even the most sophisticated computer programs. This talk introduces a paradigm for utilizing human processing power to solve problems that computers cannot yet solve. Traditional approaches to solving such problems focus on improving software. I advocate a novel approach: constructively channel human brainpower using computer games."
Awesomeness: Pretty awesome.

Overhead online

2006-11-16T09:34:00.000Z

On whether university economics skews you politically rightwards:

I never was taught basic economics (Latin and Greek were thought to be much more useful), but the logic of a rightward shift seems pretty straightforward to me.

First, you are taught how to conjugate a verb. That would be Latin 101.

Metella est mater. Quintis est filius et ambulat in hortum. Hic, haec, hoc. (This is all I can remember)

Then you spend the next 5 years learning all the 20,000 exceptions to the rule. That would be real Latin.

Similarly, Econ 101 is for libertarians, while economy is for, huh, real economists. The libertarians never get past the Esperanto-like first grade version of Latin.

They only learn the first bit: how markets work. They never get round to the second, far more frustrating bit: markets don’t work all the time, and can indeed fail disastrously. The invisible hand often needs guidance.

Jasper Emmering at Crooked Timber.

Leaving the test centre at 9am Saturday morning...

2006-11-11T11:22:00.000Z

...now I can drive - in theory.

Help me out

2006-11-10T12:49:00.000Z

I've thrown together this image for a manuscript I'm trying to finish up. I'm not entirely happy with it as it stands, so looking for a few pointers.

For those memory-research naive, what does the diagram give you? Are you any more informed about Memory loss? Anything particularly unclear?

For those of you with a bit of a background in this stuff, I'm not sure about the caption coming off of the Event Theta (the little easter egg symbol). PTA extends aft AND before the insult, but I worry that it'd start to look really scruffy if I shoehorn another event in just before and recolour. Also, PTA doesn't really cut it - there are also confusional states and other stuff. Is there a pithier way to get at this?
Also - I guess for anyone - if I added more colour (they want glorious technicolor in their publication), what would be fair candidates? A colleague suggested the PTA-period getting a different colour, but the program I'm using, Paint.net, although nice (and free) doesn't appear to offer you gradients from one colour into another so it would look a bit blocky and coarse. Could colour certain events... however, in all cases, I would prefer to add colour when it actually means something, and to definitely avoid it when it actively confuses.

Any comments hugely appreciated, folks!

I'm finally using a reader so now everyone else has to.

2006-11-09T23:01:00.000Z

Since I'm updating a little more than usual, I thought my world-worn and harried readers may benefit from the benefits of a web reader*. This is an "inbox for the web", meaning that sites you are interested in have their new information plonked into one location for you to check out, much like emails all pour into one location for you to read them (instead of having to check different locations for each person who might send you something). This technology has been around for donkey's years, or at least blog years; Bloglines is a well-known and established provider. I've never quite got my head around it, but recently with Google reloading their version, I thought I'd give it a go. And really, it's dead easy.

Step 1. Go to Google Reader, or a preferred alternative, if you know better. I'll just talk about the Google one, as it's what I know.

Step 2. Get a google account. If you have a gmail email account then I think you already have one; if not, you just give an email and password and you're away.

Step 3. Add subscriptions; that is, the sites you want updates from. You do it by putting information in the text box opened by the add subscription button (genius!). Obvious candidates are news sites - BBC news has a list of their news feeds here, for example - or blogs. I did have a lengthy thing about how to find the right address for the feeds (all blogger blogs are the webaddress plus /atom.xml) but it's even easier than I thought. Just put the basic web address in and in most cases, it'll just find the feed for you.

Step 4. View at leisure. When you come back to your Google Reader page, you can see all the new content that's been added to your favorite sites (not always new comments on posts though, depending on the feed), and as you scroll through to find something enticing, the nice front-end automatically marks everything you pass over as old. You don't get a big inbox to manage, just a quick scroll-through and next time it's all gone.

Step 5. Sharing? Too early a stage to say how useful this is, but one feature is a no-bones proto-blogging feature, in that things you see and find interesting enough to share can be sent to a shared page just by clicking on the share button. Then others can see it and marvel at your powers of discovery and superior (or gloriously bad) taste. I threw a few things on today, and you can peek it. Blogging for people who don't see the point in putting "as the incomparable William T. puts it" before an excerpt, and "indeed." after it.

That's it. Do it and put me on top, and keep on top of the quality.
EDIT: I wanted to say - and make clear that it's not all about me - that thanks to having this in place I know immediately when something internet-worthy has happened to any of my pals. I just got a nudge that Tom has had a bad day, for example. I also have everyone from my friends list on the right in, so when Akin has more baby news, I know it. This is especially handy for keeping up with people who update only occasionally; I have great respect for people who've kept up with my blog given that there have been months where I haven't said a peep, and they've presumably been fruitlessly checking back over that whole time. No more, people, no more!

*that is, RSS. But ignore the acronyms if you, like me, find them full of dangerous magic.

Beyond words

2006-11-09T10:39:00.000Z

Unbearably sad.

Thoughts about homelessness in London

2006-11-08T21:17:00.000Z

Not profound ones, mind, just things that have atruck me recently.

1. From the top floor of the number 59 on my way from work I witnessed a homeless guy grudgingly empty his can of superlager into a drain under the impassive eye of a policeman/community support officer.
Why?
Granted, I didn't catch the whole scene - the guy might have been spraying the pinstriped backs of London's great and good with frothy brew - but assuming he was doing what most people do with alcohol, drinking it, for whose purpose is he prevented from doing so? Mine? I'm definitely aware of the impact that large-scale vagrancy has on a local environment, living in King's Cross, but I hardly think confiscating cans of lager gets us anywhere better. For the homeless fellow? Now, I'm under no illusion that life on the streets is fun and games and bonhomie, but surely we're not in the position of making decisions about responsible drinking and leisure activities for someone with a bagfull of possessions and a dearth of options?

2. On another day, at the end of my route, I passed yet another London Lite/London paper vendor (for those who don't know, these are free evening papers which are being agressively shifted off to punters in a war for control of the market). I almost didn't realise that's who it was, as they were almost exactly in the spot of the local big issue seller, who, sure enough, was standing plaintively opposite offering his charity paper you have to pay for to folk who were having free papers thrust upon them. Now, this comparison was particularly acute, but it's got to symbolise a wider trend. I'm not a big fan of the Issue - it can have some pretty good content but I tend to pick up my magaziney info (reviews, news pieces) online - but I would make an impulse buy if I was in a good mood and I had a journey ahead of me to fill. I imagine I'm not alone. With the agressive hawking of free (if utterly banal) content, I neither need more reading material nor desire another street transaction. I imagine I'm not alone in that either. The Issue is going to be squeezed by this. This seems to point at a problem with market solutions to social problems - the market is intrinsically callous, and indifferent to whether innocent bystanders get shot in a turf war. And whereas a failed venture isn't the end of the world for a larger company, pushing the disadvantaged beyond a viable honest living is going to see them make other choices right now, rather than waiting to voice their displeasure at a stakeholders' meeting.

3. As an addendum (this post was sitting in blorgatory the last few days) today I got approached by a homeless guy who asked to speak to me and then said "don't run away! Why is everyone scared of me!"
Which, in my opinion, is quite an affective way of getting someone to be a little scared of them.
I did immediately, and fluidly, say "I'm not scared of you, mate" with a incredulous chuckle in my voice... but after I chucked him some scrilla and walked off I did get the sense of a bit of a near miss.

Jefferson Airplane with swords

2006-11-04T15:37:00.000Z

The first ever versus- person fighting game had vector- graphic characters fighting over a printed, very psychedelic landscape.

Apparently the game was pretty poor, but the image is striking.

See Wikipedia for a rundown.

Gig lowdown

2006-11-03T08:33:00.000Z

Went to see Neko Case on Wednesday. Neko does what I hesitate to call alt.country - because I got a glimpse of her contract rider sitting on the sound stage, and it made it clear that under no circumstances should the words alt.country appear on any promotional material - but hey, that's what it is, country/folk steeped music with a particularly modern compositional bent and idiosyncratic subject matter. Oh, she has a tremendous voice, and puts it to use. Check out Hold on Hold on, playing here, or Deep Red Bells, here; I highly rate both albums that birthed them. It was certainly a good show, although I think the set was stronger when I saw them back at the Shepherds Bush Empire.

M Ward supported, and I need to urgently recommend this guy. I got my hands on Transfiguration of Vincent recently but only allowed it to dent my consciousness, but seeing him live was an electric experience. Part eccentric showman, part troubadour, and part wounded artist, his songs are recklessly inventive but allow the music of ages to breathe through them. Tremendous stuff and I have indeed suscribed to his newsletter!

AllMusic review of M Ward.
AllMusic review of Neko Case, and reviews of albums Fox Confessor.... and Blacklisted at trendier-than-thou music portal Pitchfork.

November uprisings

2006-11-02T20:35:00.000Z

Whoops! Looks like National Write a Novel Month has begun, and I didn't tell anyone! (Well, I didn't know.)

It's a nice idea, and although I have no intention of doing it myself, it's spurred me to try and write a little more on this little blog. For this post, my purpose is simple - everyone who reads this should think about a creative aim that they've been putting off: knit that hat for little nephew, make that list of greatest songs, write that letter to the editors, redraft your story, write a story, update your blog, draw something.

Now do it.

Seriously, this coming week, starting with the heaps of free minutes the weekend offers, get it done. Then, if it's done, do something else. In this little microcosm of the world, November is get something creative done month. I will keep you posted of my attempts; promise.

EDIT: Bloody Hell! So my decree goes double now. Get something creative done in the next 3 days, and then give the month a good going over.

Into every generation, is born...

2006-10-20T19:17:00.000Z

Big evil threatening to ruin the world as we know it?
A trio of misfit schoolkids - wisacring girl leader, goofy guy spilling popculture references and a redhead - are the only ones who can stop em?
The crew helped out by a plummy-voiced school teacher, who takes off and on her specs at plot-significant moments, is flummoxed by their youthful decisions and carries an air of "I don't know why I bother"?
The school- built on top of an older evil - as the focal point for bad things to happen?
Comic dialogue and outlandish schemes supporting a story about vigilance and personal responsibility?
Reoccuring bad-ass with bleach-blond hair?
The Chosen One?

Yup, it's early 90's CBBC show Dark Season , penned by Queer as Folk / Dr Who scribe Russell T Davies. What did you think I was talking about?

Spooky Buffy parallels aside (and DS predates even the Slayer movie by a year), this is a pretty cracking series. It's incredibly pulpy, with Nazi plots and desperate professors, with science being both the problem and the answer. It foreshadows Davies' Who work, as Marcie, the shows nicely paranoid voice of reason, is very much a Doctor. It really strips away the fluff and gets straight to the action - the first plot arc is resolved in 3 twenty-five minute episodes; shame there's only 6 in all.

Neowhonow?

2006-09-19T12:34:00.000Z

Neo-Liberal

You scored 54% Personal Liberty and 27% Economic Liberty!

A neo-liberal believes in moderate government intervention on personal matters and moderate to high government intervention on economic matters. They believe in a social safety net or welfare state and try to balance personal liberty with safety or security. Some neo-liberals believe in more foreign intervention or war then most other leftists. Others are more like Centrist Democrats. More authoritarian- leaning Neo-liberals (such as personal 40/economic 30) are the result of a "fusion" between "old left" and "new right" tendencies.

My test tracked 2 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:

You scored higher than 33% on Personal
You scored higher than 1% on Economic

Take the test here (NB you will have to sign up to a random site at the end of the questionnaire).

I like the fact that they call it economic and personal liberty - that is, you're maximum "for liberty" if you reject any societal obligations.

Weather

2006-07-26T15:59:00.000Z

Weather. Weather. Weather. Blooming weather.

That weather.

The weather thing.

Everywhere I go, weather.

(Weather weather - watch the meaning bleed from the word as it becomes overused, weather, weather. It's what Chris Moulin calls jamais vu, the subjective experience of lack of recognition for a familiar item, that resembles but may not be equivalent to semantic satiation, an objective decrease in the ability to judge as meaningful a repeatedly presented word.)

I've been to 3 countries on 3 continents in the last 3 weeks. On every one, weather.

China: Very hot. Very sticky. And lots of rain. Had to spend days ducking into and out of the heat into air conditioned shops + museums, or when desperate climb into icecream freezers or the path of a disapproving gaze from a distinguished posh lady. Freezes the blood that.
Australia: Damp. Very very wet, and damp and dank, and damp. Spent the time hiding from thunderstorms or tumbledrying my drenched trousers, shivering in an unheated bedroom and drinking to keep the heat in. Come back China, all is forgiven! Heat is great.
UK: Hot and sticky, close and windless. Stuck in the office feeding moisture into the padding of my chair via the conduit of my glistening shirt. How I long for the cool tempuratures of Sydney. That was idyllic, no?

In other news of my trip...gah, no, weather, phew, cor, weather, end.

PS Chris does a lot more stuff on deja vu/deja vecu, and there's a nice article about it here.

Ketchup

2006-07-05T15:57:00.000Z

Catchup. Some of you may have been watching the World Cup of Soccer (this is a sporting event quite popular in some parts of the world for an Aussie rules footie knock-off); just to say that
a) England aren't in it any more - eject your ire in the comments below
b) The last 2 matches (Fra-Bra + Ger-Ita) were really rather good; disagree in comments below
c) The last of my rare gambling flutters flitted into an open flame and went poof, with Ukraine going out miserably. I blame Duncan; blame Duncan in comments below.

Also, I am going to be away for a few weeks in 3 top cities - Shanghai, Beijing and Sydney, so do throw me any advice/luck that occurs to you.

Finally, I (finally) got confirmation of my PhD this week. Old news really, but hey.

To revisit old thoughts with a different head...

2006-06-28T09:11:00.000Z

I stumbled across an old review of the book - DC Dennett's Darwin's Dangerous Idea - that shaped my college love affair with natural selection, and it does a damn good job of shaking some of Dennett's grand edifices.

Dennett has long championed the notion that Darwinism might explain why some ideas and styles flourish while others perish.6 Darwinism thus explains not just the biological origin of consciousness and culture, but their changing contents.... why is he ineluctably drawn to the view that cultural change involves some brand of Darwinism? The reason is that he believes natural selection is an "algorithmic process," a blind, formal procedure whose operation is guaranteed to return a certain kind of result. A defining property of an algorithmic process is its "substrate neutrality": An algorithm does a job and returns a result whatever the input. Dennett concludes that natural selection, as an algorithm, is also substrate neutral. One can select between genes on chromosomes, codes in a computer, or ideas in a culture. As long as mutation, replication, and differential survival occur, any substrate can be selected. For instance, ideas can change (mutate), they can spread (replicate), and some can die out while others persist (differential survival), so we would seem to have a substrate suited for selection. Following Dawkins, Dennett claims that the substrate that gets selected in cultural evolution is the "meme," any memorable idea, jingle, or fashion that lasts long enough to get copied by another person.

This substrate neutrality argument is supremely important to Dennett. It -- and nothing else -- explains why selection can be lifted from its historical base in biology. It is what makes Darwinism so dangerous. But Dennett slips here. While it is true that many different kinds of substrate can be selected, it is simply not true that Darwinism works with any substrate, no matter what. Indeed Darwinism can't even explain old-fashioned biological evolution if the hereditary substrate doesn't behave just right. Evolution would quickly grind to a halt, for instance, if inheritance were blending, not particulate. With blending inheritance, the genetic material from two parents seamlessly blends together like different colored paints. With particulate Mendelian inheritance, genes from Mom and Dad remain forever distinct in Junior. This substrate problem was so acute that turn-of-the-century biologists -- all fans of blending inheritance -- concluded that Darwinism just can't work. Modern evolutionary genetics was born in 1930 when Sir Ronald Fisher cracked this problem: Population genetics shows that particulate Mendelian inheritance saves the day. It is just the kind of substrate needed for evolution by natural selection to work.

What, then, about Dennett's memes -- all those "tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes-fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches." Do they show particulate or blending inheritance? Do street fashion and high fashion segregate like good genes, or do they first mix before replicating in magazines or storefronts? Does postmodern architecture reflect a blending of the modernist and classical or the inheritance of distinct LeCorbusier and Vitruvius genes? I do not know the answers to these questions. And neither does Dennett. And neither does anyone else.

The whole review is here.

Dungeon fighting

2006-06-27T12:45:00.000Z

Do not waste your time doing this.

I died in the Dungeon of Judd Sonofbert

I was killed in a rough-walled passage by Ptevis the owlbear, whilst carrying...

the Dagger of Boxninja, the Wand of Aaronace, a Figurine of Shiffer, the Shield of Trooper6, the Crown of Niwandajones, the Shield of Bob Goat, the Sword of Akira, the Wand of Warren Ellis, the Amulet of Burning Wheel, the Shield of Grrm, the Crown of Jhkimrpg, the Dagger of Drivingblind and 144 gold pieces.

Score: 184

Explore the Dungeon of Judd Sonofbert and try to beat this score,
or enter your username to generate and explore your own dungeon...

Minor cleanup

2006-06-23T16:36:00.000Z

I've tidied up the site a bit and added some links to friends who have blogged up recently - on the sidebar at the right.

That is all...

For your consideration, friends, the fourteen kinds of animals:

2006-05-26T17:14:00.000Z

1. those that belong to the Emperor,
2. embalmed ones,
3. those that are trained,
4. suckling pigs,
5. mermaids,
6. fabulous ones,
7. stray dogs,
8. those included in the present classification,
9. those that tremble as if they were mad,
10. innumerable ones,
11. those drawn with a very fine camelhair brush,
12. others,
13. those that have just broken a flower vase,
14. those that from a long way off look like flies

Neu future?

2006-03-20T14:33:00.000Z

Vaughan at yonder Mind Hacks site pointed me to a blog called neurofuture who are holding a contest to coin neologisms around the word neuro. I submitted mine but not sure if they'll get through the moderation, as the site seems pretty transhumanist, leaving my contribution seeming a little mischievous.
Regardless, here are mine:

Neuro-tic: involuntary, even unconscious tendency to bring neuroscience into any conversation.

Neuriposte: making a comeback to based on pseudoscientific speculation as to their neuropsychological makeup: 'that's a very frontal thing to say', 'what a systematiser', 'it seems to me you've not developed your area BA10 :)'. See also Evolutaunt.

Neureality: The belief that we are stepping into a new stage of human existence defined by advances in neuroscience. 'Everything's different now.' Characterised by neuro-tics and when pushed, neuroripostes.

Neurrelavent: Best practise when dealing with a neuriposte or neuro-tic, e.g. 'that's neurrelavent and you're lowering our intelligence just by bringing it up'.

Making the case for Story Games III: Why would you need a rules to make a story together? Why not just talk it through?

2006-03-11T15:09:00.000Z

I've been talking about the attraction of creating your own stories, and the incentives offered by doing it with other people. (It's worth reading these first to get something out of this post.) At first blush, it might seem like doing things in a freewheeling manner is better than worrying about a bunch of rules. Surely, you just get your creative juices flowing, and run with it? One massive brainstorm?

If this appeals, all power to you! However, there are a number of reasons why using a system may make this activity both more creative and fun.

The first was touched on above: system can be actively involved in creating story. It accomplishes this by offering well-focused constraints on what can happen in the story. The constraint "if any character commits a sin, the next step in the story is to focus on the repercussions of that sin" dictates the progress of certain parts of the story, but doesn't determine the outcome (the repercussions could be infinite in breadth). It also provides an over-arching focus - people creating the story are aware that in this story sin is a major feature - a theme or premise, if you will - and introducing it will drive and direct the story.

The second reason relates to the social aspect of creating story. You know where I said that it's very likely that other people will shake up a story just where you wouldn't? If this gave you any misgivings, hey, I'm with you. Without a guiding system, this could be a recipe for fruitless bickering, with everyone confident that their creative vision is the best. Ultimately things could end up unresolved or decided through force of personality, either way with the potential to bring about ill feeling.

With a system? The problem can largely disappear. "Allan can decide everything that happens in part one of the story - but everyone else gets one overrule that they can use to change something they feel strongly about". If you stick to the system, there's really no avenue to argue, and given a basic level of trust among everyone, the sticky points get passed by quick to get to some more great story.

The third reason I'll offer is even broader, on the social aspect of doing stuff. When I said it "can enhance any activity" I'm sure you came up with counterexamples; we all can. Some of this will be because some people are bad eggs, and a bad egg can ruin any activity. It's a shame, but there you go. Avoid. But many other people will be perfectly cool, and potentially great partners in a number of activities, but only if you're on the same page to begin with. If you want your story to avoid graphic violence, or to offer a redemptive view of religion, it's best to make sure everyone knows this. You can agree on these rules at the beginning, in which case they become part of the system you are using, albeit one spoken rather than written, or you can use a rule-set that lays out the creative experience it intends to emphasise, making sure that everyone finds this interesting. In many cases, you do both.

These are some of the ways in which rules, as a formal explicit part of a story-creating system, can be hugely useful. There is another, hugely important part of using rules. This is that it can make the process into a game*. This isn't necessarily so, as systems like Oulipo, or the strictures of a writers workshop demonstrate, but is true for almost every such system that is used for leisure. The reason is obvious: games are fun. And the very best systems utilise the fun of playing games to produce story as an outcome.

*I'm not going to get into the semantics of what a game is, but use the maxim of 'you know it when you see it'.

Making the case for Story Games II: Why make stories with other people?

2006-03-07T20:04:00.000Z

There are so many reasons! I'll pick a few big ones.

First of all, you know when I said earlier that without having any kind of support, making a story isn't going to be too much fun? Here's the thing: having other people making the story with you is the best kind of support you can have. Feel like you've hit a brick wall? Ask around; someone will be packing that sledgehammer.

Closely related to this is surprise. Many wonderful stories reward us because things happen that we didn't expect. The plot twist that turns everything that came before upside down, the character who betrays our expectations and transforms our attitude towards them. (Great stuff.)

Now, I guarantee that when you make a story, you will surprise yourself. Guarantee it. Things emerge that you didn't plan at all, but when they strike you they make perfect sense and make you shiver. (In my opinion, this is even greater stuff.) By making the story with other people, you are ensuring you will hit these unexpected moments far more regularly. And crucially, they wil l shake things up where you would never dare: the aspects of the story that you had considered inviolate. And your blindspot might just be the sweetspot where truly excellent story lies.

Finally, the fun factor. Any activity done socially has the potential to be a lot more fun. The more you like the people involved, the more likely you are to get this extra fun. This fun is distinct from what you get from the content of the activity (in our case, the making of a story) - it's the fun you get at the level of relying on people, engaging in competition, and learning something about what makes the other person tick. It lies behind team games, going hiking in a group rather than solo, and having a coffee break. I know, this is basic stuff, but it's always worth putting out there. Doing stuff together can enhance any activity, and in an atomised world, it's great to do.

Making the case for Story Games I: Why make a story when there are so many good ones out there?

2006-03-02T16:14:00.000Z

All stories demand a degree of involvement, and to that degree we are complicit in its creation. This is most true of written works where we must create all the sensory aspects of the fiction from what we are given textually. It is also true of dramatic works, in that events may be implied rather than presented, and the motivations and emotions of the protagonists must be drawn out by the audience. So I'm not talking about a radical step here. The story we leave the cinema/book with is our interpretation, not simply a copy of the author's intent.* We put some work in to make it real for us.

OK. But you can go further down this road. Do more, make more of it yourself. I'm not claiming this must therefore be a better method, but it is a different one, and so gives you different things back. Think of it as another option to get at story; one you can select when circumstances suit you. To take an example from a different activity, a guided tour is a perfectly fine way to get a sense of the layout and history of a city, but sometimes you just want to stomp the streets on your own with a map, a keen eye, and a willingness to ask a question or two.

Note that you don't need to do it all from scratch. Just as a map can be a good framework for exploring a city, producing story can rely on a system that gets you started. One well-established example is the Oulipo school of writing, which uses generative rules for inspiration and uses constraints to channel creativity (constraint in poetry acts comparably, although often in the service of aesthetics, the sound and feel of the words, rather than to further story per se). Being handed a blank sheet of paper and being told to "make something great" is not going to be a fun exercise for most people. Being told:

Jim came back from the war broken, his dearest friend Gavin lost somewhere out in no-man's land. His respite from his pain is his nightly drunken visits to the picture house. Half-dozing through the newsreels, he is shocked agape when he sees Gavin's face emblazoned on the screen, with the heading: WANTED-MURDER. What happens next?

could be the beginning of a great evening.

*What I've presented here is taken principally from a neat summary from John Kim.

Murder in Samarkand pre-release

2006-02-20T09:39:00.000Z

Craig Murray is releasing a book. In case you need reminding, he was the British Ambassador to Uzbekistan who spoke out against the Uzbek regime, notably its use of torture and murder against its own citizenry. Following this he was removed from his post after various allegations. Some reminders here, here, here. I should say that I've met him and found him both engaged and engaging.

The book is entitled Murder in Samarkand: A British Ambassador's Controversial Defiance of a Tyrannical Regime Within the War on Terror. Because of its controversial nature, its ultimate release rests on confidence in public interest. What this means is that pre-orders may contribute to it seeing the light of day. It can be found at Amazon.co.uk and WHSmiths. Someone near to me has read a late draft and thoroughly recommends both the writing and the insights offered. If this is your kind of thing I recommend snagging a copy, and spreading the word.

Why I enjoy story games / rpgs - little cool things.

2006-02-15T18:59:00.000Z

I'm brimming with ideas. I watch a movie, and think 'but what if?' I read a science article, and think 'the ramifications could be...' On the bus, thoughts coalesce with no apparent basis. This stuff leaks out all the time. I'm brimming with ideas, and I suffer for it. Why?

Because it's hard to do something with these ideas. Mostly because although I would love to expand and deepen what they are, for the most part they're not a high enough priority for this to happen. They're little things that make me go 'cool'. Rarely the idea is magnificent, and then I'm prepared to sink the time into it. Occasionally, a string of seemingly unrelated little ideas reveal a common theme, which might also encourage me to develop them. But most of the little cool things never gets anywhere.

For example, walking home today, an image struck me, of a Western (maybe US) bureaucrat's desk shadowed by a big poster depicting both Christ and Marx, looking sinister, with a tagline such as 'Jewish ideologies: a threat to our wellbeing!' Cool, and intriguing. Do I have a compelling story to base around it? Nah. And if I was going to develop something, there are other things that probably jazz me more in any case. Still, what a waste of a little cool thing!

With a story game I could sit around with some mates and sell them on the idea of an alternate Cold War where Christianity had also been rejected by the West. We can develop between us a type of story that might be exciting within these confines, and play together, developing the parts of this world that interest us and the aspects of story that excite us. I don't have to do work - it's not a painstaking project, it's a social game. I would probably be begging for a scene in a bureaucrat's office at the beginning, to introduce that jarring image and jazz everyone with it. Other people could riff off that to produce more cool stuff.

I want to note that the little cool thing doesn't need to produce a momentous cool thing to justify the game: bottom line, if the game was fun, it was all worth it, and if the li'l kewl ting contributed to our having fun at all then there's the bonus. Whereas if writing lead to no momentous cool thing, I'd be pretty ticked off at the wasted nights.

I think it would be cool and fun to make a story about pick up artists, or disabled conmen, or butlers who hate their masters, and all kinds of stuff that I would never want to pour my life into to make come alive.

Now I don't have to.

The lone stag stalks.... together?

2006-02-07T19:03:00.000Z

My first stag weekend came and went, and verily, I am weary! Godspit, I'm clearly not getting any younger... but it was great sending Duncan off in some style. Nothing too much to say, a little karaoke, some fairly mild ritual shaming (to be honest, almost impossible with such an unflappable figure), shots, cheesy indie music, sake, far too little sleep, and paintballing.

I think the whole running in the woods with guns thing has unleashed something fairly primal in me, as I keep daydreaming key commando moments, and had an extended dream involving some kind of paintball war (and, I reluctantly add, some kind of Tolkeinesque faction of dwarves...). Frere Dodger was even more 'up in it', rescuing the flag and conducting madcore assaults on the enemy. As they say, "I'm just glad he's on our side."

Props to everyone there, and much love to Duncan. Next, wedding bells in Kyiv!!

Word migration

2006-01-27T13:27:00.000Z

Hey! MindHacks went Finnish! So if you've been wanting to read me in suomi (a highly distinctive Uralic language, so definitely worth the effort), now you can!

Also out (and sold out!) in Japan.

Ownership in shared fiction

2006-01-22T16:54:00.000Z

I've a claim that I'd like to explore, and I'm explicitly looking for input from people who read this. The claim is about any kind of game which involves making up a story with other people. Here we go:

The importance you give to a character is the importance of that character to your imagined fiction. The more players differ in their investment in characters, the less they are sharing in the same fiction.

Firstly, to the rpg gamers (or ex-gamers) out there, does this strike you as a big deal? A player gets through a session where his character experiences real growth and does stuff that rewards her; in the same session another player flounders, doesn't really connect and ends up introducing elements inconsistent with his character. That this should be as big a deal as if the reverse was true (irrespective of how much the players care for each other)? That it hurts her story just as much either way - or else they're not making a story together?

To those with experience in drama: is there a mismatch between my statement and the way people portraying a role on stage or screen feel? I'm thinking through the implication of the fact that "what's my motivation?" is a cliche, whereas "what's her motivation?" is not. My thinking is that this may be a reality, but one that merely reflects the actors' focus on delivering their best performance. That when appreciating the value of the work as fiction, no-one values the quality of their own performance over anothers, and no-one values the quality of their lines over the lines for other characters.

Is this true? As an audience, I think certainly yes. As an actor enjoying his work as fiction, I say yes - but I'm not an actor. I should make it clear that I'm certain that from the point of view of personal satisfaction, or ambition, you're probably more preoccupied with your own performance more than others. I'm asking about the appraisal that is anchored in appreciation of the created fiction.

To those with experience in neither role-playing games nor acting, I'm almost interested in you most. What do you make of all this? Is it blase? Does it fit with your intuition of what you would be bothered about if someone said "let's make up a story together - i'll be rod and you be jane"? Putting aside the appreciation of the fiction, would you find it simply more comfortable to worry about one character entirely, and let the other person deal with the other - or does it make sense that if we're making a story, you'd welcome any input that was offered on what jane does next?

Ideas stimulated from many areas, but particularly here (and also here ).

A prelude, and the rpg

2006-01-22T03:20:00.000Z

So I realise that what I really need is a throat-clearing post, the post where you say what a roleplaying game (henceforth rpg) is, how it works, explain why I find it interesting and so on. I fear if I began such an exercise, you'd find my lungs on the floor seven hours later, and you may be none the wiser. I won't attempt that, just yet.

What I will say is that games are not what they were. If we look across historical time, games have always operated in a social context: locking eyes across a card table, gesturing in a parlour, squabbling over the proximity of your ball to the jack. And looking across developmental time, the games you played when you were young were vivid, real and exultant, driven by imagination and tacit agreement.

Games in the historical and developmental now are overwhelmingly console/computer-driven, often played alone (or with others who provide input through the impoverished medium of on-screen actions and text) and offered with a rich front-end that discourages imaginative contributions. I've no interest in dismissing any value of these types of games: what impresses itself is how social and imaginative components seem so absent.

The reason this matters is that games are an amazing thing. They are a system for producing entertainment, rather than entertainment itself. TV can be wonderful, but its purpose is leisure, throwing something to you to digest (yes, and mull over and contest); games demand a minimum of intentful involvement - they are an activity, in which you create the content (which you can then mull over, contest or celebrate). Many traditional games are stripped to a core of simplicity, and the way they reward you during play is often through achievement; chess could be an example, where the social side does exist but may bookend the game rather than permeate it; even here it may directly enter through a shared history or understanding of the game ("the Alekhine Defense? It's been a while. Cool, let's refight that battle."). Other games more clearly provide entertainment in a social sense - the pleasure of the poker table coming from Dan's bravado, Dodge's wisacres, Dave's rise and sudden fall, itself all fed by the way the particular game reliably produces a certain kind of play, coupled with the unique sequence of events in the game.

I'm excited by games that can provide this social underpinning reliably: at base this really just demands getting people in the same room together, as we're pretty social animals. But I'm perhaps more excited at games that also provide that other crucial component - imaginative content. The wonder of this is that it harnesses what is great about pre-produced media but throws it into the social arena, allowing us to collectively produce fictional content. This can sound weird, like a Czech arthouse experiment, but it's really no different from the games we used to play with Transformers when we were kids, or the stories we were read when we would interject: "no, the frog-prince got a sword too!" It's also on a continuum with those Murder Mystery games where people dress up and play a part.

It's all of those things, and its own thing, and increasingly no one thing, but a bunch of them. It's a way to play the TV-show you wish existed; explore morality by looking through the eyes of someone a world away from yourself; scare yourself silly by exposing yourself to the horror within yourself ; give flesh to your wacky ideas of what your cat is really thinking, or what gingerbread men get up to the night before christmas. And do it all with your friends, to laugh, kibbitz, tease, and maybe learn a little about each other.

I should add, with my Polymath-in-training hat on, that when you start to dig deep in this stuff, well, you can go pret-ty deep. Anthopological parrellels, the meaning of fiction, social contracts - it's heady stuff and for the geek in me just reading it can get wild. But the bottom line is to play. With your friends. Like we all used to do.

That's not too strange, is it?

Alex Reloaded

2006-01-22T02:22:00.000Z

Hmmm, it's been dead here recently. I've been away a bit, plus starting my new job, but that's only part of the story. I've found myself a bit played out on the political blogosphere - the infighting, the signal-noise ratio, the frustration - and given it a miss, so I'm both more ignorant and less bitter at the moment, a mix I'm currently content with. I've also found that link-storage is much more convenient through delicious (which you can always click through to from the sidebar), so cut down on the "Check this! I have nothing to say about it, but it's good." posts, which is probably no bad thing.

I've decided to remedy this, and I'll be getting a little more active for a time, but with a shift in focus. In a way, it's overdue: the ethos of the blog was to proclaim my abiding dedication to the ideal of the polymath, or the diverse amateur - exploring topics just so long as they are rewarding you, and exploiting knowledge from many domains. So I'll be writing about role-playing games, or collaborative fiction games [edit: or story games, which I find a pretty useful shorthand] - a social activity where you make your own entertainment. We'll see where it goes.

Whoever you are, we absolutely have to play...

2005-12-17T21:02:00.000Z

Dude, papertelephone. 1, 2, 3

Your place or mine?

If you know me...

2005-12-13T15:43:00.000Z

'Minor corrections' will have awesome significance. If so, kiss me Hardy, as it's done.

Hollywood Boulevard hotbed of agressively begging Characters

2005-12-10T22:04:00.000Z

Oh my. Just... oh my.

Mr. Harper, the 40-year-old Elmo, says he was set up by the cops. But upon returning to his spot a day after his arrest, he conceded that things are tense these days among the characters, who form cliques and alliances to defend their turf and make money. Mr. Harper, for example, says his Elmo is a foe of Batman and Superman, but in cahoots with Mr. Incredible, SpongeBob SquarePants and at least one of the half-dozen Spider-Men who prowl the street.

It's pretty interesting, as a snapshot of an unusual (employment) subculture. But still, oh my.

via The Slumbering Lungfish.

Web comics continued

2005-11-05T11:36:00.000Z

He's also a doctor. One you must read.

Short quiz

2005-09-30T10:27:00.000Z

Big Time, Tangent Man, Landslide, Stretch, Little Stretch, The Blade, Guru.

Are these
a) rappers
b) a superteam
c) oh god you've got to be kidding me.

Though Turd Blossom seems apposite.

In other news: Kneel before Zod.

A well deserved self-centred diary post.

2005-09-27T21:32:00.000Z

Quite a week, all in all.

On Thursday, I get my first paper accepted - I think, I can never quite read between those narrow lines.

On Friday, I submit my thesis, within mere hours of a deadline I discovered only weeks ago.

This much, you know.
(Probably.)

Five hours ago, I had an interview for a 3-year research post that I CRAVED. It was a three-day process preparing.

One hour ago, I got the job.

Fifty-nine minutes ago, I was informed that the job could start pretty much when I want, i.e., take a bloody holiday.

Fifity-eight to fifteen minutes ago I drank booze.

Four minutes ago I decided I am geek enough to blog my successes, drunk.

Sweet.

Cry freedom

2005-09-24T14:20:00.000Z

It's done.

It's done?

It's done.

Me on the internets.

2005-09-01T21:55:00.000Z

I've been checking out The Sharpener recently, a decent UK group blog about politics and whatnot. I'm enjoying an abortion debate that is still going strong 250(!)-odd comments later. It gets a bit messy and pointless in the middle, but picks up, more or less, from about my post time-stamped (those who know my thesis know how reluctant I am to utter those words) August 31, 2005 @ 8:06 pm. But then, I would say that, wouldn't I? I'm having fun trying to winnow out a coherent atheistic position on embryos being equivalent to people. Not much luck so far. Join in if bored (and polite; otherwise the whole thing becomes pointless).

Other than that?

Work, work.

On plurals

2005-08-25T16:02:00.000Z

From Chris Brooke's site:

"Rhinoceros" is the best one, though, when it comes to plurals.

You can pick from "rhinoceroses", "rhinoceros" (unchanged), "rhinocerotes", "rhinocerons" or "rhinocerontes" (though you can't have "rhinoceri", which is what some people, I think, are taught at school -- along with the equally incorrect "octopi").

I asked a friend once what the plural of "rhinoceros" was, and he immediately answered -- quite correctly -- "rhinos".

Thesis coming, coming. And check the sidebar for deli feed - it's updated in real time (as opposed to fake time - I'm an expert on this so don't contradict me) and thus a far higher output than when I was actually trying to add content. Ah the ironing.

Don't complain I'm working

2005-08-22T13:19:00.000Z

This site has been moribund recently, which is a sign that my thesis is progressing. To allow anyone who would like to tap into my flavours du jour, I've incorporated a del.icio.us feed in the linkbar on the right. The links below "my del.icio.us" are things that have impressed, puzzled or disgusted me on the web. It will update as I add new stuff so even if there is nothing happening on the front page, there will be (minimal) new content on an ongoing basis.

Oh, and give Murky a hand with his new photo game, will you?

The deft use of words make me smiley good

2005-07-29T13:15:00.000Z

Patriotism, n. A willingness to sacrifice everything for one's country and what it stands for, including one's country and what it stands for.

Freedom, n. Ammunition for use in the Global War on Terror, which is being fought over it, cannot be fought without it, and will therefore come to an end at the precise moment that it is entirely exhausted.

Rapture, n. The process by which the most fervent proponents of Christianity are to be abruptly transported to another place. While some expect the RAPTURE will take place before the imposition of Hell on Earth, the better authorities have the two occurring simultaneously, an arrangement that would forestall unseemly rejoicing among the damned.

Islamofascism, n. An amalgam of religion and meaningless expletive, bound together with the "o" from "veg-o-matic". Originally coined by Communists in their struggle to explain the indifference of Muslims to the self-evident charms of Communism, this word tends to evoke hysteria in the listener, whether as an insult to Islam, as an insult to the English language, or as a humiliating reminder of things that are foreign and hard to pronounce.

link

Don't give me credit

2005-07-25T12:53:00.000Z

We treat our bank managers like we treat our doctors. They say, 'Ah, you'll need to buy some insurance with that, sir.' And we believe them. But in fact we're just being sold things. And this is an industry that's self-regulating."

The state of the credit industry.

At a direct-mail conference, a new item in the arsenal, the post-it note:

The letter has all the technical details. You throw the letter away and keep the Post-It Note!" So the devil is in the detail, you chuck the devil in the bin, and all you're left with is a friendly, brightly coloured Post-It Note with a number to call. It seems that whenever new regulations are forced on the banking industry, someone springs into action and devises a clever new idea that might legally avoid them.

And on meeting the man who made the original case for democratising credit to all:

It becomes obvious during my conversation with Lord Griffiths that he has come to believe that he inadvertently unleashed some kind of monster. He says he never could have predicted "the dynamism" with which the lenders would pursue his ideas. "The dynamism," he says. "The innovation." I've never heard these words uttered with such sadness.

The casualties.

I remember an old Bob Dylan song - Who Killed Davy Moore? - in which a boxer dies in the ring. In the song, the crowd say it wasn't their fault ("It's too bad he died that night, but we just like to see a fight"). The gambler says it wasn't his fault ("I didn't commit no ugly sin, anyway, I put money on him to win"). The opponent says it wasn't his fault ("I hit him, yes, it's true, but that's what I am paid to do"). In the song, nobody killed Davy Moore and everybody did.

What I want to know - in the metaphorical sense - is, who killed Richard Cullen?

A moving, and frightening story, here.

More explosions

2005-07-21T12:53:00.000Z

I'm fine, but would appreciate people letting me know they are.

UPDATE: Minor, only one injury reported (and that apparently a bomber). Move down to canary yellow alert.

One word, one vision

2005-07-17T18:54:00.000Z

Bloggers

(Tip o' the hat to Cleek at Obsidian Wings.)

Face of subversion?

2005-07-15T20:44:00.000Z

John, during your spell in the states, are you sure you didn't pop over to Washington ?

37484153861, originally uploaded by jakedobkin.

Actually, Borf's been arrested. Read the article: he's my kind of kid. Yes, I know his reasoning is garbled, and his stances inconsistent. But that's part of the point of being a teenager - to launch yourself into things that matter, get a point of view - let the coming years take the edge off him, by all means, but my god we need more 18-year olds like him rather than like him (actually, that's unfair, he has some sensible things to say, and he's not 18 any more...actually hang on he's banging on about evolutionary psych and the crypto-racists at genexp again - I take back my retraction!)

Here's the reason I have a soft spot for him:

He said he was an activist long before he got into graffiti. The first protest he attended was against capitalism in September 2002. It's possible he would have been arrested if he'd gotten there on time, he said, but the protest was "too early."

Quite right too.

Superdick expose

2005-07-12T17:21:00.000Z

You always had this sneaking suspicion. The preppy coiff, the supercilious attitude, the sneer lurking just beneath his lips. Superman has got to be a dick. But his immense popularity and admitted feats of derring-do make you swallow your accusations and doubt your thoughts.

Doubt no more. (But you can still swallow.) Thanks to an extensively researched investigation into his actions over the last 60 years or so, I have obtained access to all the proof needed that Superman is not just a dick, he's a superdick. My personal faves:

petty graft
sociopath
enabler of non-consensual zoophilia
enemy of the family
Or how about committing your friends to maintain your privacy?
Then again, maybe that particular friend deserves it...

Post your favorites in comments.

UPDATE: this might take the cake...

Out of town

2005-07-09T09:22:00.000Z

Off to the Cardiff Science Festival today; Tom and I are doing one of the events, a science cafe where we're the house boffins. Today's program is here; if you're that side of the sticks do come along (it's free) to ask some awkward questions.

London today, yesterday and before.

2005-07-08T14:46:00.000Z

Livingstone remarked upon what he thought was a keystone of the successful London bid: that 300 languages are spoken by people of origins from across the world, who live together side by side. He continued:

This city typifies the future of the human race....I would like to congratulate Londoners - no panic - an incredible response of stoicism....I myself will use the UG to go to work on Monday as normal, and that is the advice I give to every Londoner....I wish to thank Londoners for their solidarity - there are some places where such an incident would unleash internal strife and physical violence, but Londoners have stood firm....If you go back a couple 100 years...there was a saying ``city air makes you free'' - and the people who come to London...have come for that...this is a city where you are free to be yourself, as long as you don't harm anybody else...a city where you can seek your potential. And that is our strength....that's what they seek to snuff out. But they will fail.

A pensioner on the streets following the explosions yesterday:

Nil desperandum.

Here's another blitz quote, from H.V. Morton's London, February 1941.

I do not know how many tons of high explosives have been tipped out upon the gigantic target of London since the Battle of London began on August 24th, 1940. The result is a grim city, a shabby city, except round and about Guildhall, where several famous streets have been burned to the ground.
The people of London, having developed a technique of living in the face of repeated danger, now accept the preposterous, and what was until so recently the incredible, as the normal background of existence. I often think that the ability to reduce the preposterous and the incredible to the level of commonplace is a singularly English gift.

In the face of adversity

2005-07-07T21:46:00.000Z

Pont%202, originally uploaded by Alex Fradera.

by Pont

London 1941

2005-07-07T17:36:00.000Z

Half masonry, half pain; her head
From which the plaster breaks away
Like flesh from the rough bone, is turned
Upon a neck of stones; her eyes
Are lid-less windows of smashed glass,
Each star-shaped pupil
Giving upon a vault so vast
How can the head contain it?

The raw smoke
Is inter-wreathing through the jaggedness
Of her sky-broken panes, and mirror'd
Fires dance like madmen on the splinters.

All else is stillness save the dancing splinters
And the slow inter-wreathing of the smoke.

Her breasts are crumbling brick where the black ivy
Had clung like a fantastic child for succour
And now hangs draggled with long peels of paper,
Fire-crisp, fire-faded awnings of limp paper
Repeating still their ghosted leaf and lily.

Grass for her cold skin's hair, the grass of cities
Wilted and swaying on her plaster brow
From winds that stream along the street of cities:

Across a world of sudden fear and firelight
She towers erect, the great stones at her throat,
Her rusted ribs like railings round her heart;
A figure of dry wounds - of winter wounds -
O mother of wounds; half masonry, half pain.

Mervyn Peake, Shapes & Sounds 1941

Taken from Michael Moorcock's Mother London

Series of explosions - almost certainly terrorist attacks

2005-07-07T12:32:00.000Z

Nothing you'll get here you couldn't get from google or the BBC.

I'm posting this to reassure that I'm fine, as is Disa, and from the numerous reports I have from friends and family, my sphere has been spared from the traumas occurring round the city. ~~Three~~ Two of the explosions were within ten minutes of my house, and one across the road from where I work. I may post some updates as the day progresses, and if anyone wants to use comments to declare their situation then do so.

UPDATE: The death toll is rising; I've been outside to meet with some friends and it seems people are pretty unflustered - this is on Lambs Conduit Street, just metres from Russell square - although police cordons are carving up this part of the city at present.

CORRECTION: The Russell Square and Kings Cross explosions were in fact one explosion in between the two stations. Likewise for Aldgate and Liverpool street.

UPDATE: Typing as I hear it: "They're trying to use the slaughter of innocent people to cow us, to frighten us from doing the things we want to do.... they should not and must not succeed. When they try to intimidate us, we will not be intimidated. When they seek to change our country or our way of life by these methods, we will not be changed.... We will show by our spirit and dignity, and the quiet and true strength there is in the British people, that our way will outlast theirs....This is a very sad day for the British people, but we will hold true to the British way of life." - Tony Blair, 17:30 approx GMT

Evolution in Mind - Michael Ruse

2005-06-24T15:41:00.000Z

Ruseblogging is in vogue currently, keen as he is to prosecute proponents of evolution (the charge: raising to a religion what should be simply an explanatory paradigm). For more on that issue best visit Butterflies and Wheels where close readings hew out the rhetoric from the facts on most issues. Specifics found here, here and here

What the above description might not make apparent is Ruse is a fierce proponent of evolution himself - indeed, was introduced at this week's symposium as "Huxley to David Hull's Darwin". So as a sort of counterweight to Ophelia's posts at Butterflies and Wheels I thought it would be interesting to see Ruse shot from both sides.

His talk, "Darwinism and its malcontents", was essentially a j'accuse directed against those who try and keep humans outside of the realm of nature and evolution. His wide-bore approach scattered shot into Alfred Russel Wallace; Soapy Sam and various dissenters from the evolutionary view, through to Intelligent Designers; and critically individuals such as Elisabeth Lloyd, David Buller and other individuals who are in concord with evolution per se but are making sounds (not sure precisely what, but a 'tut' or drawn-out 'hmmmmm' should do it) about how it is currently applied to brains, minds, and certain other features which may (or may not be) particular to humans. Lisa Lloyd analyses the proposed adaptive value of the female orgasm and finds it wanting, David Buller critiques the E-Psych program (debated here at Crooked Timber), and so on. [NB the site containing the Lloyd piece is an excellent resource on major issues within current biology.]

This wallification (to abuse a phrase I suspect intended to be abused) of humankind off from evolution could well be a topic for concern. Yet I found Ruse entirely unconvincing because he presented none of David Buller's arguments against Evolutionary Psychology, or addressed Lisa Lloyd's concerns with some seemingly inconsistent adaptive analysis. It was really framed as an argument from authority: Darwin believed that selection was operating 'all the way up', and we are all good Darwinists if we are nothing. A corollary is the insinuation that if you hold beliefs that an Intelligent Design proponent would be happy you have, then your beliefs are suspect.

Flimsy stuff, really; I don't give a damn what Darwin really thought about human exceptionalism. I'm a scientist dammit. Show me the evidence and convince me! If Lloyds arguments do ultimately hit a wall in that they are fundamentally anti-materialist - really unwilling to accept that physical forces shaped these properties - then put the argument out step by painstaking step. It's not clear that this is the case at all, and readers will know that I myself have issues with several components of the EP program while still firmly wedded to materialism. Yes I have read Darwins Dangerous Idea and yes it is wonderful, but the fact that selection could operate in all realsm does not entail that it must, or that it can't be outstripped by other forces - either selection at another level (the old meme idea) or cultural learning forces that aren't well described as selection at all, due to the levels of top-down direction, non-heritability or what-have-yous that make natural selection a specific, designed process, rather than just a catch-all for any kind of change.

Engaging and rumbunctious as he was - the overall tone was that of giving his colleagues a good teasing - it still had the insipid flavour of some sort of jovial McCarthism - these are the sorts of things we should not be thinking in the United States of Darwin. So it seems that Ruse is fighting on two fronts. It leads me to wonder whether this is because he has a very narrow and specific view of what evolutionary science is, and how it should proceed, and leads me further into ruminating whether that is a exemplary or terrible perspective.

Evolution in Mind - symposium

2005-06-22T16:36:00.000Z

There was a symposium at my department 'to celebrate the academic career of Henry Plotkin' - i.e. his retirement or half-way point in the academic career, depending on how you want to look at it (half full, half empty, sour). Prof Plotkin was our head of department and supervised my final year project, gave inspiring lectures on evolution of mind and wrote good books on the same, so you bet I was there. Some thoughts follow.

David Hull gave a fairly gentle talk on evolutionary epistemology. I shall just pick out a few comments I found particularly interesting, chiefly on universality. This is a claim made about a feature or characteristic, specifically that it is found across [the class, taxa, all life - but most typically species, and in the context of humans neary always framed in this way] without exception excluding abnormal cases. According to Hull, although all humans possess characteristics, if species evolved as evolutionary biologists think they do, universals should be rare. In fact, Hull doubts that many exist at all, especially not the hundreds of traits claimed by Donald E. Brown to constitute his 'Universal People'. What Hull points out is that universals are often achieved by arguing away variability - partitioning off the 'normal' population under consideration. As he points out, blue eye colour is found in 1% of the population, and is the result of a malfunctioning gene, but it's just as human as anything else. I share this concern, which has its mirror in the tendency of some universalists to universalise from traits only seen in the abnormal - i.e. in psychopaths - which I wrote about here .

Hull also posed a question, which can be summed up as 'Why are universals so universal?' Why is the need to pin these things down so ubiquitous? He suggested two reasons, one being sheer outgrowth from the nature-nurture debate and the polarised positions this produces. He also suggested that it is due to a perceived link between universality and Laws of Nature - the Big Game of scientific endeavour - even though the considered view in biology is that there is no such thing. He concluded that perhaps it is also that essentialism is simply very hard to avoid.

Hull is also concerned with the future of science - whether it has a future, which he doesn't take for granted and urges us not to. He is convinced that central to science is the notion of Mutual Use - collaboration, sharing of information, open access, which he feels must stay central to science to prevent it going under. So yay science blogging.

Tomorrow I'll try to give a little on a few more talks.

Moral relativism II; neighbourliness and conduct

2005-06-20T10:56:00.000Z

More in Left2Right on relativism, this time of a special breed.

Living in close quarters with exotic strangers: the perfect hothouse setting for the growth of dormitory relativism. And I think it's a gorgeous flower, not a weed.

Dormitory relativism says, oh, it's all just taste or personal preference. You like atheism, I like religion; you embrace the sexual revolution, I prefer staying a virgin; you're a radical, I'm a conservative. As long as you don't leave the bathroom a mess and don't keep me up at 2:00 in the morning with your stereo blasting, we can get along just fine. To vary the metaphor, dormitory relativism is the perfect peace treaty for getting along with people with sharply different views. Instead of bitter arguments and hatred, we get amiable shrugs.

To be defensible - to stay crassly political and eschew any claims about ethics or justification or epistemology or ontology - dormitory relativism has to be an as-if, wink-nudge-nod collective understanding. Dormitory relativism doesn't say, "there is no point arguing about these matters because there's nothing there but personal preference." That's rotten philosophy.

Read the whole thing, if only for gratuitous ice-cream analogies.

The comments thread that follows is spasmodically interesting, but I want to pick up on a comment by Steve Horwitz:

Don's bifurcation of the dorm room and the classroom is problematic here. (I would suspect he would agree and that his use of "dormitory relativism" was a convenient rhetorical flourish for the underlying idea.) My students, who are not of Michigan caliber, far too often and too easily slide into that same relativism in the classroom, fearful that actually taking a hard position might generate negative social repercussions either in or out of the classroom. The degree to which we encourage "dormitory relativism" as a way to "go along to get along" outside the classroom is probably correlated with its spillover into the intellectual space.

Why not, at least in the context of a college residence hall if not in other communities, challenge it at a deeper level? Why cannot members of a residence hall (standing in for other communities) find ways to move beyond treating moral positions as if they were ice cream preferences while still managing to play by rules that enable the civility and mutual respect necessary for living together? We expect tough classroom discussions to accomplish that lofty goal, why not in other forums as well? By accepting literal and metaphorical forms of "dormitory relativism" do we do a disservice to students by stunting their ability to engage in meaningful and tough dialogues in a variety of settings, including ones where they, literally, have to live with the consequences of what they say and the moral and political views they hold?

I think I agree more with Mr Horwitz than Mr Herzog. But in reality, I think that at times I do practise dormitory relativism. Many of my friends and family hold opinions that I disagree with (not violently, but not negligibly either) that I will often gloss over rather than tackle head-on. It seems tiresome and pointless to play welfare-state shuffle or taxation frenzy (actually, if that was a real game, I would SO play it) with someone who just doesn't see the world on your terms. Is there a clue in the word 'dormitory'? That is, when we shunt up to the family level or winch in people who are not just entering adulthood, and forming and fusing opinions, but who are relatively entrenched and perhaps defined by their ideas, are we on a different playing surface entirely? But just how entrenched are we, at any age? One of my elderly relatives is characterised by an involvement with the world and a widening of ideas that has only increased with age. Is this the wisdom that accompanies our later years? Perhaps it is exceptional, and wisdom as commonly understood is instead the focusing and greater articulation of a single world-view, corroborated by evidences selectively remembered over a great span. Is it simply self-gratification for youth to yank the beards of the wise, or is it necessary - even if it is too late to make any real impact on the way they organise their lives? To give an example, would even the most militant atheist do missionary work in hospices?

Moral relativism I (courtesy Philosoraptor)

2005-06-17T10:56:00.000Z

Philosoraptor welcomes Benedict XVI's snipes about moral relativism in modern liberal society, as "liberals might finally be forced to give some serious thought to the relationship between liberalism and relativism." He gives an exceptionally clear reading to a valuable argument: I'm going to shamelessly hack n' stick it here.

The most important point to be made here is this one: liberalism in no way presupposes moral relativism. This is not a particularly difficult point to understand, and it should be clear to anyone who has spent even a moderate amount of time thinking about the issues.

Most liberals, like most conservatives, haven't given very much thought to meta-ethical questions about the nature of moral obligations. Most liberals, like most conservatives, say a lot of extremely vague and confused things when they do set out to say something about these meta-ethical issues. When conservatives and liberals do make claims about the moral foundations of liberalism, it is common for them to make claims that are interestingly ambiguous. The ambiguous claims made by liberals in this context are frequently ambiguous in a predictable way--that is, ambiguous as between (a) an objectivistic/realistic/rationalistic interpretation and (b) a relativistic interpretation. The ambiguous claims made by conservatives in this context are frequently ambiguous as between (a) an objectivistic/realistic/rationalistic interpretation and (b) an interpretation that presupposes some version of the Divine Command Theory of morality.

Some important points:

(1) Although some liberals say things that can be interpreted as being relativistic, this does not mean that one must be a relativist to be a liberal.

(2) Although some conservatives say things that can be interpreted as presupposing the truth of the Divine Command Theory, one needn't do so to be a conservative.

(3) Since moral relativism is a hopeless philosophical junk heap, philosophically astute liberals will not endorse it.

(4) Since the Divine Command theory is a hopeless philosophical junk heap, philosophically astute conservatives will not endorse it.

(5) The astute liberal believes that the moral claims made by liberalism are really, objectively true. This is commonly taken to mean that these claims are rationally binding on us. That is, that they are non-optional demands of reason. Astute liberals do not believe that the reason that women should be treated as the equals of men is that our culture happens to say that they should. Philosophically astute liberals recognize that mere widespread acceptance or cultural orthodoxy cannot underwrite moral obligations. In fact, that recognition is in some sense what liberalism is all about. Rather, philosophically astute liberals believe that there are rational, objective, and reasonably well-known reasons in support of the claim that (e.g.) women should be treated as the equals of men.

(6) Conservatives frequently act as if liberals are the only ones who face puzzles about the nature of moral obligations. But conservatives face the same problems liberals face....The DCT is simply moral subjectivism writ large. The DCT proper is merely divine subjectivism.

Read t'all y'all. Some of the ground is also covered well in Baggini's What's it all about? which I've endorsed before as a nice primer on the philosophy of (personal) meaning.

Webcom 1

2005-06-15T18:26:00.000Z

Some Tom the Dancing Bug for my little children.

Creationists

A genius caption competition

Fun facts for the psychotic

Scalia and congress

And from Big Fat Whale:

Science Facts

Science Militia

Atheism's One Commandment

Malevolex Pharmaceuticals

Have you noticed that koalas are turning up with alarming regularity?

Buggy recommendations

2005-06-14T14:59:00.000Z

Why was this recommended to me?

We recommended...
Thunderbirds: The Thunderbirds have only just returned home to their secret base when their space based station ...

because you have selected or watched:
Collateral: Fate has it that a contract killer, working for a drug cartel, and a veteran taxi driver will meet.....

hooookay.

the adoption industry announces new, younger models.

2005-06-14T13:46:00.000Z

Interesting post at Left2Right on embryo donation. J David Velleman argues that the practise of passing on excess embryos from IVF to other infertile couples is morally problematic. In essence, adoption entails some distressful impact upon life of the child (identity crises and so on) and should the number of kids being adopted should be kept low; creating a new child to be adopted rather than taking one that already needs to be conflicts with this premise. Of course, all sorts of (highbrow) tonguelashing ensues in the comments. Velleman's later expansion is interesting:

An important piece of background to my argument is what moral philosophers call the "non-identity problem", which is a problem in the ethics of procreation. Here is how the non-identity problem arises.

Suppose that a woman is taking a medication that is known to cause birth defects: if she becomes pregnant while taking the medication, her child will be born disabled. We ordinarily think that this woman is under an obligation not to become pregnant until she has finished taking the medication and the danger has passed. If she is careless and becomes pregnant with a disabled child, we will think that she is blameworthy. And if the woman positively tries to become pregnant while taking the medication, and does so for the express purpose of bearing a disabled child -- why, we would consider her a monster.

Now consider what this latter woman -- this supposed monster -- might say in her own defense:

Yes, I have purposely conceived a child who will be born disabled. But the vast majority of people who are born disabled go on to live happy and rewarding lives. There are people far more seriously disabled than my child will be, and they are still grateful for having been born. What's more, my child will not have any grievance against me for conceiving him while I was taking the medication. If I had waited until the following month, when I was no longer taking the medication, I would have conceived a different child -- and this child would never have been born at all! There is no way that I could have conceived this same child without conceiving him disabled. So I have done nothing wrong: I am giving the gift of life to a child who will be grateful to have received it, and my child will not wish that I had given that gift to a different, able-bodied child instead. If my child will have no grievance against me, how can you?

Should we be persuaded by this woman's argument? Of course not.

Read it all y'all.

The road to bulging cortex

2005-06-12T10:26:00.000Z

Reposting some stuff I put up as a comment at Harry's Place in response for requests for books to make one an intellectual. Further to lists of books (so help me, I'm not writing 'The Canon'..look what you made me do) that everyone simply has to read, spanning three millenia and hundreds of thousands of pages, I demurred:

I worry that the goal of reading the 'greats' is never going to be achieved through a sense of obligation. I've embarked upon Proust twice, because I'm doing a PhD on memory and time and it seemed like I simply had to be familiar with his work. Don't get me wrong, Proust was immensely rewarding; paragraph upon paragraph of precise articulation of what the relationship is between ourselves, our lives and our past. Even the few hundred pages I read changed the way I think about the world. But I lost the pace, and then lost the thread entirely, I think in part because I began thinking "I ought to read Proust" rather than "I want to read Proust". (I've read some people saying you only totally get him once you're at the age he was when writing À la recherche du temps perdu.) My take on it would be to read thought-provoking books that you want to read - stuff that is written well and engaging, and can be enjoyed on multiple levels. Once in a while, when motivation grasps you, you can go for the less forgiving stuff; I managed to swallow a book on Rawls and Theory of Justice (by Crooked Timber's infrequent Jon Mandle, actually) last year without it sticking in my throat, mainly because I was on a roll from all the other stuff (it's an engaging book by the way, also serving as a good introduction to communitarian and post-modern critiques of liberalism, and responses to those).

As such I would second Huck Finn (and Connecticut Yankee, a stunning book) by Mark Twain and the Periodic Table - Primo Levi, as totally engaging works that arrest the mind as well. Moreover

Bleak House - Dickens. It is humongous. But from the very beginning it's laced with this bitter energy that crackles and sparks. It's split between chapters from the POV of the heroine, using a bit of an 'unreliable narrator' approach, and other chapters from a truly 3rd person perspective that nonetheless stabs out emotion in every description (just read the opening chapter describing the fogs around the law courts and comparing it to the lawyers themselves). Can do with being taken on holiday, but works ok serial-like too.

Graham Greene - most anything I've read by him, but The Comedians is tremendous and the totalitarian angle (Haiti) might particuarly interest. He's an uncomplicated writer but his prose is breathtaking anyway.

Chekov - haven't read since I was a kid, but I remember the Cherry Orchard and the Seagull as being pretty great.

I'd recommend reading some (fun) science. Fun science for me takes a few forms, most seemingly on evolution:
Pinker. Any of his books. Given the political angle and its tendency towards stoking feuds and taking the scalps of opponents, The Blank Slate might be a good read for any HP member. For me it was riveting when read but on re-examination just too onesided, cheap and polemical to be a really great book. The Language Instinct is the most playful in some senses (but pretty focused); How the Mind Works is perhaps the most useful book of his, for its efforts in getting to grips with Cognitive Neuroscience.
Dennett. Mentioned above, he is a real heavyweight but writes too well for you to notice at times. Darwin's Dangerous Idea is a great intro to the implications of selection processes, and its transformative influence on the world we live in. Other stuff of his seems heavier, but I haven't tackled his new book, freedom evolves.
Dawkins. Getting tired of the names yet? Obviously known for the selfish gene, I think he continued to develop his metaphor and would recommend Climbing Mount Improbable for carefully employing metaphor that invigors how we understand evolution.
Paul Broks - Into the Silent Land. A wonderful book about brain damage and implications for how we understand ourselves; also deeply personal and inventive. He writes about whether Robert Louis Stevenson could be right that little people in his head wrote his stories in his sleep (answer: possibly), imagines himself at a kangaroo court of Hardline Materialists, and describes all his cases with vigour and humanity. Think Oliver Sacks, I suppose, but more playful and provoking.

Part of the reason I recommend these folks is because (Broks aside) I disagree with all of them on some issues: their privilaging of evolutionary psychology over other (evolutionary-friendly) forms of neuroscience, their preoccupation with rebranding atheism etc. I get the sense that being an intellectual, whatever that means, involves having some critical perspective to what you are reading or watching or listening to. I find it easier to step into that mode by reading those I don't fully agree with. Further to this are

C.S. Lewis - He comes generally recommended, but I've only read The Screwtape Letters, which is an exposition on Christianity livened up by being told from a devil's POV. As a quick and demonically funny introduction to Christian Theology you'd be pressed to do better.

and, more Scholarly than Intellectual - please don't ask me to justify this, merely a sense I get- Samuel P Huntingdon's Who are we? about American identity. There is much there, mainly factual, to make you think, and although I'm resistant to his central premise, that America should formally embrace its Anglo-Protestant culture, there's enough there to force you to reassess your arguments. But I'm not sure if it really counts as it's chiefly a historical work, dealing with particular contingencies, and I often get the sense that intellectual works grapple with eternal truths and whatnot.

I learned a lot from these kind of books (and others) to challenge myself and attempt to criticise the work of my betters.

Oh, and a modern intellectual I can half recommend is Geoff Dyer. I read his In Pure Rage and he has a special grip on the world, thought and language - so many paragraphs where I went 'wow'. Then again, he comes across as extremely unlikable (the book is in the main a record of him traipsing about various locations writing a book about T.S. Elliott and moaning 'oh no! I'm fed up with Sicily. Oh no! I'm fed up with Mexico) so much so you want to hit him.
----
I forgot Abelson's Statistics as Principled Argument which I've blogged about before - a wonderful introduction to statistical thinking. But more importantly, what do others think about this? Firstly, is every book that makes you think an intellectual or intellectualising book? See my reluctance to put Huntingdons book on that shelf, although he's personally surely as smart as the other authors, and his book is authoratative and thought-provoking. I see that history or biology or computer science can be mind-expanding, but fall short of being intellectual. Am I wrong?

Moreover, what books do you recommend? Either to pad out that cortex in the proper way, or just because they've been floating your boat recently> Tell, tell, tell.

[A great source of second hand books here. ]

Some pennies.

2005-05-31T20:48:00.000Z

Yes I know the system has failed. What? I have a thesis to write! But in my tea-break I feel I can briefly update you on some things:

The illustrious Roger Ebert, king of US film critics, brings us the
best review ever.

Amanda Marcotte's heartfelt paean to the mix tape generation.

A band who do Smiths covers in the style of Black Sabbath.

Reflections on our status in a wired world.

a terrific post from Jim Henley on paternalism, its acceptance by liberals and why he thinks it's a loser.

(Some hat tips needed for Gary at Amygdala, and David T at Harry's Place.)

Are we designed for violence?

2005-05-27T14:10:00.000Z

Violence is common to our present, history and prehistory. Is there reason to hope that our future will be different? Doubtless we’ll know in the long run, thanks to the grand uncontrolled experiment of life. Meanwhile some argue we can get an early forecast by using the behavioural sciences – investigate our nature to divine our future. But just what do we mean by a violent nature, and would such a nature necessarily force us to be so pessimistic? Such a wide issue needs to be viewed through a narrow prism, so here we shall focus on the neuroscience of violence. Are we wired for violence - is it brain-based, an original sin never to be expelled? Or could it be less indelible than we fear?

While examples of human violence are varied and plentiful, the most chilling are those individuals who seem innately disposed towards causing suffering: the Hannibal Lecters of the world who seem calm and controlled as they torture, scheme and kill. Psychopathy is marked by a total lack of empathy with others, allowing them to act without compunction. The rare cases of acquired sociopathy, where brain damage leads to behavioural patterns that resemble the psychopath, are perhaps even more unsettling. It's one thing when it's the other guy - born different. But the acquired case holds the terrifying promise that it could be you.

While we shiver at the horridness of all this, scientists have leapt at the chance to study these individuals in the hope that it may shed some light on whether we have a design for violence. As with much research, the exception helps you find the rule: the differences in the psychopaths' brains and behaviour give insights into what is shaping the behaviour of normal people. One thesis that has gained broad popular attention (to which popular science writer Steven Pinker devotes a chapter of his recent book The Blank Slate) is that cases of violence running wild illuminate the caged beast inside all of us. This account argues we have inclinations towards violence only barely kept in check by imposed restraints; not dissimilar to a popular religious notion that humanity is fallen from grace -urged to good but drawn to evil.

It seems true that abnormal populations differ from us because they lack some kind of restraint: some failure of an inhibition mechanism which ordinarily screens out or rejects violent actions in healthy individuals. James Blair, a leading researcher in this area, has termed this a Violence Inhibition Mechanism (VIM, see e.g. Blair & Cipolotti 2000): and follows early ethological work showing that some animals in the wild cease their aggression if their victim shows signs of distress (Lorenz, 1966). Evolutionary pressure could promote such a tendency to discourage fighting to the death, switching you off from pursuing a conflict once your opponent caves in.

Other researchers point more generally to the role that the frontal lobes of the brain play in inhibition of inappropriate behaviour, suggesting that problems with these regions lead to the failure to inhibit violent acts. The two explanations may not be exclusive, but the inhibition-frontal lobe thesis is primarily investigated in acquired cases, whilst the VIM is researched in developmental cases. The upshot is that proponents of a deep and negative human nature argue that as we are engaging in suppression, there must be something there to suppress - therefore, there is violence within us. For example, Steven Pinker (2002) states that “direct signs of design for aggression” include the fact that “disruptions of inhibitory systems...can lead to aggressive attacks” (p316).

But this conclusion is premature in principle, and not supported in practice. Firstly, the principle. The argument that we can judge our inclination to violence by observing it in a free situation is flawed because it doesn't take base rates into account. By base rates, I mean what our level of violence would be if we were `violence blind': if we had no interest, but no disinterest, in whether our actions caused harm.Science fiction author Isaac Asimov recognised that this rate would not be zero, and made this a key concept in his Robot trilogy, the First Law of Robotics. This was the rule which trumped all others, and commanded that
"A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm."
The robots are not given this rule to counteract some kind of 'assassination chip' placed there by a mischievous designer, but simply to act as a guiding principle to distinguish certain kinds of actions into acceptable and unacceptable. Asimov saw that you would need an inhibition system in place even when there is no tendency to cause harm; without specifications, harm will tend to occur. Without establishing fully what such a base rate would be, it is absurd to look at the harm any individual causes and conclude this is evidence for violence worked into the design.

When we turn to the evidence, violence for its own purpose does give a good account of the actions of these patients. For example, Blair and Cipolotti (2000) describe a patient with frontal lobe damage whose use of violence was goal-directed, for the purpose of excitement (pushing another resisting patient around in a wheelchair at speed) or to protest when frustrated. This does not resemble the sating of a wild hunger for aggression, but is more like a slide towards the base-rate – uncaring that your desires have harmful consequences.

It is difficult to see how someone could seriously advance the perspective that we are innately violent - commit violence far in excess of the base rates. Even considering the bloodiness of human history (and leaving apart the social factors underpinning conquest and genocide), the potential bloodshed from the base rate is equally boggling. Moreover killing for the sake of it would be inefficient, and considering our basis as a social species would be utterly foolish, so it makes good evolutionary sense that we are not drawn to violence.

So let's retreat a little: perhaps the issue isn’t innate violence, despite the rhetoric; perhaps the argument is that we're not averse to using violence, that we use it when it pays, much like we would do if we used the base rate. This is an issue that evolutionary psychology often investigates, modeling factors to uncover in which situations it would pay us to commit harmful acts (such as to revenge a slight in a culture of honour (Cohen, Nisbett, Bowdle, & Schwarz. 1996). All very well, if proving very little about violence in the brain. But however productive this line of research is, even this weak version finds a fairly big stumbling block, in the very phenomena we began with: the existence of systems that work to inhibit violence.

We took aside these inhibition systems (i.e. looked at neurological patients with damage to the areas that they reside in) in order to say “let’s look at what’s really going on.” But whilst this approach can tell us useful things, we need to put it all back together again: what makes us human isn't just what lies beneath our inhibition systems, but is the fact that we inhibit at all, in such a sophisticated and complex manner. This is what renders the quote from Pinker so empty: the inhibition system itself is a product of design.

Anyone doubting that treating other people as more than instruments is founded in the brain would do well to look into developments in the study of self–other mapping. This has provided stronger and stronger evidence that these relationships are hardwired into us, strikingly with the discovery of mirror neurons that fire in the same way for events that occur to you or to those you observe (Gallese and Goldman 1998). Many argue that empathy is an outcome of these representations (see e.g. Frith and Frith 1999). And recent research demonstrates appreciating someone else's pain activates many of the same areas as experiencing it (Jackson, Meltzoff, & Decety 2004): good evidence for a VIM-like mechanism, and certainly a rebuttal to those who think our withdrawal from violence is unnatural.

By making psychopaths into poster-boys for innate violence, we risk ignoring crucial aspects of their behaviour. The patients investigated by Blair and Cipolotti were reported as socially inappropriate in a variety of ways, and recent imaging work suggests that the areas crucial for regulating and preventing aggression also keep us within the bounds of socially acceptable behaviour (Berthoz, Armony, Blair, & Dolan, 2002). Rehabilitation would require addressing that big picture.

Designed for violence? Really, the strongest conclusion that this work can give is that we sometimes are violent when it's in our interests. We are not innately disposed to violence, or even indifferent to violence, we are neurologically bound away from violence. This understanding gives us a solid basis for treatment, and an honest beginning from which to address the continuing problem of violence in society.

References

Berthoz, S., Armony, J.L., Blair, R.J.R., & Dolan, R.J. (2002). An fMRI study of intentional and unintentional (embarrassing) violations of social norms. 125, 1696-1708
Blair, R.J.R. & Cipolotti, L. (2000). Impaired social response reversal: A case of ‘acquired sociopathy’. Brain, 123, 1122-1141
Cohen, D., Nisbett, R.E., Bowdle, B.F., & Schwarz, N. (1996). Insult, aggression, and the Southern culture of honor: an “experimental ethnography.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70, 945 60
Frith, Chris D., & Frith, Uta Interacting Minds--A Biological Basis Science 1999 286: 1692-1695
Gallese, V., & Goldman, A. Mirror neurons and the stimulation theory of mind-reading. Trends Cogn. Sci. 2: 493-501, 1998.
Jackson, P.L., Meltzoff A., & Decety, J. (2004). How do we perceive the pain of others? A window into the neural processes involved in empathy. NeuroImage, 24, 771-779.
Lorenz, K. (1966). On aggression. New York, NY: Harcourt Brace and World.
Pinker, S (2002). The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, Viking Press.

Boycotts

2005-05-25T22:33:00.000Z

I imagine you are aware of the AUT proposed boycott against two Israeli universities, which is covered in excellent detail at Engage; I hope I need not state that I am (along with many others) utterly opposed to it. I was a signatory of a letter put out by David Hirsh, an academic who has been instrumental combatting the boycott from a reasoned left perspective. Today I attended a meeting organised by the anti-boycott meeting, which is described in brief below.

I was at the Public meeting against the boycott at University of London today; speakers there seemed confident the boycott would be overturned tomorrow with a fairly large majority. The underlying mood was that this was just one battle in a long war, another front being the motion soon being voted on by NATFHE - in this case for a straight boycott of all links between universities in the United Kingdom and those in Israel. There was also a mood of hope that the real left would shake up the 'pretend left' and the groupthink which has led a cartoon rendition of the complexities of the Middle East situation. Many speakers expressed solidarity with Palestinians and condemned current Israeli policy - this was truly no Trojan horse for neocon perspective - and to the extent it was raised, a plurality of opinion on Iraq.

What brought them together was opposition to the snaking, repeated attempts to shove through a discriminatory motion that draws a scar across the face of British academia, impedes the pursuit of knowledge, corrodes the good faith of Jews worldwide for causes of the left, and hurts the very institutions that are working their hardest to improve the sitation on the ground. (Who else are, like the lecturer from Bar Ilan, educating the next generation of civics teachers who will make both Israelis and Palestinian aware of the value of democracy?) Finally, as one attendee put astutely, what could more betray the spirit of a trade union than the endorsement of political tests in order to get jobs? If this boycott were a cheque you'd never get it to the Council floor - it wouldn't stop bouncing.

Election Livebloggers Unite!

2005-05-05T14:57:00.000Z

OK, so here they are:

The CY Election Liveblog Guide

If You've a Blacklist

See these lovely people for their inside scoop on the stuff thats being announced on tv anyway. Maybe not. But have it on as well, and get some extra info with added sarcasm. Ooh! Sarcasm! Thanks to Chicken Yoghurt for putting the resource together.

Oh and if you haven't voted, then vote. Or spoil a ballot at least. Don't be a not voter. I voted, and look at me!

Image, originally uploaded by disasauter.

Back from the Apple

2005-04-17T18:08:00.000Z

Back from an engrossing conference in the bright lights of NYC, with much to tell, in and out. John was an obliging guide (finding Tibetan food and the first issue of the new Peter David run on the Hulk are laudable achievements) and we covered a lot of ground over the scant six days. Also slid to New Jersey to see family, whichwas great fun and threw the urban nature of the rest of the trip into sharper relief. Got to catch up with some of Disa's friends including an acoustic gig by Hannah, and I even spent some time in a genuine American ER room. Verdict? It was quicker than I was used to (then again, it was a Sunday night) though the staff were atimes hurried and impersonal. Plus it cost a wee bit more (versus nothing). I'll probably post some stuff from the conference at Mindhacks - probably a summary of the memory reconsolidation symposium. If I can figure out how, I might put my poster up here if it interests anyone.

Oh, I saw The Edukators yesterday and thought it was pretty good. What drew me to see it as much as its theme (political activist/pranksters in crime-gone-wrong predicament) was the fact that Daniel BrÃ¼hl, who I had seen in the excellent Goodbye Lenin (playing an Alex, no less) looks uncannily like me. Apparently he walks like me, too... should I be worried? Or... should he?

Image, originally uploaded by Alex .

I have no recent photos, but compare to this , adding hair everywhere, and - well, not everywhere thanks very much - and you have as close to a match as I've endured.

Playing cards for really tiny stakes

2005-04-06T20:57:00.000Z

Yesterday marked my first visit to the Dana centre with my Audience Panel hat on (not as trendy as it sounds). The topic was nanotechnology with the format supplied by progressive economics foundation nef, in the form of their card game Democs - DEliberative Meeting Of CitizenS, apparently. I've been there only once before, for a discussion of measuring brain activity for lie detector purposes (we hit this topic at Mind Hacks); it's essentially a venue for public engagement with science, much like the presently dormant Cafe Scientifique at the ICA (however, it seems to have found a home at the Dana Centre, though quiet since January; check out your location to see if there is any action) and the nearby Darwin centre. In London you're well supplied for discussion and debate on science (why, not last month there was an illuminated talk by Messrs Stafford and Webb on cultivated perception at Foyles), but much of this depends on being in the know - the right mailing lists and so on.

This was the Dana centres first use of Democs, which is essentially a structured way to introduce information about a topic and have a discussion, and after the scheduled session those on the Panel were plumped into a focus group. Quick tip - if you're going to ask people to turn up at 6:20 and then end up keeping them til after 10pm, it would be nice to supply some food beyond olives and nuts, or tell them to eat first. Just sayin. On the focus group turns the future use of the game, so in some sense the future of public engagement with science, making what follows of breathtaking importance.

When we arrived the missus and myself were greeted and seated at a table with a bunch of other people; we were the only two with any priors, which could have been awkward if it were not for this stubborn flu (after 18 days I am entitled to call it that) rendering me impervious to social nicety. Drink orange juice, stare at pretty screens. The centre, which is an outgrowth of the British Science Museum, is a bright, flashy, multimedia bar, wherin organisers strut about in brittany-type headsets (strangely flesh-coloured, strikingly like face huggers in the moments where reality was flickering), but in a fairly accessible manner. It feels a little bit yo sushi, in the way that you could bring your folks there and have them bemused but impressed, rather than bewildered til they crack, clawing at their eyes as they stagger into the conforting outdoors. I know this is true because I have seen two sets of 'folks' through the experience without incident. That said, if that robot drinks waiter had appeared on the scene, it would have been touch and go.

The game, introduced at confusing length by the Head Brittany (HB), is all about arming people with knowledge about an issue and allowing them to discuss it in a safe space. The first part turned out fairly well. There was a short introduction to nanotech via HB and the screens, then after a quick riffle shuffle the first set of cards were doled out, each containing a key piece of info on the topic. Everyone at the table picked two cards to read out, and explained why they chose those. The rest went to the ~~graveyard~~ discard pile. It felt like a clever way to orient people to information, by making it interactive (rather than yet more facts over loudspeaker) and giving some direction through demanding selection of the best (by whatever criteria) facts; it also had a parallel role in icebreaking, as the whole group was forced through a process together, increasing cohesion, and had to back up their choices with reasons, revealing where each of us were coming from. For these reasons alone, the game as it stood showed enormous potential in facilitating genuine public engagement with a scientific issue that they could know little or nothing about prior to commencement. However, there were various issues that put the whole thing, well, out of whack.

The game did not lend itself well to discussion; in fact, it severely cramped it. Following the information round was an issues round, where in a similar fashion cards (this time denoting issues such as 'Who controls the uses of nanotechnology?' were distributed and each member spoke about two. This seemed to be the section in which debate and discussion ought to flow, yet it flat failed. The biggest issue was pragmatic; each section was on a fixed time regime, and we barely had time to read our choices out before we were cut short. This can be remedied, but for me more frustrating was the ground rules under which discussion must take place. The emphasis on a safe space, where debate (as opposed to consensus-forming) was actively discouraged, seemed to me entirely wrong-headed. It meant that the justifications for cards were weak and general- 'I think this is something we shouldn't neglect in this debate' and were never challenged, which left no obvious mechanism for winnowing down the multitude of perspectives supplied. Now, I think that discussion should have some kind of safe space in which to occur - I've written about it before, it underwrites the name of this blog, and some of my favorite sites (e.g. Obsidian Wings, Left2Right) enforce this with a resultant high calibre of discussion. Giving people time to speak, allowing quiet voices to be heard, civility, and the assumption that everyone is arguing in good faith seem to me entirely right and proper. (Of course, not everyone agrees.) But the use of counterfactuals, explicit disagreement, reduction ad absurdo or pointing to internal inconsistency seem to me worthwhile ways of challenging and developing opinion. These were approaches that the game did not give a space to.

To my mind this totally limited the utility of the game. The final stages wherein the cards preserved by the group were ammassed and sorted into different clusters was thought provoking but esperating, as no-one wanted to make too bold a decision yet there was no explicit accord on what was important, as we hadn't a chance to make a case and stake a claim. When we were then asked to quickly choose the cluster that the group agreed was most important, you could sense the shrug undulate across the table. This process did not yield that product.

So the game (as we played it) was flawed but certainly had its bright moments; I think it was an excellent way to introduce knowledge to a lay group and encourage participation between strangers. Within the focus group, various measures were suggested; one was the allocation of different story cards (expressing the situation and viewpoint of a relevant individual, such as a biomedic or a transhumanist) to different tables, as a starting point for debate; in our session the stories were simply read out back-to-back at the beginning, and didn't serve as more than a distraction. Another was fewer issue cards and more emphasis on debate from this stage (after the icebreaking), possibly applying these issues to the plight of the hypothetical character and building an argument pro or con. The main one was a lot more time, particularly by extending the game beyond the cluster ratings and final vote on opinions by encouraging people to stay on and debate at their table - in effect, that when the game ends the discussion really begins. Apparently our comments might lead to changes in the way it is used in future, which I would be very happy about. The evening was well worth turning up for (did I mention that, like most Dana Centre events, it's free?) and should you sit down for a game of Democs and it turns out rather well, just remember to thank me later. You're welcome!

Book report

2005-04-05T20:26:00.000Z

Currently reading The Screwtape letters while dipping into the works of HP Lovecraft. What with the ongoing and enduring cog-psych reading, I feel like C.S. Lewis is directly admonishing me when he writes [That devils] are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight. Quick! Roll against POW! And remember that free will is an epiphenomenon. No good; I'm going to hell, twice.

I am enjoying Screwtape quite a lot, though. Written from the POV of a senior devil corresponding to a naive nephew, it attempts to expose what Lewis feels is worthwhile in Christianity, from the vantage point of the other side, seeking to undermine it. For a polemic tract, I enjoy the humour, notably in Screwtape's counsel against expecting too much benefit from the jingoism of war:

The results of such fanciful hatred are often the most disappointing, and of all humans the English are in this respect the most deplorable milksops. They are creatures of that miserable sort who loudly proclaim that torture is too good for their enemes and then give tea and cigarettes to the first wounded German pilot who turns up at the back door.

I'd certainly like to thing that this holds true, and of the Western world generally - that the discussions of torture that exhude from the internet (both extremists and legal experts) is just expension of hot air.
...
Yikes! On further reading, I find he actually names the type - materialist magician, who go in for this sort of thing. Consider me named and shamed. In other book related news - the news being that I have or am reading them also - must continue to smear Lemony Snicket with all the good-time love he undoubtedly deserves. After a mammoth two-month-odd sojourn through Michael Moorcock's Mother London (verdict: good, and in parts immensely rewarding, but a bit of a schlep; even as a Londoner I got lost in some of the descriptions and areas) I got my synapse candy through books 4-6 of Snicket's ...Unfortunate Events. It's not just the stories, it's the style, the fun that isn't aimed over the heads of kids, like some of the recent family films seem to be (I see ya Shrek, and I heard it in spades about Sharks Tale) but squarely at them, forcing them to duck and cover, then appreciate. So obviously, right at my level. Take this:

If you were to take a plastic bag and place it inside a large bowl, and then, using a wooden spoon, stir the bag around and around the bowl, you could use the expression "a mixed bag" to describe what you had in front of you, but you would not be using the expression in the same way I am about to use it now.

And while you're taking this, take that!! From another thumbed but unfinished novel, The Pleasure Of My Company from cerebral clown Steve Martin, sharing a gentle tale of an uncommon person who just happens to have OCD:

Thinking too much also creates the illusion of causal connections between unrelated events. Like the morning the toaster popped up just as a car drove by with Arizona plates. Connection? Or coincidence? must the toaster be engaged in order for a car with Arizona plates to come by? The problem, of course, is that I tend to behave as if these connections were real, and if a car drives by with plates from, say, Nebraska, I immediately eyeball the refrigerator to see if its door has swung open.

I also just got Dave Eggers' How We Are Hungry, chunks of palatable short fiction, and have Kenan Malik's Man, Beast and Zombie moaning to be read. My brain hungers for zombies...

It takes work to think the way you want, not think what you want

2005-04-03T19:26:00.000Z

As a kid, I was clothed in cast-offs, bikeless and warned off sweets, but none of that sweated me too much, as I was indulging with abandon my overriding hunger for knowing all kinds of stuff. I decimated my junior school library with 18 months still on the cards, and ended up purloining books from the middle school. Animals existed to be petted, sure, but also to be filed away in taxonomies alongside Latin names and habitats. And television smuggled me maths, hostory and science. I wasn't a special kid, nor an angel; this was merely my preferred brand of sensation seeking. I soaked up the environment through words and concepts, rather than through joints, tendons and the arc a falling ball makes across the retina. (I.e. I was a bit of a geek.) Truly questioning what came in came later, as is with everyone; I began to question my faith, and to appreciate what I was told was not always the truth, from the obfuscation of politicians to the sleight of hand of teachers to the unreliable narrator. But I realise that many of those candidates for independent thought were carried as much by what I learnt - that the conceptual environment was driving me as much as me it. (This is the point where I would shift to discussing memes, if I was in the mood to cloud a discussion with tragically hip jargon.) My capacity to doubt Creation stories as literally true was only installed by access to credible alternatives, and explicit thought experiments to what the traditions I had learned would actually entail. These gifts were given to me through science and fiction, which is perhaps why I hold both so dear.

Now, the danger of the information driving is that you take some naps during the ride, and you're not in total control of the route, binding you to missing some pretty important scenery. One book begs for another to be read, one revealed truth gestures coyly to another, and before you know it you are happily ensconsed in your fortress of solitude with an impervious worldview. If you can't change your mind, are you sure you still have one? Of course, to slide the other way, well,that way lies indecisive Dave (minor but feted Fast Show character). And since most philosophers have given up on the idea of a truly objective privileged perspective, I hope you won't mind that I do the same. What I have, instead, are some means by which I live my mental and moral life. They are not much, but I owe to them all of what little I have in either regard. Namely:

faith in reason
respect for evidence
core beliefs - sentience has intrinsic value, people should not be treated instrumentally
the preparedness to question

As to how these interact, I'm quite happy to concede that there is no formula at work. Even if I had one, I don't think I would actually operate by it. Reason and evidence carry me most of the way through my day-to-day cognitive existence, with a certain set of background beliefs that generally aren't appraised. They are, however, amenable to appraisal, and I can (and have) shifted my positions on them. The core beliefs are those that I would like to think I would retain even if someone made me a watertight argument against them. I am well aware of the fallibility of the mind generally, and mine specifically, and I could not regard myself a moral being if a figure of however superior intellect could, through 'proving' that slavery was ok, headlock me into agreeing.

All that said, I guess I'm a fairly typical left-winger, reminding me of that complaint about political philosophers that the top down systems they model turn out 9 times out of 10 to be a validation of some bottom-up system that's been in play just fine without them. Having said that, my scientific optimism brought me full-face against the spirit of the left regarding GM technology, and it brought home how 'your side' can be composed of orthodoxies too. Since then it's become clear to me just how rough around the edges some circles in the left are (and perhaps ever have been); I should stress again that this is less epiphanies on my part than the streaming of diverse information.

This post is not to chart my political trajectory, although for the record I guess I'm a moderate, liberal social democrat, though I suspect my epistemological materialism coupled with my teleological spiritualism earmark me for some positions some might deem extreme. Yet while I am moored in things I value, would fight for, which sustain me, I keep myself as free-floating as possible, as I nknow my more contingent beliefs, the things that are important to me principally because they are true and accord with my fundamental principles, must avoid ossification for them to be worth anything. To that end, the question must be a weapon, not against those who threaten your beliefs, but to test and probe those beliefs itself.

This is why I am angered by the erosion and inversion of this principle presented in the blogs regarding the Lancet study of late 04. (Here + here, if you want to tast it first hand; snippets from a ongoing war really.)The publication of the paper on Iraqi deaths due to the war generated many questions among war supporters, but not the right kind. Often just referred to as the Lancet study, as if the journal came into being just for the purpose of this study and poofed away after, it is clear that for many critics this is the first scientific paper, or certainly epidimiological study, that they have come across. This didn't stop the cascade of mud slung at at, their methodology rubbished, their statistics misunderstood, their motives impugned. It has now become a canard to refer to it as discredited, dubious, biased or just plain wrong, when it is none of these things, and appears a quality piece of research. Few of the critiques provided any light, and fewer still were meant to do so - this was purely "throw enough shit and see what sticks", writ large. If it were not for a few patient and painstaking (particularly for me Dsquared, but also Tim Lambert and Chris Lightfoot ) bloggers with the expertise to systematically wipe away the untruths and rebut the accusations, the effect would be ever more complete.

It dismays me that people are so willing to bend the information to fit with their beliefs. I guess I come at it a different way, or one could argue that the stance on Iraq is a core belief for some. I know it's not for me; I marched against it before it happened, but now am cautiously optimistic for the future, and readily concede that it may turn out to have been worth it, even factoring in the deaths (note: we're nowhere near the point where that judgment could possibly be made). It dismays me that questioning, a means I rate vital for mental life, can be subordinated to leash that boat flush against the quay. If you're willing to make the conclusion that medical journals accept politically motivated propaganda, that medical researchers produce it, and that peer review accepts it, in order to maintain your preferred perspective on events, then any evidence you don't agree with can be similarly wished away. Everything is true that I want to be true. It stikes me that this has some resonance with Hilzoy's post on Obsidian Wings entitled "Hatred is a Poison" - one of the best posts I have read this year, as it happens; she notes how through the prism of partisanship your opponents, and eventually yourself, are rendered despicable. My point here is through that prism, or one much like it, evidence and reason are subordinated to the will of belief.

The term 'reality-based community' entered the blogging vocabulary a while back after a member of the US administration poo-poohed such an entity as antithetical to its purpose. I realise this is not the pastiche I thought it was. No-one will admit to not being reality-based, of course, and pride in reason and science is not the birthright of either side of the political divide. But you can talk the talk, and exult reason and enquiry above all else, and use them as weapons to obscure and undermine the true picture. It's a creationist tactic: what about the eye? What about this molecule? Evolution is just a theory... until you create the appearance of two different camps, and consequently no consensus. Ditto warming. I'm not exempting the left, as GM and to some extent nuclear have infuriated me for years (if the left got on board these projects, and demanded accountable technologies developed for and in the hands of those who need them, the impact would likely be tremendous). But this wholesale comtempt for views that don't gel with preconceived beliefs has characterised this current US administration (see my post here and is found in full force in people who seem otherwise reasonable, and talk up science in other capacities. It's unscrupulous, and reeks of a deadening of the mind. That the site designated blog of the year by time magazine denies evolution augurs terribly for the future.

Crikey

2005-03-27T19:30:00.000Z

Major internet deficit this holiday weekend. Once real life returns, I'll post a fairly lengthy piece about my fundamental principles. Wait, I have principles? Anyway, it all links inito evidence and poisoning the discourse, and it's tangentally inspired by this post which is far better than anything I would write anyway, so go ahead. I'm virus woozy anyway.

Penny in the link bank (balance: ₤0.06)

2005-03-22T21:45:00.000Z

The swop system for courses at a law school leads to trouble when students start offering hard cash for a coveted course option: link. One students posting at the swop forum says it all:

a spot in neuborne's evidence: $500.
one year's tuition at nyu law: $38,000.
proving every existing lawyer stereotype right: priceless.

Penny in the link bank (balance: ₤0.05)

2005-03-22T00:33:00.000Z

I've become a convert to using index cards to organise my life, as a quick and dirty alternative to a PDA (Psion, Blackberry, etc). Here is a guide to really, really making the most of such a system, replete with visual examples using flickr: link

Efficiency

2005-03-20T21:52:00.000Z

..has dropped a little on this front, but in a war on many fronts, sacrifices are made. Back to the business - the business of productivity maximisation.
(Sing along - 'theyyyre's no bizness....')

43 folders is the best source of information for how to make your work and leisure more efficient, whilst perversely being an ideal place to while away a lot of time that could have been better spent doing other stuff. From a typically tip-packed post , I am particularly in agreement with this:

Standarize your Subject lines - I think well-crafted email subject lines are largely a lost art today. Back in the day, people would use them like IMs, creating a message where the Subject line could stand as a request or answer all by itself. No more. I know I’m guilty of my share of “Subject: Hi” emails to be sure. We all are. But good subjects can save tons of time when used correctly and consistently. Whenever I manage projects, I encourage everyone to start the subject line for all project emails with the same 4-6 letter code. Spacely Sprockets’ project emails might start with “SPROCK,” for example. This makes filtering a breeze and helps you visually organize your inbox more quickly, especially when you work with a given person across several projects.

Yes, yes, a dozen times yes. Another tip I would give is to use gmail, or any kind of email system with threadable conversations, to group circumscribed projects cleanly and simply. For those who aren't familiar, when you get a reply to a message in gmail, or reply to a message, these are paired together in your inbox: If Sam asks "Let's meet at 6. where shall we?" and I reply "Foyles on Charing Cross Road", then the inbox will read 'Sam(2)' and clicking will reveal a page with both messages displayed in chronological order, making it a snap for me to refresh myself of all the salient facts. This stacking will persevere as long as somone doesn't change the header or send a new mail rather than replying.

I've done this on a larger scale with my projects I am running with students. I've got 4 groups of roughly 3 students each, and with those numbers the inbox can get peppered with responses that may or may not be labelled or placed in folders, leading to a high tendency to disorder. So when the first group approached me, I gmailed them with "miniprojects" as a header, and asked them to keep to correspondence by replying to this account. When other students started applying for the projects, I forwarded/replied to the first groups response, deleting their email and the email content and sending it to the new students. Soon I had conversations with four sets of students, identifiable by the "To" header information, all in one chronological thread, with my outgoing messages placed in order amongst them.

It's now come a bit adrift as people have been sending fresh emails. I suspect they are inclined to do so because they are not using threaded conversations themselves, so the advantage isn't really there (I also must admit I have broken the chain on one occasion - still need to train myself into it). But it has proven enormously helpful, especially when trying to organise multiple meetings that were interdependent without losing where I was. The utility of having causal linkage between mail is massive for me - no more hopping from inbox to outbox to verify what the hell I had said in the first place.

In the comments to that post, Tyler Weir shares a nice idea:

Adding useful text to the subject line is a great time saver. At work we commonly do something like this: "Working from home today: 555-555-1234 [nt]" Where "[nt]" stands for "no text." That way you tell the recipient they don't even have to open it.

Also in that post is some wise advice about preparing for illness.

Create a sick box - Make up a little box filled with all the stuff you'll want fast access to on the next morning you wake up with a cold. TheraFlu, cough drops, fresh box of Kleenex, unwatched DVD you've been saving, a nice trashy novel, and the phone numbers of anyone you'd need to contact at work. Believe me, you're in no mood to collect this crap when you wake up with the flu kicking your ass.

Perhaps I should make another list of things to prepare before you get a mighty arm tattoo: hoover, wash-up etc because you won't be doing any of that for a while, buy a hundredweight of burn cream, work out some way to sleep at night that doesn't end up with your sticky arm bonded to your vest. OK, I've creeped everybody out now.

Penny in the link bank (balance: ₤0.04)

2005-03-14T22:46:00.000Z

Trick your goldfish into feeling free. Link

Readership

2005-03-13T14:37:00.000Z

I realised something somewhat depressing. To the extent that some people do stumble across my site through google (and despite the fact that this may become a rarer source of readership for blogs thanks to changes in the way google appears to rank sites: link), does this mean my swell of random traffic excludes those people who can spell coup correctly? If so, at least I don't have to worry about jibes from anonymous grammar police. Eat, shoot and kiss my face.

Penny in the link bank (balance: ₤0.03)

2005-03-11T17:14:00.000Z

What the different UK political parties offer, from a humanist perspective: link. Article by Nick Cohen, followed by party positions.

Through the k-hole

2005-03-10T22:13:00.000Z

Note: this post will go up at 12pm Friday at www.mindhacks.com.

What do squat parties in Brixton, vetinarians in Buckinghamshire, and cereals in Budgens have in common?* The answer, of course, is Special K.**

Ketamine is a tranquillising agent that was widely used until patients began to complain of its hallucinogenic effects, which they experienced when coming out of sedation. Not too fun. Except, of course, for those who take it for pleasure - of whom, according to ongoing research by Mixmag magazine and the Institute of Psychiatry, there have been more than a fourfold increase between 1999 and 2003. Apart from this population, the drug is still administered as a tranquilliser for animals, and also young children for whom the trippy effects don't seem to occur. Notably, after Putin banned the drug in Russia in 2003, Bridget Bardot campaigned for a reversal, on the basis that it would result in more suffering for animals; whether the implications for children were weighed is not on record, but in any case Russia reversed the ban in '04. Notably, the drug is not illegal in the EU, and whilst a controlled substance is low down in priority, at least in the eyes of the law. But if you're an ocassional taker, or curious about it, I suggest you read further, to get the skinny on the cognitive neuropsychopharmacology of ketamine.

My friend and colleague Celia Morgan has been doing her PhD on the cognitive effects of ketamine with Val Curran at UCL; Prof Curran gave a presentation about this last month; again, some is not yet published (although some is, and if you use Google Scholar you should be able to get your hands on some abstracts, at least).

To give the basic neurochemistry, ketamine is an nMDA antagonist - this means it acts on a specific type of neural receptor in the brain, the nMDA receptor, found throughout the brain but particularly in the cortex, and it act by suppressing its normal activity (whilst an agonist would boost it). This leads to an excessive release of the neurotransmitter glutamate. This lays a case for a possible harmful effect of ketamine: nMDA antagonists have been shown to disrupt long-term potentiation (the neural mechanism by which learning takes place in the brain). And the receptors are particularly heavily distributed in memory-critical areas such as the hippocampus and surrounding areas, which means adverse effects are likely to impact on memory.

Moreover, clinical reports document that being on ketamine produces symptoms very similar to those seen in schizophrenia. The similarities have been so striking as to contribute to a shift away from purely dopaminergic models of schizophrenia to nMDA hypofunction models, which suggest that glutamate as well as dopamine are responsible for the abnormal function of the schizotypic brain. (see e.g. Olney and Farber 1997).

Morgan and Curran have been investigating this using cognitive and neuropsychological testing, alongside clinical-style inventories of schizotypic symptoms and thoughts. One aspect of their research uses healthy people, dosed up with ketamine. Relative to doses of placebo, ketamine-addled subjects were impaired across a variety of tasks - short-term memory, attention, and problem solving. They also gave higher ratings when asked to score a number of schizophrenic-type experiences, such as such as 'The world does not feel real to me'.

Anyone investigating specific populations (like patients, drug users or people with developmental disorders), rather than imposing different conditions on a generic population, will tell you nightmares of exclusion criteria, control group selection and so on. The difficulty with ketamine users is that they invariably take a lot more than ketamine - cocaine, weed, ecstacy and even more obscure drugs. Their solution was to accept poly-drug users in the ketamine group - and to match with a control group of poly-drug users, who had never done ketamine. In effect, this is a subtraction technique, similar to the kind that underlies many imaging studies (activation difference between complex and baseline tasks shows you the activation due to the processes unique to the complex task), and underlies much of the presuppositions of cognitive neuropsychology.

Compared to this control group, ketamine users were poorer on days following their drug intake, and still poorer three days afterward. As ketamine has a very short half-life, it seems fair evidence that this may represent neural degeneration (already established in laboratory work - Olney et al 1998), rather than active effects of the drug. (To make sure of this, they also compared subjects from their non-chronic use experiment after three days, and the placebo and ketamine group were not performing at different levels.) Their poorer performance was shown on tests of source memory, story recall, verbal fluency (being able to list words of a specific criteria rapidly) and speed of semantic processing (what things mean). They also, needless to say, showed higher ratings of schizotypic type symptoms. A follow-up study on a sample of former chronic users is also a window into how enduring these effects are; changes in certain measures were heavily correlated with changes in ketamine intake, but many others, including the schizotypic symptoms, continued to persevere. What is perhaps the most ominous of the findings is the apparent irreversability of the impairment produced in episodic memory (personal memories of events and instances), and possibly also attention.

Abstract of paper on healthy individuals link
Abstract of longitudinal paper in Addiction link

*Non-UK readers, insert your own amusing locations (to wit: lively if rough urban area; rural dull spot; corner-store-cum-supermarket). Once you have done this, laugh appreciatively, and wonder at the marvel of international collaboration. Truly, is there nothing we cannot do?

** I hasten to add that Special K the cereal is not in any way hallucinogenic, unless you can hallucinate from eating damn fine flakes. Of maize!

Penny in the link bank (balance: ₤0.02)

2005-03-09T23:20:00.000Z

Checkout the webcomics here (click on either archive and start from the beginning): link. More and more you can see the potential for this medium - the style and colours that the bright young things are starting to pull off are cracking.

Penny in the link bank (balance: ₤0.01)

2005-03-08T21:46:00.000Z

I'd never heard of Oblique Strategies before, but apparently Brian Eno and friend, the artist Peter Schmidt (I'm beginning to sound like Joe Friday here no?) put together their working principles, which were often whimsical and out there, into a deck of cards as inspiration. There is an online oblique-generator at this link.

Something familiar, Something peculiar, Something for everyone: A policy tonight!*

2005-03-07T18:12:00.000Z

Posting policy, that is.

This whole blogposting thing has become increasingly slackadesical, and I'm the first to admit that. Mainly because the poverty of posting means there's no-one else to do the admitting. The ridiculous thing is I have a stack of things to talk about, but they just get furled up or store away in a text file (normally a never-to-be-sent email, which I find functions quite nicely as an on-the go appendable list).

My attempt at a remedy is this: one post every three days, while offering comment free linkage on other days. That is, a one-liner like "Sebastian really hits it with this post: {link}" or "This story describes some interesting biotech developments, but there is some sinister goings on: {link}. Copyright of biological materials is going too far". If I am in danger of spilling over into more, even a paragraph, I'll finish it off and shelve it for the next post day, and replace with a link instead (hell, there's millions of them). Link days may have more than one link, and may quote where appropriate. The Glenn Reynolds model of blogging, I guess. Items that 'only' get a link may later get upgraded to a post, in that I think of some interesting angle that I want to add. This counts as a post, so two link days to come. Goodies every day, with a personal touch as regular as I can make it.

===============================
*With apologies to Stephen Sondheim

I'm in the wrong line of research (A continuing series)

2005-02-18T11:15:00.000Z

This is so good I just have to reproduce it verbatim::

Unskilled and unaware of it: How difficulties in recognizing one's own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments.
by Kruger, Justin; Dunning, David
from Journal of Personality & Social Psychology. 1999 Dec Vol 77(6) 1121-1134

People tend to hold overly favorable views of their abilities in many social and intellectual domains. The authors suggest that this overestimation occurs, in part, because people who are unskilled in these domains suffer a dual burden: Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it. Across 4 studies, the authors found that participants scoring in the bottom quartile on tests of humor, grammar, and logic grossly overestimated their test performance and ability. Although their test scores put them in the 12th percentile, they estimated themselves to be in the 62nd. Several analyses linked this miscalibration to deficits in metacognitive skill, or the capacity to distinguish accuracy from error. Paradoxically, improving the skills of the participants, and thus increasing their metacognitive competence, helped them recognize the limitations of their abilities.

Hat tip to the ever-mocking John

Just so you know

2005-02-14T23:18:00.000Z

fradera_alex, originally uploaded by Alex Fradera.

This is me, sorta. Me of three years ago, so more or less me - less hair, more innocence, I imagine.

Don't let other people get in the way of a good idea

2005-02-07T16:49:00.000Z

Julian Baggini talks about a phenomenon, here, which I imagine many people likely to read this have encountered, of forming substantive and functional relationships through the internet. By this I don't mean on-line social forums like Friendster, Myspace and hi5 (although I'm not knocking them either - they seem fun, if a bit of a time drain, and if I were single I'm sure it would be an outlet for a bit of wishful thinking: a venezualan supermodel-jetski racer! And we're connected through bobs mate tonys mate steves acquaintance tim. It's onnnnnn. ). Dr B is remarking on the work and productive partnerships that can arise when people have never met, and seem all to the good for that. As he puts it

... online collaborations can be supremely efficient. The qualities I identified in my co-author, Peter S Fosl, which made him a good collaborator, were all manifest in our email communications and in his work. He was knowledgeable, clear, flexible, enthusiastic about communicating ideas and responsive to suggestions and advice. What more did I need to know? Whether he liked his lattes skinny?

I can cheerfully second this, as it's precisely how my involvement with Mind Hacks began. I only knew Tom from his website: assured, stylish and highly informative. When, after some purely pixel-based interaction, he offered me the chance to get involved in a project he was in, I jumped at the chance. If I had known that he is, like me, a guy who wears t-shirts and eats at Thai veggy buffets, I would have recoiled in horror. Well, I wouldn't, but for the job at hand (contributing to a neuroscience fun-guide) person-to-person contact was unneccessary for me to make the judgments. Having said that, if a professional relationship was the main, formal game, then meeting in person translates to those bonus levels on Mario games that are just as vital as the game itself.

While writing this, I began to consider whether this argument holds for well-defined tasks like writing book sections according to a specified format, but not for open-ended development, like (say) free-forming the future of a fresh or neonatal project. Then I realised: hey, someone's done some experimental work on this- and it's me!

I exaggerate for gut-wrenchingly comic effect, of course. Brainstorming research from the 50's onwards was shown that groups underperform relative to the sum of what they produce individually, both at producing ideas 1 and retrieving memory content 2, and don't seem to produce emergent new memories. A common explanation for this is social loafing 3 the term coined for the free riding that occurs when responsibility is diffused amongst a variety of agents. A related issue is production blocking, where the delays people face before speaking may lead to them to forget their ideas, or supress them because they seem less relevant or original later. Often good intentions of facilitators of group discussions may compound this, by enforcing turn-taking or other systems that might in the interests of balance interfere with fluidity and hence output. (Of course, output may not be the most valued measure, and in some cases, such as a focus group it might make sense to privilege balance over prolificity.)

This dim view of mass brainstorming is tempered by findings that its negative effect attenuates when a dyad (group of two) is made up of good friends or partners 4; the explanation offered is that individuals have a 'cognitive style' that people can become familiar with, so when one is on a roll the other doesn't interject, or can pick up and develop vague wavings into something genuinely useful. And if you send your mind a'thinking down this merry alley, the level of performance should be due not merely to the interactors but the interaction.

As the mind goes, so the research proposals follow, and a group of researchers 5 successfully eliminated the output shortfall produced by group colloboration by mediating their interaction through a computer-based file-sharing procedure. Through this participants were offered questions to which they could append comments; they could then view other comments and append comments to that. Production blocking was eliminated because one can immediately respond with ideas without interruption, and even though some degree of social loafing could still have been operating to impair performance, groups did better than the sum of the efforts of their members working alone, and increasingly so for larger groups. The 'me' bit of all this was some undergrad work I carried out extending this effect to collaborative memory, rather than ideas, and showing that two heads can be better than one, if they interact in this fashion. Not my idea, I was under the tutelage of John McCarthy, who I haven't seen for ages but whose site confirms he is still doing fun stuff, which is actually pretty Mindhackish. Hmmm. Maychance I'll give him a buzz sometime....

With good reason, other people have picked up the ball with this work and run with it.This paper, for example, details a computer environment in which people can contribute to solving or exploring questions, in a more sophisticated manner. And in a sense, we are all already converts to this perspective, no? Who can doubt that, for all the noise in amongst the signal, that the interated and interconnected debate you can find in a blog comment thread allows for the screening of useful ideas in a way that a face-to-face argument would rarely do? Putting aside the availability of such variety of viewpoints and information that the internet provides, there is a good case that it's developing in such a way to structurally promote the flourishing of new ideas in a way that has never been universally achievable before.

Clearly I'm not bringing up anything new here, and I think Eldan,Tom and Matt would have a lot more to say about this, which I would love. I just felt like mapping out a geneology of the research that lines up with these changes in our information and interaction environment.

1 Lamm, H., Trommsdorff, G.(1973). Group versus individual performance on tasks requiring ideational proficiency (brainstorming): A review. European-Journal-of-Social-Psychology, 3(4), 361-388.
2 PR Meudell, P.R., Hitch, G.J., Kirby, P. (1992). Are two heads better than one? Experimental investigations of the social facilitation of memory. Applied Cognitive Psychology.
3 Steiner, I.D. (1972). Group process and productivity. Academic Press, New York.
4 Wegner,D.M., Erber, R., Raymond,P.(1991). Transactive memory in close relationships. Journal-of-Personality-and-Social-Psychology, 61(6), 923-929
5 Valacich,J.S., Dennis,A.R., Connolly, T.(1994). Idea generation in computer-based groups: A new ending to an old story. Organizational-Behavior-and-Human-Decision-Processes, 57(3), 448-467

Knowledge Nuggets - Original Recipe

2005-01-25T17:50:00.000Z

This project here probably has some sputtering into their creme brulee, but the idea of compressing great works of philosophy whilst retaining the "in their own words" attraction of going to the originals is a wonderful thing. The pitch, itself compressed to it's standout points is

There is no taking-part in the 'Great Debate' of Western civilisation, the debate about who we are, how we should be governed, how we think and how we ought to behave, without some familiarity with the, remarkably few, thinkers in whose language and idiom the talk is conducted....So, here are the most used, most quoted, the most given, sources of the West. The books that have defined the way the West thinks now, in their author's own words, but condensed and abridged into something readable....it becomes possible to read the whole thing as a single narrative, as the story of Western Thought

The story of Western Thought in a month of lunchtimes? That's got to be the ultimate democratisation of information. More power to us.

First m'Hacks post up m'lud

2005-01-25T17:48:00.000Z

Go here to see my account of what Ian Penton-Voak has to say about Personality in the Face. It's kind of fun.

Mindhacks

2005-01-22T19:27:00.000Z

I'm up on Mind Hacks now - my intro post is here, and I should be a creature feature on the site in the future. And, if you're coming here from the site, then welcome and look around. And I know it's a terrible design. That's why Matt is a web guy, and I'm a neurosciency guy. Only Matt knows tons about neuroscience too. And Tom has a great looking site.

But they can't do this, can they
[does intricate footshimmy]

Didn't think so.

The greats

2005-01-10T17:49:00.000Z

"Vote for the greatest cartoons", C4 urges. Ok, I say, breezily. "Thanks - now we'll do one of those annoying top 100 programs you hate so much!" Damn you, I snarl. Why didn't you warn me before I wasted my time? "Actually, the page was clearly labelled to that effect, Alex." Ah. yes. Well, at least it means I'll be able to watch tons of clips of cartoons, rather than faded popstars talking about how it was a crazy time for everyone. "If you had a TV." If I had a TV.

My (unranked) ten votes were for

Akira - Obviously - broke anime from its ghetto in the West, and unprecedented in its scale and technical achievements anywhere. Just a wow piece of work.
Battle of the Planets - Bizarre and totally of my youth, I wonder whether footage will be shown, as I suspect it is now nestled somewhere within my body cavity, shaping my future and making me walk a little funny.
Dungeons & Dragons - Just because I still really, really want to find the Dungeons and Dragons ride - and for the end music. But seriously, it was a perfectly constructed quest comic, onscreen, every week.
King of the Hill - For being so genuine, and so genuinely funny, that it makes the world a better place.
Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies - With a catch-all like this, how could you not? You may have hated half the characters, but there was always one, right? I'm partial to a bit of Duck, myself.
Powerpuff Girls - For being the perfect exemplar of nu-cartoon - a splash of kid-anime, a does of retro, sardonic, peppy and a-ok by me.
The Ren and Stimpy Show - For being horrible genius.
The Simpsons - I shouldn't need to justify this.
Who Framed Roger Rabbit? - Mainstream cartoons for adults? Would we even be asking these questions if RR hadn't come along? Well, yes, but this sure smoothed the ride, a wonderful work of pizazz, imagination, and attention to both period and the medium. Acting to imaginary weasels as a hard boiled american private dick sent our Bob 'oskins a bit loopy, which considering the cockney horror that Dick van Dyke inflicted in a similar format some 30-odd years before with no apparent damage seems mighty unfair.
The Wind in the Willows - A bit of bias here, as my aunt wrote the screen-play, but this is a wonderful work - puppetry/stop motion rather than cartoon, and showing the power of those models to convey pathos, warmth and danger.

They have suggestions for what should be added, but this proves rather difficult for my floaty-lite memory; what to do but rehash childhood favorites, or list animes that 'ought' to be seen ad nauseum? I went for

Cities of Gold
Nightmare Before Christmas
South Park the movie (They have the main series, but I would vote for this as a separate, splendiforous effort)
The Raccoons
I am not an animal (as much a cartoon as south park is, and truly twisted)

Any thoughts on obvious stuff I am missing? Clearly my cartoon archives need updating.

The very best of (part of) 2004

2004-12-29T13:33:00.000Z

A very small part, alas.

This week, I have been mostly

playing with Emacs, LaTeX and R; more fool me, I suppose, but the depth of my disillusionment with MSWord shows no signs of stopping, and with a XXX-page thesis to right over the next 10 months, now is the time to make the (free) plunge. Better earlier, but still. If this resonates with your inner spell-checker, then read this and muse (or see PDF here).
Reading - I will have a fuller booklist when I hit my post-present stride, but for now I should commend
Kukla, Andre (2001). Methods of theoretical psychology. Cambridge MA: MIT Press. UK / US
for managing to set me straight about the flaws in induction, the lack of a rationale for preferring simpler theories and several other 'smell the coffee' moments without freaking me out in the process
Baggini, Julian (2004). What's It All About? GRANTA UK / US
for cool analysis, warmly given, that reassures me that maybe I have, roughly, got it sort of, well, right...
eating. Apparently, the new posh Christmas lunch is a turkey stuffed with a chicken stuffed with a duck stuffed with a pigeon stuffed with hundreds of scorpions. Ok, so not the last bit. Anyway, Sunday pm I knew what they were going through. Is it bad when you sweat gravy?

Speaking of anyway, I'm ditching the crisp cheeriness of December London in favour of heatless, foreboding Stockholm, realm of the ice-bears. I'll catch y'all in '05.

Bias - prejudice or orientation?

2004-12-09T18:32:00.000Z

Harry’s Place links to a comment from a blog called Iraq the Model , outlining his general lack of contact with left-wing weblogs. Various people ponder the significance of this – is the state of the Iraqi people not of interest to the left?

I want to address why such an imbalance might be so, but should note that it may not be true, that is, it may not generalize. The blog in question has a linkslist which could be enough to send me away with a shudder on a bad day (I’m prepared to give anything a try, but some sites just reek of unpleasantness, and have too low a signal-noise ratio to be worth bothering with), and a cursory click through the archives encounters the tired conservative smear that if you criticize the war, you are betraying the memory of the dead troops . Maybe it’s generally of a better pallor than that, but it doesn’t augur well. Given people tend to link to birds of a feather (unless it’s for the purposes of derision), this may mean a whole lot of very little.

But let’s beg the question for the time being, and assume that the spectrum of politics (barring position on the war) of Iraqis that blog maps across left and right sensibilities. Why might we see more links from the right than the left?

Well, take me. I fall left, broadly speaking, and I don’t link to Iraqi blogs. In fact, I don’t warblog. Be happy that I don’t! My knowledge on the subject is not enough to produce interesting copy for you, my loyal ~~readers~~ reader. I’m interested in what goes on, and I try to follow it within my abilities, alongside manifold other world events.

Such a position isn’t really available to the good-faith pro-war blogger. Being pro-war impels one to be extensively involved in it, both during and the aftermath. Anything less would be both irresponsible and immoral; this applies to any major project – you wouldn’t install a funfair in a public area without seeing that it was desired and safe, and ensure that its impact was observed – but particularly one where the moral calculus involves justifying the killing of people. The onus doesn’t work quite the other way; much like religion, even the faithful must admit they are non-believers more often than not (if not, what’s your opinion on Chad, Guinea, Uzbekistan, Indonesia…the moons of Jupiter?). Hence there are many people who did not support the war, and for whom Iraq, though important, is one issue, not the issue.₁

As a consequence, this group (which includes myself) has no special desire to immerse itself in info about Iraq. Genuine news about the situation is going to be attended to, but Iraqi man on the street saying “today I felt safe, and a soldier was nice to me” isn’t information high on my premium. I have a stake in Iraq, as we all do in the long term, but I have a stake in a lot of other places, too. However, if I was pro-war then I would have far more staked in Iraq than on most other issues, and be hungry for confirming evidence of the arguments that led me to advocacy in the first place. Investment is asymmetrical between the pro and anti war camps, and seeing as the architects of the war were on the right, and the party most firmly behind it the Republicans, the pro-war population skews decidedly right (notwithstanding whether there are good left-wing reasons for supporting the war, as HP has argued). And as hits from these factions accrue, you’re going to see the predictable ingroup feeding frenzy in which big names cite a source and it trickles down to all the little fish. Iraqi blog X makes a comment that seems like it might undercut former candidate Kerry, Superblog links with a “heh, indeed! Kerry’s out of touch with the Iraqi people”, and X hits the reading lists of 50 foot soldiers.₂

So this putative imbalance doesn’t surprise me so very much, as the pro-war camp should be invested most in Iraq. Of course, in a perfect world, we’d all be fully informed about Iraq, and Sudan, and Kazakhstan. But we can’t, and there seems to be a sensible case for a difference in how we allocate our resources contingent on one’s stance toward the particular issues. Oh, that I could know it all about Iraq! But as Theodore Zeldin₃
said,

What to do with too much information is the great riddle of our time

And sadly, I’ve just added to that.

1 There is another section which I can’t account for: the anti-war brigade for whom Iraq IS the issue – the nemesis of the self-proclaimed pro warriors. Are they silent on the thoughts of the Iraqis? Could it be that they consider the musings of guys with websites secondary to general measures (deathcounts etc), and if so is this a shortcoming (ignoring personal testimony) or an advantage (a focus on the verified facts)? Or are there other sources that the Iraqiblogger/prowarblog axis simply doesn’t cover? I’m curious.

2 Furthermore, this may well form a positive feedback loop. If X gets a sudden influx of readers for saying something that gels with a core blog readership, lots of things happen. Cynically, they may feel that stance needs to be consolidated to maintain these readers, and to auger more recommendations. Emotionally, they are going to feel kinship with those people who are responding enthusiastically to what they wrote, which may lead to a genuine willingness to overstate similarities and minimize differences (your standard in-group/out-group process). Rationally, they may feel impelled to go back to those linking sites and check them out, thus being exposed to arguments, conceits and framing of issues that place them further in this camp. So one might imagine a centrist (or even centre-left) local blog-zone becoming ideologically gentrified due to special attention from the right end of the blogosphere. Now, that has to be a sentence no-one has written before. Combinatorial language system, I salute you! UPDATE: Aspects of this (mainly the first and perhaps second processes) go by the fantastic slogan of "Feeding the Beast", as I have recently been reminded.

3 Thanks to Tom, Matt and the amazing Mind Hacks for orientating me to this quote in the sea of bits in which it swims.

In Print

2004-12-09T18:25:00.000Z

The book is out, and it is beautiful!!! I got my copy today and ran round the building showing it to people who probably had much better things to do. But I’m a writer now, so screw em. Screw em all.

Sorry, I think the mouse thing is spilling over. Suffice to say that if you want to know about the brain, and the mind, and you want a bunch of mavericks to illuminate it using cognitive and visual illusions, pop culture and web-references, wrapped up in a very chic, sleek simple design, you couldn’t go far wrong. One hundred hacks, and me and Disa have a hand in six of them.

If you want a taste of what it’s all about, you won't do better than to check out Mind Hacks, the blog of the book. I should be configured for it at some point so expect me to pepper this site with links to it; from this point explicitly science blogging will be confined to that location, whilst I’ll keep my scattershot blather here.

Our secret finally out

2004-12-09T13:37:00.000Z

I was expecting this. There's that momentary, moment of relief, like a burden lifted, but you know it's only going to hurt science in the long run:

anthropologist Brent Wrigley suggested that the hatred of mice may be the single most important factor in the evolution of modern science.

Why do people always have to go and ruin a perfectly good thing? Sigh. Still, it's hard to keep that wracking laugh down in your belly when you read about the solid, highly replicable work being achieved by stalwarts like this:

"It kills me that I can't infect the control group," Villalobos said. "Unfortunately, if I infect them, I'll throw off my results. But once I complete this experiment, I'll rotate the control group into the hot seat. Don't you worry. They'll get what's coming to them."

Kill em all dead.

Mimi-cry me an ocean

2004-12-01T17:24:00.000Z

There's nothing clever to say, just check out the wonder of nature.

Tax me!

2004-11-15T18:28:00.000Z

I don't know if Astarte went to clarity camp when she was young, but she certainly can pare down a clumsy, mumbly issue into a tidy message of purpose. Here, on tax, she nails the progressive argument for taxation. There is no muddy preamble, no "I spoke to someone the other day and they said this, which shows this, therefore that"; it's straight to the point and sharp as a nail. The essence is encapsulated in the final paragraph:

Paying taxes is making an investment into your country. Without those taxes, basic services would cease to be available. We would be open to attack, and we would lose the innovation that this country is proud of. Paying your taxes invests in the safety, innovation and security of this country. We should all pay our taxes.

I'd like to see equally elegant counterpoints to this kind of argument, preferably not along the lines of "the government is a big crook". I'm sure they're out there, but I don't see em much....

Doppelgang

2004-11-12T10:35:00.000Z

We are not alone.

Say hi to Bloodless Coup, now added to the links, who share not only a strong, rugged name but also are in bands, like Buffy, do politics and bump books. So if my strain of bloodlessness ever gets too watery, pop over and see how they do it in the Majors.

Ticking over (brains, that is)

2004-11-11T16:30:00.000Z

Tom's got some nice brain quotes to gently knead our thoughts with, and also to segue seemlessly (as if there was ever a need!) into a mention of the book, the book being that book with which Tom and Matt will batter down the doors of the popular science publishing world, and simultaneously the book I emitted a few pieces for. This book.

Plus Eldan is unmistakeably back, which means either he is kicking the tail of his study-related projects or he has been roused like an unstoppable mythological beast - an animanticore, perhaps.

NB: I apologise for narrowing my humour such that only cognitive scientists who have a passing knowledge of the ancient greek bestiary will get. A truly high falutin' joke.

(adopts Steve Cogan/Connor Hammil voice from episode 2 of The Day Today)

So what about me, OB? Am I elitist? Am I? Am I really an elitist? Am I? Am I? Am I?

Yes, or no? Find out tonight.

Eminem - Mosh

2004-11-02T13:57:00.000Z

Here.

What can I say - I like animation, I like Mr Mathers, and I approve of this message.

UPDATE: I can't really blame Marshall for the result, can I? It may not be his best track but I think larger things are at work here.

If you wanted to, you could consult Gene for the case for how the Democrats lost the values vote, or Matthew for the counter-case - but I'm inclined to continue to sleep on the whole thing. Hibernate if possible.

[slaps face]

no, no, I'm on it - 'don't mourn, organise' etc. So one night to sleep on it, and then I promise I'll come back? Thanks!

Election 04 - A scientific case for voting Kerry

2004-11-01T15:20:00.000Z

I try to address issues on this blog (when I get round to them at all) with the enthusiasm of a political nebbish, and the coolness of a scientist-in-training. The first is heartfelt, but not totally delineated, without a full comprehensive system behind it – I often know what I feel is right, but sometimes the rationales can seem a bit post hoc. The latter is as doubting and cerebral as I can manage (a fair bit of gut is also involved). The two can sometimes be set against one another, or one sacrificed to allow the other fuller expression. Today I am going to post with all of my heart and all of my head. (And some guts.)

There is an election occurring tomorrow in the USA. This is firstly, an urge to all those who can, to use their vote. I can’t; I’m a UK citizen. It is secondly, a call to all who value science and reason, to vote the incumbent out of office. This current US administration has shown an attitude towards the scientific community that can at best be considered disinterest and at worst contempt. A former head of the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment has this terse assessment of GW Bush’s position on stem cell research: "an attempt to throttle science, not to govern technology." It rings true of this issue, but moreover the wider treatment of scientists by the administration.

The White House, with its eyes on religious conservatives, decided in 2001 that new stem-cell lines would not be funded federally: the President’s justification was that there were already “more than 60 genetically diverse stem cell lines.” However this claimed figure was twice that of the estimate the National Institute of Health had originally put forward, an estimate that presumably was not felt to gel with their case, as it was met with a directed search for all cell lines that might ‘conceivably exist’, however risky or unpromising, which threw up this 60 best case figure. Currently only 11 have been confirmed by NIH as being safe and viable.

This was a case of finessing the figures, and taking one’s own authority of what was the important measure of stem-cell technology (conceivable lines rather than viable lines) over that of the largest research organization at your disposal. If anyone doubts that stem-cell research represents one of the cutting edge technologies that will massively change medicine, then correct your thinking. This cavalier treatment of an important scientific issue throws a spyglass onto the wider treatment of the science. But why would Bush hit on science? After all, Republicanism is not ideologically opposed to science or reason.

Perhaps the most pro-science president of the last century was Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower, a former West Point mathematics and engineering student, and later president of Columbia University. Eisenhower established the post of White House science adviser, allowed top researchers to wander in and out of the West Wing, and oversaw such critical scientific advances as the development of the U2 spy plane and federally funded programs to put more science teachers in public schools. At one point, he even said that he wanted to foster an attitude in America toward science that paralleled the country's embrace of competitive sports. Scientists returned the affection, leaning slightly in favor of the GOP in the 1960 election.

But ideology comes second to pragmatics for many, and a game plan has been open, for those who would take it, for Republicans to hit Democrats in their core areas – and contrary to what some may push, science is a fairly Democrat-heavy enterprise. Couple this with the emergence of religious pressure groups as a political force to contend with, and a dedication to reason becomes to some an impediment to achieving political goals.

Cue Nixon (who abolished the entire White House science advisory team), Reagan (who revealingly stated the old canard: "Well, [evolution] is a theory--it is a scientific theory only, and it has in recent years been challenged in the world of science and is not yet believed in the scientific community to be as infallible as it was once believed.") Gingrich (cutting budgets at research organizations like the US Geological Survey because it hit Democrat jobs, abolished the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment – believing, as one associate put it, that "Scientists tend to have an agenda, and it tends to be a liberal political agenda,") Tom DeLay (evolution unproven again, best to ignore environment science because "God charges us to be good stewards of the Earth" anyway) leads us inexorably through the past to the incumbent, who "believes the jury is still out" on evolution – really?

The administration has repeatedly devalued scientific offices in the government – posting non-scientists to senior roles, downgrading positions, letting posts go unfilled. Occupational Health has got a battering, with individuals who are not on-message vis a vis the administrations ergonomics position getting rejected for posts they had been approved for. Doctors who recommend prayer to deal with PMS are promoted. And scientists who approach the FBI with information about bioterrorism are jailed. Even on the most lenient analysis this is ass-backward, clumsy and totally counterproductive. Would the same approach have been taken with church leaders who found evidence of terrorists meeting in their basement?

This has not been met with silence, however. The Union of Concerned Scientists issued a statement decrying how the “administration has undermined the quality of the scientific advisory system and the morale of the government’s outstanding scientific personnel”. You can find the Full report here - including no small number of concerns, of which I present a few (summarised from this source)

Then there are those examples the UCS does not mention: the Corn Refiners Association and Sugar Association successfully lobbied Bush to pressure the World Health Organization to de-emphasize the importance of cutting sweets and eating fruits and vegetables in their anti-obesity guidelines. Two scientists were ejected from a bioethics council due to what they believed to be their views favoring embryo research. Data on hydraulic fracturing were altered so benzene levels met government standards after “feedback” from an industry source. Another study (sponsored by Florida developers) claiming wetlands cause pollution, was used by the EPA to justify replacing protected marshes with golf courses to improve “water quality.”

Nothing is so trivial that it escapes top administration advisor Karl Rove’s insistence on staying “on message”—from forbidding NASA scientists to speak to the press about the global warming disaster flick The Day After Tomorrow, to letting National Park Service gift shops sell books with the “alternative view” that the Grand Canyon was formed in seven days.

One need look no further than the USDA to see how compromised the research and enforcement environment has become. Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman was a former food industry lawyer and lobbyist and her staff includes representatives of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and other industry groups. So it should be no surprise that shortly after a dairy cow from Canada tested positive for mad cow disease a senior scientist came forward alleging agency pressure to let Canadian beef into the U.S. before a study concluded it was safe. 18 Nor should it shock us that whistleblowers accused an Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service supervisor of insisting a cow exhibiting symptoms of the disease be sent to a rendering plant before a technician could perform the tests mandated by agency guidelines. 19 But even the most cynical among us might be baffled by the almost cultish devotion to industry pandering exhibited when the USDA refused to give Creekstone Farms Premium Beef the kits it requested to voluntarily test its cattle so it could export to Japan because it might “create the impression that untested beef was not safe.” Creekstone may very well go bankrupt as a result.

Foreign scientists who would make the leap to the US are argued to be more disposed to Europe in this climate, which would do it some good term, but will harm the scientific community in the long. And it should anger Americans that smart, technical minded, rational people – the embodiment of the immigrant ethic that the country was built around – could be turned off by what America has to offer.
Why are scientists treated in such a way? How can this big tent party get away with this? One argument is simple, and again, pragmatic:

They aren't a big voting bloc. They are generally affluent, but not enough so to be major donors. They are capable of organizing under the auspices of a university to lobby for specific grants, but they aren't organized politically in a general way. In short, scientists aren't likely to cause the GOP problems if they are completely alienated. Scientists have almost never turned themselves into anything like a political force.

To spell it out: this administration, following the tone of previous Republican ones (with notable exceptions, including GH Bush) makes political capital out of weakening science bodies, and protects its policy decisions from rational criticism by shifting the facts or undermining their perceived legitimacy. This is damning stuff, and they get away with it, because there is no voice for the scientists.

Except. There is a voice for science, if the blogosphere has any half the political clout it claims to. Blogs and their readers skew technophile, and their format rewards and reinforces a deference to rationality. Being right, having evidence, these are things that liberals, libertarians, conservatives, socialists, gun control advocates, gun freedom advocates, pro-war camps, anti-war camps all prize. Blogs from all across the political spectrum are the scientists best line of defence. We should consider, despite our politics (and looking at it from a British perspective, Kerry does not present to me as a liberal alternative), what it would mean to continue to have an administration bent on eroding the resources, influence and legitimacy of scientific investigation. What it means to continue to have an administration that is not interested in the views of the “reality-based community”. The difference in having an administration that would at least attempt to marshal the full scientific facts, and regard science and rational information as an intrinsically useful and valuable thing. That would not be condemned by the Union of Concerned Scientists for suppressing, distorting and undermining science.

Many have raised this President's confidence in his instinct, and commitment to faith. I’m not at all interested if these lie behind his slashing the tyres of science, or it is due instead to those pragmatic considerations raised above, or some combination thereof. Maybe it speaks volumes about his decision making style, maybe not. When it comes to this issue, it really doesn’t matter all that much - it’s self-evidently a bad thing, regardless of motive. The enlightenment, that remarkable little project that all of us thinking people are committed to in one form or other, must be defended.

Commentators from across the board, from the left to the right do seem to care about such things, recognizing that imbalance and lack of respect towards scientific viewpoints are deeply troubling. But now is the time to convert those concerns into action. Kerry may not be a man of science, but he appears to respect it. An unprecedented array of Nobel scientists back him, stating that their decision is because "Unlike previous administrations, Republican and Democratic alike, the Bush administration has ignored unbiased scientific advice in the policy-making that is so important to our collective welfare", and he has placed himself against the stem-cell policy of his opponent
Of course, if you are already a “What good is science if we are all blown to bits by Al Quaida and John Kerry will ensure this will happen” kind of person, then this doesn’t make a jot of difference. [NB if you are, then continue through that link for an analysis of how a non-rational approach to the War on Terror may have already undermined it, then we can go back to the talking points] I know for many, this election is a single issue vote, and the idea that we can defend civilization and also champion those things that make it exceptional is no longer in fashion. But for those others – vote for science.

UPDATE: And there's more. First, swing state Ohio is being hurt by the Bush approach to science. This isn't just a floating, abstract issue - it affects people with real jobs.

Also, thanks to Meteor Blades at dKos I got hold of a vital link I was after. The Democrats care enough about this issue to be monitoring and documenting the treatment of science and scientists by the Bush Administration. There is too much on this site for me to begin to encompass, but when you try to tackle all these organisations:

then it's safe to say you're not on the side of science.

UPDATE 2: Well, it's all said and done and the other guys won. Which is precisely why it is so important that these anti-scientific measures, together with this broad antipathy toward the scientific community, is recognised, vilified, and trumpeted to high heaven by anyone who is sympathetic to science per se, and the entire enlightenment project. If this stands it harms all of us.

In short

2004-10-29T14:31:00.000Z

We played ourselves into rock history. Ka-koo-ka-choo.

Now that's done with, here is the scariest fucking thing I've ever read.