Beware Geeks Bearing False Pretences

The last ten years has seen a polarisation of political views on many issues. Social media emphasizes that divide. On Twitter, it is so much easier and more satisfying to signal your allegiance to your tribe, instead of discussing disagreements and trying to understand the opposite viewpoint. Glib, over-simplified tweets which misrepresent your opponent will gain likes and retweets galore. Nuanced defence of those in the other camp will get you unfollowed, ostracised, or maybe harassed.

But is it any wonder? Yes, in many ways humans are much, much better off these days than we ever have been. Global infant mortality has plummeted, for example. But our gaze takes in more, so we see more of what's wrong with the world. And some of the problems we face really are huge, and seem intractable. Anyone losing sleep over climate change is, I think, not over-reacting.

If there were easy, obvious answers to any of the political problems we squabble over, we wouldn't be squabbling over them. I think Brexit was a terrible idea, but the European Union does have serious flaws. We need to drastically cut GHG emissions, but poor countries desperately need development and that will necessarily push theirs up.

So maybe we can't expect (and maybe we shouldn't want) to agree on the best policies, but we should be able to agree on facts. After all, if we can't agree on facts, on what basis can we discuss policies? To avoid serious global warming, some will want to focus on technologies and some on consumption, but those who don't accept that it's happening at all - well, what constructive dialogue can happen there?

Science should be common ground between people on the right and the left (and the centre, which funnily enough is not the common ground). We need this, we need trustworthy scientists whose duty is to discovering the truth. Of course nothing in science is the last word, of course everything should be open to question and further testing. But scientific consensus should be our best bet when looking for the most accurate account of reality. And experts who choose to be public communicators should communicate this consensus, honestly, which means putting it in fair context so that they have done their best to avoid misleading the public.

On Twitter I regularly see scientists doing the opposite. Presenting biology, for example, in a skewed and cherry-picked way, because that account better supports their political views. I think that when scientists and other experts do this, they are helping to destroy any hope we have of constructive, amicable politics. Because they are taking away the common ground of science, and fact.

If you ever feel like you have to misrepresent scientific fact, perhaps by carefully showing part of the story but not all, or placing it out of context, or bamboozling people with obfuscating detail so they don't notice when you finish with a non-sequitur, stop. Ask yourself why. If you know and understand the science, and yet hold the opinion you have, why don't you explain *your* reason for holding that opinion, despite the science you think undermines it? Who knows, maybe that reason will sway your audience. They are of course entitled to make up their own minds, based on the evidence. And if you are an expert, you have no right, at all, to abuse that position by tricking them into agreeing with you on false pretences.

Boy Oh Boycott

I've long been convinced of the importance of a robust defence of free speech. It should be needless to say, but that includes speech I personally find offensive. (I find, for example, election speeches that explain how free speech is only the freedom to say things with which the speaker agrees, not things she finds unkind, particularly offensive, but it is that person's right to make such a speech, and the right of those taken in by it to vote for her.)

Free speech is curtailed if we can lose our livelihoods because of thoughts we have expressed in a personal capacity. Kenan Malik has discussed that here.

Given all that, something quite funny happened today. I pay a number of small subscriptions to various newspapers, writers and websites. One website to which I contribute via Patreon runs an Arts account on Twitter, and hosts an interesting hashtag each week. I used to contribute to the hashtag conversation, and in doing so met a guy who at first seemed very pleasant (and indeed has pleasant traits mixed in with everything else, as have we all).

But this guy gradually began to behave in a bullying manner on Twitter. I agreed with his politics - I think Brexit is a bad idea, for example - but not his way of attacking people who disagreed with him. If someone supported Brexit it was because they were racist and a bad person. It was dangerous to listen to opponents' views (presumably because they might trick you into agreeing with them, but also, it seemed, because treating them like human beings was somehow equivalent to being a collaborator).

He emphatically was not a free speech advocate. He liked the idea of writers who had been found 'problematic' automatically losing their publishing contracts, for example. I'd considered talking to him privately, because we got on very well, and explaining how this kind of censorship can have the opposite effect of the one he wanted - because I don't doubt he wants a kind and fair society, as I do. I was going to point out how the liberal left's abandonment of free speech meant that women were unable to freely discuss how trans rights were conflicting with our sex based rights, and how detransitioners were silenced and left without support.

Then he quote-tweeted (he liked quote-tweeting - it's a way of summoning your followers so they can abuse a wrong-doer) a tweet timidly supporting gender critical lesbians with the hashtag 'TERF'. For those unfamiliar with the connotations, here is Helen Lewis explaining the misogyny. On Twitter, it is like being branded as a witch - you are henceforth considered fair game for death and rape threats. Putting it with the hashtag meant that those looking for women to harrass would easily find the person. And the woman in question? Was the guy's sister-in-law.

Anyway, at that point I stopped interacting with him. Not because I disagreed with him about trans rights, but because he was incapable and uninterested in having a discussion about it, and because when he strongly disagreed with you, he was a vindictive, nasty, closed-minded bully on Twitter (he's probably pleasanter in real life, most people are).

Back to the Arts website I support via Patreon, who are good friends with Quote-Tweet Guy. I knew they were vaguely of the pro-censorship side of the left (sadly, I think that's the norm now), in fact they also agreed with authors losing their contracts if they were deemed bad people, but the work they do is valuable and I'm happy to support it. Today, somewhat strangely, I got a message from Patreon to say that the Arts website was now a Patreon supporter of the Quote-Tweet Guy. I've never gotten an email like this before, so I don't know whether it happens automatically or whether they decided to send it out. Anyway, here I am, giving money to an Arts site, and that Arts site is giving money to someone who at this point probably thinks I'm the devil, and who actively storms around Twitter bullying women who believe humans are sexually dimorphic. What to do?

Well, nothing, of course. I'm supporting the Arts site, and even if they were taking my money and giving it directly to him, it is for his creative work, not for his Twitter rages. How he behaves in his personal life is just that. I do agree with boycotting where a company is making its products in an unethical way, but that's not what's happening here. In a way, I kind of hope that they did send me the email deliberately to get me to cancel my subscription. I quite like the idea of that fiver a month giving them convulsions.

Hamsters

I've been feeling good as a result of staying away from Twitter. I have more concentration and I feel like I'm spending more time reading about things that are expansive and constructive. In a way, reading books or listening to online talks is like following a path on a pleasant and interesting walk - afterwards I feel calm, energised, I feel like I've spent my time well. Reading Twitter on the other hand often felt like being a hamster on a wheel, on some nasty drug, maybe ketamine [It's been pointed out to me that ketamine is a sedative and that what I had in mind was actually a nasty dirty mixture of ketamine, speed and acid]. Little paws scrabbling furiously, jaw grinding, and afterwards feeling sticky and guilty, and that it was all a waste of time.

Anyway despite all that I do find myself taking peeks at social media, because while one part of my brain might be a sensible hill-walker, the other definitely is a hamster on ketamine [see above].

Social media furores tend to have a particular feature: a screenshot of a single tweet or post will be presented as if it sums up a person's entire personality, the balance of good and bad in them.

But people often aren't consistent. Our personalities are more a symphony than a Sine wave. (I'd just like to point out that symphonies can be awful). We'll have an overall trend, certain things will be 'in character' or 'out of character', we might have motifs. We'll change too, over years or maybe, sometimes, over weeks. But to freeze us in one snapshot, or screenshot, doesn't really show who we are. And sometimes we are two things in a tug of war - a hillwalker and a hamster - and that pulling-in-opposite-directions will happen in lots of different dimensions.

Two people can describe a third person and both be speaking the truth, and yet the two descriptions will be entirely at odds. Sometimes, when we read things we wrote, we don't recognise ourselves.

I find it's good to recognise this consciously, about myself and about other people. Seeing it in myself, I know that if I want to achieve some goal that takes willpower, I have to plan ahead to thwart the hamster. Hence I got my husband to block Twitter so I literally cannot log on even if I wanted to.

It's possible to train the hamster in some things. It takes sheer brute willpower to do sit-ups for the first while, because they are awful, but at some point they stop feeling like flaming swords being thrust into your stomach and the hamster cops on that afterwards there's a nice feeling of having done them. And the hamster should be listened to, at times - its deep melancholy when confronted with wheatgrass shakes or chia burgers is a wise melancholy, insusceptible to faff about superfoods. I suspect that, if something really is a good idea, the hamster will eventually be brought round to it, but if it is never won over, that might mean that the hillwalker got it wrong.

I wonder if hamsters ever truly fall for that joyless Art that usually takes the form of installations. I bet they don't. There's good in hamsters, as well as bad.

Anyway in making sense of or just not losing my mind with other people, the hamster theory again helps. Sometimes, people just do stuff that they shouldn't do. Trying to make sense of it is, sometimes, a waste of time. Asking why will lead either to fruitless quarrels or the person who is questioned imagining some reason that isn't actually correct. Homing in on that one thing, trying to wrestle it into a narrative that makes it consistent with other aspects of that person, or somehow making that one thing representative of the whole person, is not going to lead to a better understanding.

The unfiltered aspect of social media means that we see that disparate, inconsistent side to people more these days. Once we'd only have seen it in family or close friends, those we hold in familial contempt and familial forgiveness. Now we see it in people we don't know personally or well, and I think that makes it more likely we'll misinterpret what that inconsistency means. Arguments with a spouse are inevitable and unless they're very bad, don't make us think less of them. Arguments with a stranger feel very different, and can colour our whole opinion of them. But social media lulls us into an intimacy where we do say things unguardedly, make jokes we wouldn't make at a formal gathering, venture opinions we'd never think to share with strangers that were in the room with us.

So I think we need to stop trying to squeeze people into screenshots. Maybe it's the hamster that tries to do that, but it's up to the hillwalker to say no, we're going for a walk instead. To take the hamster out of the social media treadmill, and lift it up high to see the view. And the hamster will bask in the sunshine like a happy animal, and make the hillwalker enjoy the view even more. Because there's good in hamsters, if only they're brought up right.