Dr Yoni Freedhof is an obesity expert. I can't find the quote now, but I know that he has said something along the lines of People aren't designed to suffer, and any diet that requires them to suffer will fail because they'll give it up. I think this has wider applicability.
The Puritans didn't last very long in power in England. They made cursing illegal and cancelled Christmas. Rather than put up with the utter joylessness of the cronies of Cromwell, when he died, the English took back Charles II, dodgy with Catholicism as he was. And who can blame them?
I'm left-wing. I'm pretty certain that socialism is the best economic system, *if* we can get it right. I used to think I was liberal - I'm staunchly pro-free speech, pro-freedom of thought and religion, I believe that people share a universal humanity - the ability to reason and empathise - and that this dwarfs our differences. I believe in the principle of due process and the possibility of rehabilitation, and that punishment for punishment's sake is hideous. I mean, all these things now throw my liberal credentials into doubt, but once, these were liberal values.
And I think they will be again.
Because we're not designed for suffering. We're not designed to embrace the joylessness, the bitterness, and the lack of humanity that has currently beset the liberal left. The ones who enjoy punishing people for the sake of punishing people, the ones who censor instead of debating, the ones who believe that our differences define us, and can never be surmounted by empathy - these are the New Puritans. And they'll go the way of the old.
We'll shrug you off, like the bad dream you are. We'll explore ideas and talk to each other, and gain understanding. We'll inch forward, hopefully making the world better. We'll engage our opponents and win them over if we can, not bull-doze over them and try to get them fired. All this engagement and debate will give us the chance to know when we're the ones who are wrong. And most of the people currently acting as Puritans will cop on, as people do, when the feverish zeal passes. Some of them will write about how they got caught up in something unpleasant, and warn other people of the pitfalls that we all, all being human, have to be wary of. Some of them will forget it ever happened.
Saturday, April 20, 2019
Thursday, April 11, 2019
Happy Ever After Rots Your Teeth
There's a thing that often happens in fiction, and I don't like it. We'll be presented with a dilemma: for example, John loves Mary, but Mary is happily married to Tom, who is John's best friend and a really nice bloke. How can this end happily?
It turns out that Tom is not a nice bloke - he's awful! And he doesn't love Mary, in fact, he's been having flings behind her back. And Mary doesn't love him. So she ends up with John. The end.
Someone happily munching along might not notice that the dilemma was never resolved, rather, the original terms of the dilemma were shown to be false. Which isn't the same thing at all. You can exchange the above for other plots: an unattractive girl falls in love with a popular boy, but then it turns out actually she is attractive, she just needed to tidy herself up a bit.
Weirdly, this is an even stronger trope in politics. There will be a dilemma: animal testing, say. On one hand, we need to test new medicines. On the other, animals are sentient and suffer. Groups opposed will claim that animal testing isn't necessary or helpful, thus disappearing the dilemma that way. Groups supportive will refuse to acknowledge that animal suffering is similar to our own, and disappear it that way.
Economic growth is still tied to CO2 emissions increases. People who believe we need to abandon economic growth rarely acknowledge the social and political implications of doing so; and likewise, promoters of growth won't acknowledge that there is currently no reason to believe we can decouple it from emissions.
The best debate programme I've ever listened to has to be Agree to Differ, from BBC Radio 4. Because, rather than stoke up dramatic, polarizing rows, Matthew Taylor got his guests to simply acknowledge each other's true positions.
I think, unsatisfying as it is, admitting conflicts of interest, or real dilemmas, is the only way to make the best of them. The only real solution to animal testing - I think - is biomedical engineering, like the creation of lab-grown skin. Animal Free Research UK (formerly the Dr Hadwen Trust) focus on funding research in this area. Other ways of minimising the need for testing exist - the All Trials campaign, that seeks to get all trials registered, has the side effect of allowing researchers to identify dead-ends, experiments that have been tried without yielding benefits, avoiding pointless replication. You can support the campaign here by signing the petition or donating.
Acknowledging the problems of both degrowth and growth would allow us to try and find ways to deal with them or, more realistically, minimise them. Kate Raworth's book, Doughnut Economics, is a great exploration of this.
Sometimes, there's no perfect answer to dilemmas. But we still need to admit they exist. Unlike in fiction, we can't rewrite the facts.
It turns out that Tom is not a nice bloke - he's awful! And he doesn't love Mary, in fact, he's been having flings behind her back. And Mary doesn't love him. So she ends up with John. The end.
Someone happily munching along might not notice that the dilemma was never resolved, rather, the original terms of the dilemma were shown to be false. Which isn't the same thing at all. You can exchange the above for other plots: an unattractive girl falls in love with a popular boy, but then it turns out actually she is attractive, she just needed to tidy herself up a bit.
Weirdly, this is an even stronger trope in politics. There will be a dilemma: animal testing, say. On one hand, we need to test new medicines. On the other, animals are sentient and suffer. Groups opposed will claim that animal testing isn't necessary or helpful, thus disappearing the dilemma that way. Groups supportive will refuse to acknowledge that animal suffering is similar to our own, and disappear it that way.
Economic growth is still tied to CO2 emissions increases. People who believe we need to abandon economic growth rarely acknowledge the social and political implications of doing so; and likewise, promoters of growth won't acknowledge that there is currently no reason to believe we can decouple it from emissions.
The best debate programme I've ever listened to has to be Agree to Differ, from BBC Radio 4. Because, rather than stoke up dramatic, polarizing rows, Matthew Taylor got his guests to simply acknowledge each other's true positions.
I think, unsatisfying as it is, admitting conflicts of interest, or real dilemmas, is the only way to make the best of them. The only real solution to animal testing - I think - is biomedical engineering, like the creation of lab-grown skin. Animal Free Research UK (formerly the Dr Hadwen Trust) focus on funding research in this area. Other ways of minimising the need for testing exist - the All Trials campaign, that seeks to get all trials registered, has the side effect of allowing researchers to identify dead-ends, experiments that have been tried without yielding benefits, avoiding pointless replication. You can support the campaign here by signing the petition or donating.
Acknowledging the problems of both degrowth and growth would allow us to try and find ways to deal with them or, more realistically, minimise them. Kate Raworth's book, Doughnut Economics, is a great exploration of this.
Sometimes, there's no perfect answer to dilemmas. But we still need to admit they exist. Unlike in fiction, we can't rewrite the facts.
Tuesday, April 9, 2019
Naming Your Shadow
I think people can behave better or worse depending on pressures they're under, the company they're keeping, points of view they've heard, information they've received, lies they've been told, and experiences they've had. Probably lots of other things too.
In The Once and Future King, T.H. White wrote Lancelot as a fallible but generally nice man, who makes the fatal mistake of thinking that to be good he should test himself by putting himself in the way of temptation. But White seems to believe, and so do I, that to be good you have to recognise your weaknesses and avoid situations in which you are likely to let yourself down, or hurt others.
One corollary of this idea is that if we are fallible and liable to mistakes, then others who make mistakes likely to do so as a result of this same fallibility, not inherent badness. If we seek to understand people's objectionable actions or beliefs in this way, doesn't it make it more likely that we'll avoid those same mistakes? Because we'll see how they came about? Whereas if we just say to ourselves "Those people are monsters, there is no point in trying to understand them" we miss the opportunity to identify the traps they fell into.
Sometimes good impulses can lead us dark places. It is good to be upset when we see harm being done. I'll take a concrete example: animal abuse. A lot of people react very viscerally when they see the result of cruelty or neglect on pets. They're upset for the animal - good. They're angry at the perpetrator - understandable and I think, pretty unavoidable. Some people take the action of donating to an animal charity, or asking for legislation that protects animals - mandatory chipping, pet care as a mandatory module in school, a change to licensing laws, free neutering. This is good and constructive. Some people want other legislation - heavier fines, jail for offenders. Whether this is good or not is more complicated - deterrence is questionable as a strategy, and it will face more opposition, so is it the best way to effect better animal welfare? What about if you circulate the person's photo on social media? Are you really doing this because it's the most effective way, or even an effective way, to help animals? Or are you perhaps doing it out of a sense of justice, or to put another word on it, punishment? How do you feel when you are carrying out this punishment? A little excited? Is this a good thing? Does it really come from a good impulse? Or did the original good impulse lead to something darker, and are you now indulging in a kind of cruelty of your own?
I doubt whether anyone is really entirely free of this urge. I've no doubt it had its uses, maybe it still does. But I'm pretty sure it's an urge that we need to recognise and avoid.
This is from Ursula Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea, because all the best philosophy comes from fantasy.
In The Once and Future King, T.H. White wrote Lancelot as a fallible but generally nice man, who makes the fatal mistake of thinking that to be good he should test himself by putting himself in the way of temptation. But White seems to believe, and so do I, that to be good you have to recognise your weaknesses and avoid situations in which you are likely to let yourself down, or hurt others.
One corollary of this idea is that if we are fallible and liable to mistakes, then others who make mistakes likely to do so as a result of this same fallibility, not inherent badness. If we seek to understand people's objectionable actions or beliefs in this way, doesn't it make it more likely that we'll avoid those same mistakes? Because we'll see how they came about? Whereas if we just say to ourselves "Those people are monsters, there is no point in trying to understand them" we miss the opportunity to identify the traps they fell into.
Sometimes good impulses can lead us dark places. It is good to be upset when we see harm being done. I'll take a concrete example: animal abuse. A lot of people react very viscerally when they see the result of cruelty or neglect on pets. They're upset for the animal - good. They're angry at the perpetrator - understandable and I think, pretty unavoidable. Some people take the action of donating to an animal charity, or asking for legislation that protects animals - mandatory chipping, pet care as a mandatory module in school, a change to licensing laws, free neutering. This is good and constructive. Some people want other legislation - heavier fines, jail for offenders. Whether this is good or not is more complicated - deterrence is questionable as a strategy, and it will face more opposition, so is it the best way to effect better animal welfare? What about if you circulate the person's photo on social media? Are you really doing this because it's the most effective way, or even an effective way, to help animals? Or are you perhaps doing it out of a sense of justice, or to put another word on it, punishment? How do you feel when you are carrying out this punishment? A little excited? Is this a good thing? Does it really come from a good impulse? Or did the original good impulse lead to something darker, and are you now indulging in a kind of cruelty of your own?
I doubt whether anyone is really entirely free of this urge. I've no doubt it had its uses, maybe it still does. But I'm pretty sure it's an urge that we need to recognise and avoid.
This is from Ursula Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea, because all the best philosophy comes from fantasy.
“Ged had neither lost nor won but, naming the shadow of his death with his own name, had made himself whole: a man: who, knowing his whole true self, cannot be used or possessed by any power other than himself, and whose life therefore is lived for life's sake and never in the service of ruin, or pain, or hatred, or the dark.”
Friday, April 5, 2019
An Online Club for Twits
I've been off Twitter since last Sunday morning.
I'm one of those people who quickly become addicted to social media and check it compulsively. On balance, it's bad for me. But this is a shame because I think there are a lot of good things to be got out of Twitter and similar platforms.
Twitter allows me to chat directly to interesting people I'd never meet in real life - scientists, writers, people in politics. I've met people I just really like talking with, and I've followed conversations that have changed my mind or given me a better understanding of people with whom I disagree.
I started using Twitter in a very careful, curated way. I mostly followed museums, entomologists, that kind of thing. But politics always filters through and I can't ignore it when it does. After all, politics is, in the end, about how we treat each other and the planet. How do you ignore that?
I have my doubts that Twitter is a force for good in politics, or in society. I think it could be, but I don't think that it is. Debate on Twitter tends to be, often, about winning the argument, rather than coming to a better understanding, or exploring different viewpoints. It is very, very common to see people on Twitter say that debate itself is a bad thing. Twitter is for affirming your existing position, and for seeking out wrongthinkers. It is not for understanding your opponent, for grappling with their points, or for formulating logical counter-arguments.
Why is there this fear of debate? How have we got to the point where someone with a different viewpoint must be marked as utterly and totally bad, with no hope of redemption?
I have a theory. In the past, we had arguments in physical locations. The pub, or someone's house. You could end up disagreeing very heatedly about something. But in two major ways, it was different from social media. Firstly, you usually knew the person you argued with. You may disagree with Bill about Brexit, for example, but you know lots of other things about Bill, good and bad things, and his views on Brexit have to jostle along with those other things to make up your opinion of him. It's harder to say about someone you know, that he only supports/opposes Brexit because he's the devil incarnate.
The other thing that is different - and I think this is perhaps even more important - is that you go home from the pub, or Bill finally leaves your house. And the conversation ends. Maybe you'll take it up again but it will be when you meet Bill again, which will be in a week or so at the earliest. But nobody goes home from Twitter. Hours later, you can still be bombarded by angry responses. Or maybe you're just watching from the sidelines as people say hateful things. If you're a heavy Twitter user, you see it last thing at night, first thing in the morning. Does this make us feel always vulnerable?
Maybe we can deal with disagreement when it's contained - to a few hours in the pub, for example. But when it's constant, and it follows us to bed and wakes us up in the morning, maybe it's too much. So we start seeing disagreement not as an inevitable part of living alongside other human beings - something that's actually helpful, in that it encourages us to explore our own reasoning - but instead we see it as an attack. We've developed an allergy to it. We can't handle it, so we try to banish it, to blot out those who disagree with us.
I wonder if a platform for debate would work better if it were more limited. So when you sign up, you can specify a time of day you receive notifications - 7pm-8pm, say. You cannot change it or lengthen the time past an hour. If you need to change it, you have to send a letter to the company. So all discussions would either take place within that hour, or it would be like having a discussion via post. No checking all times of day, no rows lasting half the night. Maybe we'd get our courage back, and start to listen to each other.
I'm one of those people who quickly become addicted to social media and check it compulsively. On balance, it's bad for me. But this is a shame because I think there are a lot of good things to be got out of Twitter and similar platforms.
Twitter allows me to chat directly to interesting people I'd never meet in real life - scientists, writers, people in politics. I've met people I just really like talking with, and I've followed conversations that have changed my mind or given me a better understanding of people with whom I disagree.
I started using Twitter in a very careful, curated way. I mostly followed museums, entomologists, that kind of thing. But politics always filters through and I can't ignore it when it does. After all, politics is, in the end, about how we treat each other and the planet. How do you ignore that?
I have my doubts that Twitter is a force for good in politics, or in society. I think it could be, but I don't think that it is. Debate on Twitter tends to be, often, about winning the argument, rather than coming to a better understanding, or exploring different viewpoints. It is very, very common to see people on Twitter say that debate itself is a bad thing. Twitter is for affirming your existing position, and for seeking out wrongthinkers. It is not for understanding your opponent, for grappling with their points, or for formulating logical counter-arguments.
Why is there this fear of debate? How have we got to the point where someone with a different viewpoint must be marked as utterly and totally bad, with no hope of redemption?
I have a theory. In the past, we had arguments in physical locations. The pub, or someone's house. You could end up disagreeing very heatedly about something. But in two major ways, it was different from social media. Firstly, you usually knew the person you argued with. You may disagree with Bill about Brexit, for example, but you know lots of other things about Bill, good and bad things, and his views on Brexit have to jostle along with those other things to make up your opinion of him. It's harder to say about someone you know, that he only supports/opposes Brexit because he's the devil incarnate.
The other thing that is different - and I think this is perhaps even more important - is that you go home from the pub, or Bill finally leaves your house. And the conversation ends. Maybe you'll take it up again but it will be when you meet Bill again, which will be in a week or so at the earliest. But nobody goes home from Twitter. Hours later, you can still be bombarded by angry responses. Or maybe you're just watching from the sidelines as people say hateful things. If you're a heavy Twitter user, you see it last thing at night, first thing in the morning. Does this make us feel always vulnerable?
Maybe we can deal with disagreement when it's contained - to a few hours in the pub, for example. But when it's constant, and it follows us to bed and wakes us up in the morning, maybe it's too much. So we start seeing disagreement not as an inevitable part of living alongside other human beings - something that's actually helpful, in that it encourages us to explore our own reasoning - but instead we see it as an attack. We've developed an allergy to it. We can't handle it, so we try to banish it, to blot out those who disagree with us.
I wonder if a platform for debate would work better if it were more limited. So when you sign up, you can specify a time of day you receive notifications - 7pm-8pm, say. You cannot change it or lengthen the time past an hour. If you need to change it, you have to send a letter to the company. So all discussions would either take place within that hour, or it would be like having a discussion via post. No checking all times of day, no rows lasting half the night. Maybe we'd get our courage back, and start to listen to each other.
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