And another thing on the riots...

I just wanted to speculate a little on my previous blog regarding the looters and the elite being more alike than they care to admit, and on where this may stand in terms of the very big picture...

A lot of interesting dissonance is being created as Cameron, mistaking the one portion of civil society he can relate to (Daily Mail readers, aka shareholders) as being representative of public opinion, seeks to make political hay with collective punishment and vengeful justice.  Quotes abound regarding the naked greed of these feral youth, quotes from people who own rather nice kitchens at the taxpayers expense.  Talking heads and hesitant journalists vie with each other to see who can get the analysis wrong in the simplest possible way, decrying communication technology with such imprecision as to make 8 year olds wince with embarrassment.

A woman accepts a pair of shorts the day after the riots, having slept through them, and gets five and a half months in prison, separated from her two children.  David Cameron hires someone he simply must have known to be a criminal in Andy Coulson and he wont even apologise for his judgement. Where is this woman's second chance Dave?  So many people are contrasting this response to the aftermath of the financial crisis, comparing the damage caused and the retribution dealt out.  How many bankers are in jail? Just how far does the hypocrisy have to go before the entire system loses all credibility?

I have written previously about how cycles of forms of identity, driven by technological evolution, are also revolving at an exponentially growing rate. We are reaching a new stage whereby identity creation is once again monopolised by a narrow point of view, only now that of money.  We know the dangers of religious fundamentalism and extreme nationalism; we have yet to see what forms of extreme manifestations will arise from fundamentalist free-market ideology.   

For possibly the first time in human history, the state and religion bare absolutely no relevance to a large portion of the new generation.  What has replaced them is an orgy of commercial culture, aspirational, shallow, meaningless, irresistible... created by the scientists of human manipulation and unleashed upon a public largely unaware of what they are up against.  Dark shit happens when you view the world through fundamentalist eyes; it doesn't matter if you see God, honour or money, the important thing is what you don't see: moral concern for those that don't share your views.  And when these people are in power... well, we've already seen enough of that haven't we, now that we are free to watch the suffering 24 hours a day?

It is a sick joke that I am 'represented' by those who have never known poverty simply by virtue of exiting through the right vagina.  Those protestors in Tahrir Square represent me more than you hypocritical fools. They want respect? They can bloody well earn it.  If the Neo-liberal agenda continues to push to, ironically, possibly the most fantastically self-deluded utopian ideal out there, I have no doubt the complete subjugation of state and religion that that would entail would see us on the road to all-out corporate fascism. Will corporations be brought to heel, or will they continue to blackmail nations, make social destruction in the name of efficiency a virtue and destroy foreign lands? One thing is for certain... the next ten years will almost certainly be the most explosive and significant decade in the history of humanity. 

What we need to learn from future robots on Mars... and Bees

On this weeks ever-excellent Skeptics Guide to the Universe, I heard tell of a possible future plan for exploring the surface of Mars. Rather than use a single rover, the idea is to use a swarm of robots that will spread out from the landing spot, search a wide area and then return to upload and share data and presumably recharge. Each robot would have searched for the same list of pre-defined information and used common measuring techniques so that when the data is shared, a consensus can be reached as to the value of each robots findings.  Should a particularly interesting spot have been found, a larger group could go to analyse in more depth, or perhaps nothing of interest was found and the search could continued elsewhere.

The inspiration for the idea came from bees. It is the same process that is involved in looking for a new place to start a hive.  Each bee will scout before reporting its findings back to the hive, which will then come to a collective decision.  In each case, consensus is possible because each individual is part of the same shared reality, which is in turn interpreted the same way, according to the same rules. So what the hell is it that robots and bees have that humans don't?! Well, the question actually needs to read, "What do we humans have that these bees and robots don't?"

Here's a thought experiment (I will use the robots for the comparison, since the concepts are more familiar to us, being tools of our creation, than the inner-workings of a bees brain): Clearly the robots represent a highly simplified model of what our society actually represents.  To make analogy true therefore, we would need robots that were looking for different things, with different measuring devices, and different concepts of what information was of most importance. Furthermore, instead of each robots having an equal voice, a small percentage of the robots spoke for all the others, thereby ensuring that all but a few of the observations were ignored and consensus remains an impossibility.

We humans do not all share the same software; we are not the Borg. Indeed, geographical separation alone has ensured radically different coneptions of what has value and how to measure that value, simply by virtue of the natural environment one inhabits. On top of that, more abstract separations have further undermined the unity of our judgement: Religion, race, sex, gender, wealth, even being ginger for crying out loud; All of these things and a thousand more have ensured that we are far from the robot ideal in terms of reaching consensus. All of these things I have mentioned, together they form culture, the software, our imagined community, our political identity.  It is thousands of years of top-down cultural (bio-political as Micahel Hardt and Antonio Negri call it) production, shaping our identities, passing from generation to generation; religious, nationalistic, commercial. It is what we believe, where we live, what we do... that is what we have that bees and robots do not.  That is what gets in the way of us sharing an understanding our reality, the same shared reality that makes consensus possible in bees and robots. 

Notice above that I blame top-down cultural production for our woes? Top-down production of our identities is, by definition, synonymous with political power, not in the strict 'state' defintion but political in terms of the power to govern peoples lives in any form. This includes the religious and commercial as well. Each time communication structures have progressed, the political structure has been forced to evolve, open-up, in a constant struggle between the oppressors and the oppressed. Yet always the oppressors had the power of identity creation, thereby ensuring that whenever the tension did finally break, the oppressed would, like an abused child, know nothing other than retribution-in-kind.  This no longer holds.  The internet is ushering in a new dawn of democratised cultural production, horizontally-derived identity that can, in all but a few countries, ignore all of the boundaries that stop us from reaching consensus (Anonyminity being the extreme conclusion).  Note here the I'm not saying that the Web is some sort of ready-made utpoia; all I am saying is that is can allow you to ignore those boundaries and that, since kids enjoying the internet have in many cases not yet internalised prejudice and ignorance quite yet, it can innoculate the young from the prejudice filled fear-politics used by their apparent elders.  Unfortunately, evolution is slow, condemning the Internets early years to cultural production whose authors were still very much of the top-down identity.

Another criticism would be that I am arguing for us to literally become the Borg, something that is further reinforced by the fact that I'm totally up for transhumanism. Yet nothing could be further from the truth. Robots and bees have one primary function.  We do not; we have and should cherish our subjectivity. Consensus need only be reached in political arenas, in areas of societal organisation that has the power to impose identity upon us. We must work toward a complete split of past culture and politics, a counterintuitive notion yet only so to that part of us that has been directly formed from hundreds of years of top-down political identity.  To put it a less counterintuitive way: Do we want the fundamentalist religious, nationalistic or capitalistic ideologies of the few to determine the organisation of all of society? For all of past identity is the creation of the few, ensuring that public policy is determined by religious ideas thousand of years old, 18th Century political philosophy and institutions or wealth grabbing corporations fresh from the 19th century.  The alternative is to allow reality, evidence, to guide us, to recognise our own flaws and the insignificance of the individual, to harness, trust and give equal voice to all of the swarm.  If we were to work toward that then, far from becoming a mindless bee, you would become free in all the other areas of your life to be more than simply an indictrinated robot.  All that is being asked is that in political arenas, where people make decisions that are imposed upon others (whether willingly or not), that those decision makers leave their personal past, their personal judgement, their concept of right or wrong at the door, and allow the evidence to dictate the end results.  This could not fail to be more humanitarian, since all of the evidence points to us all being one system.

None of us should trust our own judgement.  We must all recognise our own pejudices, reflect on the perhaps instinctive rejection of the idea of splitting our known-culture and politics. Even our physiology works against us, showing patterns that aren't there, showing us a limited confabulation of reality. Slowly we are coming to realise these things, something epitomised by the exploding growth of the skeptic movement. Consensus is possible in science, precisely because it understood very early on that culture was an impediment to truth and thus attempted to filter out its effects. It has advanced tremendously, a testament to our ability to work together toward understanding ourselves and our environment. It is by defintion a step-by-step process evolution; but we are beginning to walk the right way.

The case of the controversial evolution article by Oliver Burkeman in the Guardian

Yesterday I saw an article on the front page of the Guardian website that caused widespread anger and controversy.  Under possibly the worst headline of the year, "Why everything they told you about evolution is wrong", the piece was a review of Fodor's latest book 'What Darwin got Wrong' (only slightly less a disingenuous title).

The piece drew a lot of instant criticism, from Adam Rutherland's Comment is Free piece published the same day on the Guardian site (kudos for that) and, rather more extensively, by Coyne's great blog on Why Evolution is True.  The criticisms drew on the numerous scientific inaccuracies and the muddled, unenlightening way that Fodor's arguments were presented.  The title in particular seemed to vex many who commented.

Unfortunately, in my desire to vent spleen having read through the rather lengthy review, I had a rant on the Today in Sport blog of the Guardian site, only to be banned a few minutes before comments opened on Burkeman's article.  I contacted the editors and copied Burkeman in which, to his credit, he replied to.  I have decided to publish those emails here because I feel that, given the vitriol that the article created, it needs more context and a fair hearing of Burkeman's side of things.

Here is the email exchange in full:

I read all the way to the end just so that when it came time to write my damning comment clarifying the whole matter I wouldn't miss out any of the absurdities.... only to find there are no comments at the end!

How do these people get published? Fodors argument is absolute nonsense, the fallacy of 'selecting for' meaning design is one that High School children are taught. And as for the fucking title the sub-editors gave it! Thats a title the Mail would be happy with.

Honestly, when I read bollocks like this it makes me so angry about 1) someone getting a book published that even I could debunk and 2) someone seemingly utterly incapbale of grasping the matter being paid to write a review about it!

FFS! A couple of interesting studies that needed to be expanded upon are merely touched on at the start (not even clear if they have anything to do with Fodors book) and then, to back up Fodors claim turns to that well-known expert on evolution, right-wing fundamentalist Anne Coulter, the woman who thinks Jews need to be 'perfected'.

I mean, Anne Coulter? I can't believe I just wasted so much time on something so utterly worthless.

Ben

Dear Ben:

Thanks for your thoughts, however contemptuously expressed.

To respond to your points: 1. My piece made amply clear, several times, that Fodor's argument is thought by many to be absolute nonsense, and 2. I can't see how anyone cojld read that piece and not see that I was bringing up Ann Coulter to criticise her and point out that her argument was rubbish.

Still, thanks for reading!

Oliver

You say that despite coulters record, her argument is persuasive.
That's only if you have no idea about evolution. It had no place in
the article. And what on earth did the missing day BS have to do with
anything? With a topic such as this you need to be aware of the
dangers of misinformation. People are already using your article as
evidence seemingly based on the title alone.

Have you nothing to add regarding the title? Absolutely shocking
behaviour. Designed to get hits and advertisers?  Did you seek an
expert opinion on anything? Are the two PhD students who looked it
over studying Art?

Ben

I am honestly astonished that anyone could read that piece and not see that the hilarious Creationist urban myth about Nasa was included because it is so comically ridiculous.

And as I make completely clear, Coulter is *wrong*. Of course she is — she's Ann Coulter!

It's very strange to me, this position that holds that you're somehow helping the forces of irrationalism by *mentioning* the fact that people believe these things, even if you point out (several times in a row) that they're wrong.

I do (sincerely!) wish you an excellent weekend, nonetheless.

Oliver

Thanks for the reply. The tone you intended for Tue piece didn't come across at all well. Such a long article on such a contentious book is hardly the place for it though. 

Chalk it as a lesson learned. A long piece on a serious matter needs proper accuracy and understanding else you will get this sort of reaction. Too many people do not know, or want to know, about evolution enough to be able to read between the links so to speak.  It sorely needed fact checking.

Also I really want to know about that title. It has really given the guardian some bad press, and rightly so. Are you not pissed about it? 

Ben

And thanks for your reply.

For the record, I firmly believe that it isn't a viable approach to journalism to spend one's time worrying how a piece might be used by people who utterly misread it either wilfully or out of ignorance.

Provocative headlines is an interesting question — feel free to raise it with our readers' editor if you wish. It is entirely outside my role at the paper, so I'm not in a position to say much more than that. In general, though, I think a headline coexists with the piece, so it doesn't make a lot of sense to critique the headline in a stand-alone way.

I guess this is all coming down to the same basic point: I don't think anyone of average intelligence who reads my whole piece could possibly come away with the misimpression that it's somehow pro-irrational-thinking, and I'm not prepared to start writing pieces in order to please people who can't be bothered to read them all the way through (and in good faith) — it would make the journalistic enterprise essentially impossible!

All best

Oliver

That doesn't excuse the gross inaccuracies as shown in coyne's piece,
that a simple cross-check with an expert couldn't correct.  These
things matter since science rarely get mainstream coverage and leaves
those doing hard work educating the public exasperated.

You say the title and the piece should be regarded as one falls down
when they bare no resemblance to one another.  Such a juxtaposition is
deserving of a parody piece and is getting the ridicule it deserves.
It smacks of trying to get the hits up.  Neither is this the first
time. It is becoming a running joke with the guardians readership,
something that needs to be flagged with the superiors.

You either overestimate your readership or, judging by the comments
section, failed to get across your intended tone for the piece. Since
it wasn't clearly a comic piece, due to the subject at hand, the
length of the piece, the admittance of its complexity and subsequent
attempt to explain, it was treated as a science piece.  This is where
the criticism stems from.

 Ben

I think these emails reveal important context within the wider questions of mainstream reporting of science and the limitations of the textual medium.  I don't doubt Burkeman when he says that bringing up Ann Coulter was a joke, though I seriously doubt if starting a new paragraph with the line, "This argument, perhaps uniquely among all arguments ever made by Coulter, feels persuasive, not least because it is a reasonable criticism of some pop-Darwinism" is the best way to go about creating comic effect.   

He says that, "I am honestly astonished that anyone could read that piece and not see that the hilarious Creationist urban myth about Nasa was included because it is so comically ridiculous". I too would be astonished by that.. had I included it in a clearly scientific review context.  The problem comes in the fact that it had no serious counter-balance.  See, this is what it boils down to.  I believe Burkeman is sincere when he says that these references, through their tenuousness to the subject matter, are meant as a joke.  But where does the joke end and the science begin?

This is a very lengthy piece reviewing a contentious book about very interesting science.  Now, I wouldn't have any problem with jokes (given the level of fallacy in Fodor's book) had it been included within a proper and clever rebuttal.  Yet even where the jokes ended according to Burkeman, for people with proper knowledge of evolution they simply kept on coming.  As seen in Coyne's piece, there is an awful lot wrong here.  Oliver, correct me in the comments if I'm wrong, but I get the feeling that you read the book and took a little too much of it at face value, relaying mistakes from the book as fact.  Had you got an expert opinion, your attempts at humour wouldn't have blended so seemlessly with the rest of the article.

For any journalist out there: If you contact any scientist, I can guarantee that 95% of them would drop everything at being asked to look over an article pre-publication just in the hope that it might actually lead to an accurate depiction.  When Burkeman says, "For the record, I firmly believe that it isn't a viable approach to journalism to spend one's time worrying how a piece might be used by people who utterly misread it either wilfully or out of ignorance" he misses the point entirely.  People do not need to misread his article, it was factually inept in reality.  Had it been looked at by an expert, had it been accurate, I would agree 100%.  There are people striving all the time to try and educate the public: it is immensely frustrating for those experts to see such a mainstream platform get science wrong time and time again.  All for the lack of a quick email.  The article appeared 'pro-irrational thinking' simply on the basis that a feature writer had written it and not got any expert opinion (pretty irrational).  The Guardian claimed that two PhD students looked over it, to much hilarity from commenter's with biology backgrounds.  Not. Good. Enough.

 "It is entirely outside my role at the paper, so I'm not in a position to say much more than that. In general, though, I think a headline coexists with the piece, so it doesn't make a lot of sense to critique the headline in a stand-alone way."

This is important.  It must be a source of constant frustration that the title of articles isn't chosen (or necessarily even run-by) the person who wrote it.  As suspected, Burkeman wasn't responsible, though neither does he seem too bothered.  As for co-existing with the piece, this is nonsense.  He just said it's chosen by someone else, and besides, what if the title bares absolutely no relation to the article?  What if, say, the story of a bake sale in a village hall had the title "Grannies in cake orgy scandal!"?  The title of Burkeman's piece was a travesty and it gives the Guardian a bad name.  The only way that title could be excused was if Charlie Brooker was writing the review, it was 600 words long and featured nought but Coulter and 'missing days'. 

By making the article an attempt to explain, by making it seem an outwardly science-like piece, it merely smacks of trying to cheaply generate controversy and hits to sell to the advertisers.  At last looking it was the second-highest read piece.  Strange that the Guardian sees large viewing figures for it's most shameful pieces as a success.  

Oliver, I don't hold it against you.  Your not alone in all of this.  There are serious deficiencies in the way in which mainstream press covers these things and you have to admit that getting a feature writer (which I often enjoy) to cover such a complex and contentious topic is just asking for trouble.  It is so easy to fact-check today.  There is absolutely no excuse.

Update:


As quite a humorous aside, if you type 'Burkeman evolution article' into google, the first hit hows this:

Why everything you've been told about evolution is wrong | Science ...

19 Mar 2010 ... I can see it for myself thankyou) on evolution is wrong'. Shame, shame, shame. P.S To Mr Burkeman: Are you Happy with the title? ...

 For some reason the search result for the article itself has a snippet of a comment left early on in the message board on my behalf (I had recently been banned remember).  Does someone choose that?    For the life of me I can't imagine what determines the text in the search result, but I love the fact it's my comment (that has over 150 recommends at last viewing) there as well as my blog being fourth.