Reflection on a TED Talk. I. PIXAR and Propaganda

On March 28 of 2016 the PBS network broadcast the “Science and Wonder” TED talks.

One of these was presented by Danielle Feinberg of PIXAR.

Depending on where you are you may be able to see it here.  In case you’re blocked I’ll just mention briefly what part of her presentation made me think of “propaganda”.

While describing how the Finding Nemo movie was made she remarked at all of the careful attention to scientific details were taken into consideration in the underwater scenes. The way light ripples through the surface down to the bottom, how particles floating underwater wink in and out of the scene depending on whether or not they are illuminated by a lightbeam, and how light itself diffuses underwater so that in a very short distance only blues and greys remain, the other wavelengths having been absorbed.

At one scene a school of fish was swimming away in a long column, As the scene unfolded she told us the need to tell a good story made it necessary to abandon scientific accuracy in order to allow the audience to see the fish swimming off into the distance and disappearing because they got too small by being too far away. Not because the optics of the situation required only a blue-grey wall for us to see.

She commented that leaving scientific accuracy out of the scene allowed it to be a better and somehow more believable story.

I’m sure she was correct. I only wished she had added a remark about how our business and political leaders often do the same thing when they campaign for office and use some very solid evidence (even some science) to outline a problem or to describe a situation or environment which appears to be highly believable, and then telling us they have a path forward which is clear for us to see and will get us to where we want to go.

When they tell us about “how we are going to get from here to there” is where the science and logic are dropped and the story-telling starts.

Students who get to study rhetoric are few and far between. Before the 1960s it was part of every secondary school curriculum. Now people are lucky if they even know what the word really means.

A good source to learn about rhetoric online is at the site “Classical Rhetoric 101” which is on a website devoted to “Manliness”. In earlier times the ability to appreciate art, literature, and engage in reasoned discourse was apparently deemed to be “manly”.  Who knew?

Returning to Finding Nemo and Rhetoric now: The PIXAR approach was to use “science” to make the visuals as credible as possible until the audience was sufficiently engaged in  the story to be involved at the level of “emotional attachment” to the characters and to want a “good outcome” for them.

Rhetorical arguments use three major forms of argument: logic and evidence is the “science” part, emotional appeals are common enough, and finally we have appeals to what we think should happen.

The classical terms for these three appeals are ‘logos’, ‘pathos’, and ‘ethos’.

I’m not accusing PIXAR or storytellers in general of anything sinister here. I’m just making the observation that a good story often has to be more than rigidly logical. I’m also making the point that humans can switch from the “emotional” to the “ethical” to the “logical” frames of reference (or “modes of rationality”) effortlessly and without even noticing it.

When these human attributes are in the hands of storytellers who want to inspire and ennoble us there is no reason to fear (an emotional reference?) but part of our consciousness should probably always be aware of our susceptibility to be being rhetorically persuaded (an appeal to logic?) so we don’t wind up getting involved in schemes and plans which we will regret and wish we had not done (an ethical appeal?).

We can, if we wish, even learn to admire the artistry of those who produce the films even more by seeing how carefully they weave the narrative of the tale by combining these three strands.

Comments on a Recent Attack on White Privilege

The article which inspired the following comments is reproduced at the end of this post.

The title is  “PC Hysteria Claims Another Professor”

The original article itself can be found here.

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I have a suggestion regarding “white privilege”.

Instead of having it as some kind of binary yes/no designation let us approach this from a methodologist’s standpoint.

While we know that “whiteness” is always rhetorically treated as a binary category we also know that Obama is half-white.

How are we to evaluate this?

Is he therefore “half-privileged”?

His American half is not Black and his Black half is not American.

Can we rank “whiteness” on a scale? 0-10?

Can we rank “privilege” on a scale? 0-10?

Is it possible for a person like Bill Clinton (the First Black President) to have both the status of “White Trash” as well as “White Privilege”?

In other words: are all those who are equally “white” equally “privileged” and in what circumstances would this be true?

Are those with Brown Eyes equally “White” as those with Blue Eyes?

Former President Lula of Brazil (currently detained by the police during a corruption investigation) has brown eyes and when he was president he blamed much of the world’s difficulties on people with blue eyes.

Since President Lula was widely regarded at the time as being “white” is it reasonable to assume his “white privilege” was of a lesser degree than other people who were also “white”?

Will the combined “WPI” (White Privilege Index) allow for predictive power regarding contexts? For example: how relevant would the WPI be in securing a spot in the starting lineup of the NBA? An executive position on the NAACP?

On a slightly tangential note: I wonder if the poor woman in this sad tale is one of those who detests Donald Trump? I suspect she is.

We all can imagine how The Donald would have responded to any suggestion that he owed anyone an apology in this matter.

So now we reach the final point.

She was attacked and will see her academic career derailed or perhaps totally destroyed because she was too powerless to fight back.

Even being a woman did not save her.

But I digress.

Back to “methodology”.

Aristotle, in The Rhetoric, identified three forms of argument: Emotional, Tribal/Ethical, and Logical/Rational (these aren’t his words but they’re close enough).

This woman ran afoul of hate-fuelled tribalism. All white people, all men in Western countries, more and more heterosexuals, and Middle-Eastern Christians (in particular) do not have to “imagine” what this means. Feel free to modify the descriptions if you wish but you know what I mean.

Reason, and the scientific method which is the fusion of logic and evidence, is the weakest appeal in politics and in life.

It takes years for an individual to embrace this approach to living and it is virtually impossible for any people living in cultures which have not placed it at the very core of cultural life. Only Western Christian Culture has done this. Attacks on Reason (which is what this unhappy White Woman experienced personally) are attacks on the core of Western Civilisation.

The last time we collectively saw students attacking their instructors like this was in China during the Great Cultural Revolution. The people doing the attacking were called the Red Guards.

All the truth they needed was in Mao’s “Little Red Book” and all the power they needed came “from the barrel of a gun”.

I know a man who was a Red Guard in those days. He assures me he never personally participated in the killing of any of his teachers but he admits freely to being present when teachers were killed by others.

He eventually made his way to The West where he was able to find some kind of inner peace and become a senior academic in the field of Chinese history.

Is he a better person now than he was then?

Is this question just an inappropriate attempt to impose Western Values on a society which was subjected to Western Imperialism?

Is it Western Cultural Imperialism which is at the root of the Western opposition to Sharia Law? To Donald Trump’s desire for a wall and immigration controls?

In this presidential primary season Mitt Romney, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Hillary Clinton are all furiously attacking Donald Trump for not rejecting with sufficient outrage the endorsement of David Duke.

If they were asked about the fate of this sad academic how much outrage, if any, could they muster?

 

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PC Hysteria Claims Another Professor

PC Hysteria Claims Another Professor

A University of Kansas professor was turned in by her students after using the ‘n-word’ in class to discuss her own white privilege.

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03.03.16 12:01 AM ET

PC Hysteria Claims Another Professor

A University of Kansas professor was turned in by her students after using the ‘n-word’ in class to discuss her own white privilege

Robby Soave

The movement to purge all offensive speech from American college campuses has claimed another scalp. Andrea Quenette, an assistant communications professor, was chased out of her own classroom—not because she was a bad teacher, but because her students said she wasn’t agreeing with them quickly enough.

For months, Quenette has been under investigation by the University of Kansas. She is on academic leave. Her students’ refusal to return to class left her no other choice but to take the semester off.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), which stood up for Quenette’s free-speech rights back in November when she was first accused of racial discrimination, is sick of waiting for KU to clear her of wrongdoing.

“The longer Quenette has to wait for what should be a fundamental affirmation of her rights as a professor, the more deeply speech will be chilled at KU,” FIRE Associate Director Peter Bonilla wrote in an email to The Daily Beast.

You would think that Quenette must have perpetrated an egregious act of harassment or obvious discrimination to provoke her students to publish an open letter demanding her immediate termination. The letter, written by five of Quenette’s students—some, but not all of them, black—alleges that Quenette violated the university’s policies prohibiting racial discrimination. Images of the professor disparaging minority students, or giving them lower grades, come to mind.

But Quenette did nothing of the sort. What she did was make the mistake of using the n-word—during a discussion in which she was admitting her own shortcomings about race.

She didn’t use the word maliciously: She was, quite literally, checking her privilege. Isn’t that exactly what far-left students want from their classmates, administrators, and professors?

Not unless one checks one’s privilege using carefully planned-out, politically correct language, it seems. Here was Quenette’s micro-aggressive remark—which she made during a discussion about how to talk about racial issues on campus—according to the students:

We students in the class began discussing possible ways to bring these issues up in our classes when COMS 930 instructor Dr. Andrea Quenette abruptly interjected with deeply disturbing remarks. Those remarks began with her admitted lack of knowledge of how to talk about racism with her students because she is white. “As a white woman I just never have seen the racism… It’s not like I see ‘Nigger’ spray-painted on walls…” she said.

Quenette later clarified in an email to Inside Higher Ed that “I did not call anyone this word, nor did I use it to refer to any individual or group. Rather, I was retelling a factual example about an issue elsewhere.” The exact phrasing she used is disputed.

But she did not use inappropriate language to describe any of her students—or to describe anyone else. She was describing her own blindness to racial animus. Could she have used different language? Sure. Should she have? Probably. But genuine self-reflection isn’t usually rehearsed. This wasn’t a public address—it was a classroom discussion about a controversial topic. Some imprecision should be expected, and tolerated.

One can hold the position, I suppose, that it is never OK to utter the n-word, even in a merely explanatory way. I would argue that doing so gives the word additional power to inspire fear, like saying “You Know Who” instead of “Voldemort.” Wendy Kaminer, a lawyer, feminist, and former board member of the American Civil Liberties Union, argues persuasively that there is an “obvious difference between quoting a word in the context of discussing language, literature or prejudice and hurling it as an epithet.”

In any case, given that Quenette’s intention was to shed light on her own lack of experience with racism, rather than to offend her students, it seems like a simple apology and promise to be more cautious with hurtful words ought to have sufficed.

Quenette’s use of the n-word, however, was not her students’ only complaint. She also suggested that students were dropping out of KU not because they were victims of racism or felt threatened on campus, but because of their low grades. Uh oh.

The students wrote:

This statement reinforces several negative ideas: that violence against students of color is only physical, that students of color are less academically inclined and able, and that structural and institutional cultures, policies, and support systems have no role in shaping academic outcomes. Dr. Quenette’s discourse was uncomfortable, unhelpful, and blatantly discriminatory.

The letter goes on to describe Quenette’s conduct as “morally abhorrent,” “dangerous,” and “racially violent.” The students demanded her immediate termination on grounds that her very presence was making the campus unsafe for persons of color. Again, Quenette is a communications professor—one making a good-faith effort to understand her students’ emotional pain—not the grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.

Quenette’s remarks are defensible on the usual free-speech grounds: Public universities are bound to follow the First Amendment, and faculty and students have every right to engage in controversial and offensive expression. By launching an investigation into her behavior, KU is chilling her speech.

What’s more, even deeply disturbing statements can serve an educational purpose. If someone is saying something wrong, or offensive, on campus, the solution is to call them out for it. Everyone will walk away from the exchange a little smarter.

Quenette made statements about phenomena she had witnessed. That’s all. Those statements might be wrong, but how can anyone figure out if they are wrong if they are un-sayable in the classroom?

Furthermore, if it’s offensive and racially discriminatory to use the n-word in any context—even an observational, apologetic, I-don’t-suffer-abuse-from-this-word context—aren’t Quenette’s students guilty of the same crime? After all, they used the word, too: in their open letter.

Perpetually offended students are engaged in a campaign of repression against faculty members who bother them. Their victims include: Teresa Buchanan, an instructor who was fired used for using adult humor and language in class (gasp!); Professor Laura Kipnis, who was subjected to a witch hunt for disagreeing with modern feminists; Erika Christakis, whose indifference to offensive Halloween costumes provoked the mob; and countless others whose ordeals have inspired fewer headlines. What will happen when no one is left on campus to tell students they might just be wrong?

They will have gotten exactly what they want.

“KU students are demanding that the university end academic freedom in any meaningful sense of the term,” wrote Bonilla.

Cognitive Epigenetics and Europe’s Migrant Crisis

OK. What’s “Cognitive Epigenetics” anyway?

It’s a term I made up to describe something which may in fact soon be shown to be true … a process by which basic personality traits can be passed on from parents to children directly without having to wait for evolution to modify the DNA of the children. 

We are often told that twins raised apart have very similar personalities and we are also aware of the studies which show  various aspects of personality to be rooted in genetics.  This is part of the ongoing “nature/nurture” debate in which we are repeatedly reminded that the genes we inherit get shaped by the social and environmental influences we experience throughout childhood.

Epigenetics is the process which relates how inherited genes are either expressed or suppressed in their expression as a result of environmental influences.  It’s the means by which offspring which are genetically identical can exhibit fundamentally different physiological and psychological attributes in life and (and this is the really important part) these differences will be transmitted to their offspring directly.

Epigenetics refers to the patterns of how  genes are expressed or suppressed is transmitted from one generation to the next. 

So what?

At this writing the evidence only relates directly to creatures such as chickens and carpenter ants. But if the mechanisms of genetic inheritance, psychological genetics, and epigenetics are the same for humans as well as other evolving entities then we may be well advised to consider how these factors influence such immediate human social policies as migration and multiculturalism.

Considering the rather long stretch from ant societies to human societies it is obvious this speculation is more a call to research than a basis for policy analysis. All the same, since the vast majority of our political leaders do not seem to defend their policy positions using anything other than emotional and moralistic arguments, putting a little bit of “scientific” speculation into this mix of moral certitude and emotional bullying may be worthwhile. Or at least provocative.

Schizophrenic Chickens

Researchers in Linköping, Sweden, have recently published a paper showing the genetic basis for “anxiety behaviour” in chickens. Most people reading this paper will not be as surprised by the genetic basis for personality traits as they will with the idea that chickens are treated anthropomorphically as having the ability to experience “anxiety”.

All that is really needed to take away from this study is the evidence it provides for personality traits having some basis in genetics. The debates over the heritability of intelligence and personality are rooted in the theory of eugenics and as such is all but guaranteed to run afoul of those who embrace political correctness as a worldview. People are more than willing to discuss at length the idea that some breeds of dogs are more intelligent or more vicious than others. Those same people will almost certainly exhibit extreme unease (perhaps even “anxiety”) if the organism under consideration stops being “canine” and becomes “homo sapiens”.  If they become uneasy enough then any number of aggressive and punitive behaviours may result.

Free speech can in fact be very expensive. Never say anything you can’t afford.

It’s safer to study chickens.

Carpenter Ant Castes

Another recent study shows that epigenetics can “program” or “re-program” genetically identical carpenter ants into one of three types: the Queen, the “major” caste, and the “minor” caste. The queen is the largest and lives the longest. The majors outlive the minors. All three types are genetically identical so which one a given ant becomes is entirely due to the environment in which they live before they hatch.

After they hatch they don’t just look different, they behave differently. They carry out their caste-specific roles in the carpenter ant community without complaint. The researchers don’t have any realistic way of trying to get the “minor” ants to engage in political action to establish a more equitable nest but this does not prevent us from asking if the epigenetic changes are so robust as to make it all but impossible for changes to the “social environment” to have any impact at all on the ant-caste system.

It doesn’t take much imagination to extrapolate this observation to other living societies.  Can epigenetics program “genetically identical” or “genetically very similar” individuals in violent or dishonest or distrusting societies not only to  be prone to violence, dishonesty, and corruption themselves but to pass these epigenetic adaptations on to their offspring?  And can these changes take place before the offspring are born?

If so then changing the “childhood” environment will be either wholly or partly insufficient.  Epigenetic changes – for carpenter ants at least –  occur before, as well as after, birth. Could this also be the case for humans? Dare we ask?

Migrants and Cultures

On New Year’s Eve in Köln about 1000 men who were described as appearing to be of “Arab or North African origin” sexually assaulted and robbed over 90 women during public celebrations.  German chancellor Angela Merkel and Köln’s mayor Henriette Reker both insisted it was unwise to blame this on “migrants” even as they announced their disgust at the actions themselves and suggested the real blame should fall on the police. Mayor Reker also suggested it would be wise for the women of her city to be more aware of the new realities of their social environment and change their behaviours accordingly. Epigenetics in action.

About a decade ago, Norwegian anthropologist Unni Wikan gave the same basic kind of advice to Norwegian women when she cautioned them against dressing “too provocatively” in those parts of the country where Muslim men were found.  Is this advice a concession to the realities of the environmental influences Norwegian women must now anticipate? Is more going on?

Culturally Scandinavian men have been enduring such provocations from Scandinavian women without incident for centuries. Is this also “epigenetics” in action?  And what of those “genes” which are presently suppressed? With sufficient environmental inducement can we anticipate the Viking genes to be expressed again?

We can go farther.  

Are the attitudes of progressive multiculturalists also the product of their environmental influences?  Do Unni Wikan, Angela Merkel, and Henriette Reker react they way they do because they are wiser and more ethical and better informed than those who attack them – or – are they using their intelligence and positions of social influence to rationalise a worldview which was given to them before they were old enough and self-aware enough to see it objectively? People are not carpenter ants to be sure but the general biological mechanisms of evolution and adaptation are shared by all life on this planet.

To what extent to we – any of us – have “free will” anyway? Brain scans tell us that the brain initiates the neuroelectrical signals for some actions before we are consciously aware of the options and “decide” to do one of them.  There is in fact a very short time-window in which our higher cognitive centres can veto the action which has been initiated. Which may mean that free will is often little more than the conscious awareness of the brain’s decision to act just before our bodies do it.

What’s “free will” got to do with it?

Distraction. If we only have a limited period of time to make a decision before the “unconscious wiring” makes thought irrelevant then browbeating people, denying them time for calm and deliberate reflection, and subjecting them to group pressure will result in actions which will later need to be “rationalised” through the processes of cognitive dissonance rather than rejected before being carried out.

By the purposive use of the above techniques in daily life people can be “habituated” (with apologies to Aristotle) to political correctness.  But the same techniques can just as easily habituate us to any other series of attitudes as the fate  of Winston Smith shows.  The German women in Köln on New Year’s Eve had been habituated to expect one kind of treatment. The 1000 or so men from a different culture had been habituated to act differently. 

The doctrine of multiculturalism, at its most abstract, tells us that “all cultures are equal”. This is not the kind of equality that extends all the way down from the heights of theory to the realities of the public square.  It is a bounded, bracketed, and local equality.

All cultures may be equal in the sense that they are “cultures” but they are decidedly not equal in terms of the life-chances enjoyed by those who participate in them.  All cultures exhibit corruption, violence, structured social inequality, the hierarchy of social roles assigned by achievement or ascription, and ideologies which explain why such patterns of social life are good, bad, transient, inevitable, or matters of fate.  All of them list the means by which actions can be termed either appropriate or inappropriate. All of them address the matter of adaptation and change to the forces of the world outside the direct control of those who share the culture. And so on.

At this level of abstraction cultures are generally equal.

They become unequal at the level where people actually live their lives. They become unequal for women who wander around unescorted in public while attired provocatively, for people who while born into Islam have decided to renounce it and declare themselves to be nonbelievers, for civilians who do not wish to be slaves even though they were captured by armed fighters in their homes. And so on.

Cultures which regard Islamic Sharia law as the “appropriate” way to ogranise society are different from – unequal to – cultures which seek to organise society in accordance with the Christian concept of subsidiarity.

Here we confront the embedded logical incoherence of Multiculturalism. All cultures are equal and all cultures are different.  It almost always works in the abstract. It almost never works in reality.

Epigenetics and Cognition Again

Culture is a word we use to indicate the cognitive environment within which we learn not only the language we will call our “mother tongue” and the kinds of foods we will regard as “comforting” throughout our lives, it indicates the environment in which we learn to categorise the world and the proper way to contend with these categories. The cultural environment lets us know who are the “superiors” and who are the “inferiors” of our social world. It lets us know who gets deference and who defers. It tells us what is just and what is unjust.

Those who grew up expecting their cultural inferiors to defer to them may mistake “politeness” for “weakness”. Those who grew up considering all cultures to be equal may regard the thugishness of newcomers as an “individual” rather than a “cultural” attribute. Both of these misunderstandings will only lead to more misunderstanding.

And despite the abstracted long-term moralism of such urgings of Angela Merkel and Henriette Reker, the concrete and immediately present realities of assault and violence will most likely prove to be too distracting for those who are victimised to appreciate the high-minded ideals of political leaders who have bodyguards, servants, and handsome state pensions to fall back on.

It takes generations, not weeks, to bring about any meaningful cultural changes in large populations. Historians have always known this. Now additional weight it being added to this conclusion by both cognitive psychology and epigenetics.

The world’s political elites are just as incapable of seeing their own biases as anyone else. In their case, however, the consequences of this ignorance extend to the lives of those who have no choice but to trust them. 

The migrant crisis of Europe is not entirely due to the lack of self-knowledge of the leaders of the EU but their ignorance of their own motivations and their collective unwillingness to examine the most logical consequences of their decisions is manifestly going to make the future worse than it needed to be.

 

 

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M. Johnsson, M.J. Williams, P. Jensen & D. Wright. Genetics. A novel chicken genomic model for anxiety behaviour. Genetics, January 2016 DOI:10.1534/genetics.116.179010

D.F. Simola,  R. J. Graham, C. M. Brady, B. L. Enzmann, C. Desplan, A. Ray, L. J. Zwiebel, R. Bonasio, D. Reinberg, J. Liebig, S. L. Berger. 2015. “Epigenetic (re)programming of caste-specific behavior in the ant Camponotus floridanus.”Science, 2015; 351 (6268): aac6633 DOI:10.1126/science.aac6633

Europe’s Moral Duty to Migrants. And Her Own Children

Prologue

This is the first of several comments on what is transpiring in Europe. The following is written as events are unfolding so quickly it is impossible to keep all the details both current and accurate. The last time anything this transitional happened was when the USSR came to an end. In some ways what is happening in Europe is the reverse. Thus the decision to use a number of linked posts rather than just one which is proving to be unwieldy and far too long.

The events are so complex and each one needs detail to cover it fully. The challenges which confront Europe and the world involve a vast array of factors. Historical, predictive, ethical, cultural, identity, and economic. Pundits will focus on one or two and leave the others to be inferred or assumed as being able to “sort themselves out” through some other means.

The crisis has three major features. The first is the emotional aspect, the second the moral aspect, and the third is the logical aspect – the appeal to reason. How do we “feel”, what “should” be done, and does it make any sense to do it? These are the three kinds of appeals described by Aristotle in The Rhetoric: Emotions. Values. Reason. It is appropriate to use a “Western thought paradigm” to approach this situation.

The first – feelings – is fed by media stories of people fleeing for their lives trying to escape what is clearly a deeply troubled part of the world. The focus of this is emotional, personal, and aided by photographs and anecdotes. The second deals with the idea of “doing the right thing” – an ethical dimension – which has its own justifications and sources of origin. The third deals with reality in a more dispassionate and pragmatic fashion. Can Europe stem this tide in any case? Will this influx irreversibly change European culture and the hopes and dreams of “ancestral Europeans”? Is resistance futile whether or not resistance is prompted by feelings or ethics?

Much of what is being written is produced with major references only to one of these three factors and from the viewpoint of only one of the interested parties in the drama.

What we get is “political rhetoric” when what we need is “political science” – which also has its some of roots in the work of Aristotle. The difference is to be dealt with in detail elsewhere. For now suffice to say the fully articulated “scientific paradigm” should contain all possible “rhetorical narratives”.

What is attempted here does not rise to this level. It is not in any way synoptic but rather a halting attempt to draw attention to the most obvious of the factors from the viewpoints of those who are presumed to be most directly at risk in the unfolding drama. The main focus of the Western media is on those who are entering Europe from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, and northern Africa. Relatively little attention is being given to the people already living in Europe whose lives are manifestly going to be massively disrupted.

No analysis at all has been done on how the future of Europe will be changed. The construction of a single nuclear power plant or wind farm requires years of “environmental impact” study. There are “good reasons” for this since these will change the ecological environment for generations to come. It is important to have a good assessment of the social and cultural costs these “benefits” may bring.

Shutting to borders to West Africans during the Ebola outbreak was likewise “reasonable” despite no studies at all having been done on what would happen to the already in-situ European population without them.

So what makes the decision of Angela Merkel and other EU leaders – and by that status the Western World itself – to put one and only one response option on the table? What will happen to Europe and the West if her act of apparent “emotionally” and “morally” justified generosity has hugely destructive consequences which only “reason” could have anticipate? Are consequences “unanticipated” because “no human can be expected to know” or because “we do not choose to know”?

We have a computer gaming industry which has the equivalent of Simulation Models for virtually all historical and imaginary scenarios the authors can conjure. Many academic social science departments are engaged in Simulation Modelling as well. If simulation models are good enough for the Climate Change lobby why not for the Population Change one?

And then there are our elected officials. Constitutions and laws and oaths of office are not software packages. They require constant monitoring and tweaking to work properly. For those of us who use portable computers there is even the possibility our own preferred operating systems are not perfect. With software we call the help line. For political leadership we need the people we elect to be “trustworthy”. People of “Good Character”.

The captain of an ocean going vessel will sometimes have to move to port, sometimes to starboard, sometimes go slow, and sometimes go fast. We need to trust the captain to know where “home” is and to steer by the fixed stars (for political leaders, “reason”) to bring us safely through times of trouble. Steering by the lights of each passing ship is not an option.

Our political leaders are, today in the West, ruling because they have sworn allegiance to the protection and preservation of a nation, a country, and a set of ideals. They do not rule absolutely by Divine Right. They are not empowered to change our nation and the world forever without so much as a referendum to validate this endeavour.

The same EU which demanded relentless economic austerity from European nations like Greece, Spain, Portugal and Ireland is not demanding not even the slightest demands from the German decision to let in hundreds of thousands of culturally alien people from the Middle East. Why?

Angela Merkel is not a Tsarina. Not a Kaiserin.

The “demographic” assault on the European “social ecology” is being ruled by emotions and pleas to morality while the iron discipline of the Eurozone Bankers shunned any and all appeals to sentimentality?

Greece has just re-elected the Syrzia party.

There is also a secondary agenda with this comment. It is to show the extraordinarily intricate and complex thing that “human social identity” really is. The people who are entrusted with being leaders of large social groups (cities, states, provinces, countries, corporations, etc) are almost totally untutored in social history, political science, and the humanities generally. Ignorance often leads to incompetence. When those who are incompetent do not know they are incompetent the damage they do is even greater. When such people influence the path of history itself the danger is incalculable.

Western Europe and the EU are presently in the midst of a crisis. It is a flood of people who are entering the EU but primarily heading towards Germany and other countries with high levels of social welfare, generous benefits, and social stability.

The debates – and therefore the posts which will follow this one – involve several aspects. This list may change. It is flexible. It is presented here to provide a sense of what will be attempted.

The first is terminology: are these people “migrants” or “refugees” or “illegal aliens” or “displace persons” or “invaders” or “colonists” or “opportunists”? Are all of these categories and more represented?

The second involves motivation: the motivation imputed to the flood of people will determine both the label and the appropriate response. The motivations include physical safety, religious freedom, social welfare benefits, better future options for the children of those coming in, the establishment of a new kind of non-European society, a sanctuary for those in temporary exile who wish to return to their own homes one day, and so on.

The third set of debates involve moral obligation: Are those in Europe morally obliged to disrupt and perhaps destroy their own cultural traditions in order to accommodate any and all who come? This will involve a discussion of moral philosophy as well as the introduction of the theme of Cultural Marxism. It will also treat the “European” nature of “European Values” with closer attention.

The fourth involves inevitability: since Europe is unwilling or unable to defend itself is the best course to make peace with the bringers of the new cultural reality? Will these newcomers repair the demographically depleted Europe and restore the economy, if not the culture, to its former glory?

The fifth relates to eligibility: Is anyone at all welcome or only those fleeing from Islamist terror? Does this mean Christians and other non-islamics  are more welcome than any others? Since Islamic law treats all outside that faith as second-class citizens then are they given the highest priority?

Sixth: are women, children and the elderly to be given preference? The largest single group is young adult men travelling alone.

The seventh deals with how the burden on the European nations is to be carried. Since Angela Merkel is not in charge of the EU does she have the moral authority to demand – as she has done – that other nations “do their share” when she has neither established the moral foundation of their “obligation” in the first place nor is in possession of the coercive power to compel their obedience in the second. The seventh relates to the ability of the EU to endure this ordeal intact.

The eighth relates to the survival of Western Culture in the European Continent. Is Europe going to become non-European? If Europeans become cultural refugees where will they go?

The ninth will address the long-term options which are available – whether they are seen as politically viable or not. Is Europe doomed as a place where the “aboriginal culture” of “indigenous Europeans” can flourish? What choices are available?

Uber and Migrants

Throughout many Western cities local taxicab drivers are staging mass protests in response to the impact the Uber app is having on their means of earning a living.

For those who don’t know what Uber really does, it’s a smartphone app which allows people who want a ride somewhere to get that ride from someone else who has a car, a smartphone with Uber also installed, and is in the vicinity. This bypasses not only the cab company dispatcher, it even makes hailing a cab superfluous. The Uber drivers don’t need to pay the huge sums needed to get a cab license and there is a good chance the Uber driver won’t even be making much of a detour for a trip already under way.

The technology of Uber changes, effectively, the boundaries and legal restrictions that provided some kind of “environmental protection” to cabbies. Cyberspace redefines the legal and physical environment in which cabbies support themselves and their families.

Some defenders of Uber cite the evolution of the free market, consumer choice, and in essence the idea of getting “on the right side of history”. This is the future. It’s inevitable. Get used to it. Economic efficiency and consumer choice are the engines of progress.

The cabbies are just going to have to adapt or be left behind. Demands to outlaw Uber are probably correctly seen as futile. It’s been illegal to download music for many years. The Pirate Bay refuses to die.

Two parallels can be drawn. One is between the traditional ways of participating in the economy and how the digital world will change all of that. The second is about illegal immigration (sometimes called “migrants” with the “illegal” word omitted) and how just as previous “national frontiers” once protected workers who were “legal and documented” from either having to accept inferior working conditions or go without an income are now being told there is an overarching humanitarian, moral, or perhaps even logisitical reason for tellling those individuals the world has changed. The changes will hit some people most directly. The changes will cost some of the less adaptable and more vulnerable their incomes. The changes will give cheaper items or services to others who will praise the changes as being ethical or at the very least inevitable. The right side of history.

We can analyse both Uber and illegal immigration as either being different in their details or equal in one or two possible forms of abstraction. Which way to find the “devils” in the details of the same abstraction will usually be related to which way of viewing the specifics is best for us personally. In the immediate present and economically.

Whichever way we choose to carry out this analysis, we’ll use “true facts” to assure objectivity, we’ll use logical deductions based on assumptions which are both justified by a known and accepted ideological perspective, and conveniently enough leads to the conclusion which is most beneficial to the analyst.

Each of the various desired conclusions can be reached by one or another of the partially rational worldviews available.

The study of classical rhetoric is the most appropriate way to learn how to detect these linguistic manipulations.

150 years ago this subject was taught to 12-year olds.

Now?

150 years ago we had horses pulling wagons. Horseless carriages came along — a technological innovation changed the boundaries and therefore the ecosystem of society — and the horses became mostly redundant.

Today those whose jobs are vanishing because of technology are told “new jobs will emerge to replace those which disappear”. This is no doubt true but will enough jobs emerge and will those who are made redundant be able to fill them? What happened to all the redundant horses?

A growing number of credible studies have told us already that in 20 years about 50% of all the jobs people do today will be automated. Travel agents are fast disappearing. Uber is a technology which does not care how the car is driven. Self-driving cars are only a few years in the future and it would be very likely their first deployment will be in taxi fleets where their routes can be carefully monitored. .

Even as the leading media figures insist on talking about “migrants” without the adjective “illegal” to modify their status we are seeing all around us the displacement of workers who are already here by artificial intelligence and technology. The studies and other reasons have led some of the world’s most prominent individuals to set up “The Future of Life Institute” to provide meaningful analyses and policies to deal with these matters

Uber is just another harbinger of the future economy. So is the self-driving car and a little farther into the future the replacement of many computer programmers by software like UML which will soon enough be able to write the code for us.

Throughout human history we have been largely defined by our occupations. Many family names are occupation names. One of the first questions we ask people when we first meet them is “what do you do?”

Political and academic leaders who use one kind of local rationality to discuss the moral obligations we have to those who illegally enter our countries, another local rationality to assure us up when we face unemployment in a new “ecosystem” which will be defined by artificial intelligence and robotics and in which we will either adapt or die, and then go on to sponsor “happiness” projects — such people may wish to pull back a bit and ask themselves if all of these different rationalities can exist in the same world at the same time.

We alive in this generation may have more pressing problems than rooting out the last vestiges of short term microaggressions. We may actually have some long-term macro challenges which also need our collective attention.

What kinds of future worlds are open to us? Which of them do we want for our children and grandchildren to inhabit? Which futures do we want to avoid?

Don’t forget the horses.

Where have all the flowers gone?

Where did all the horses go?

Horse-drawn wagons.

Horseless carriages.

Driverless cars.

…

Whistleblowers: The NIMBY People

If you’re going to complain about unethical, illegal, immoral, belittling, harassing, or otherwise obnoxious conduct then make you do it anonymously. If you personally are the victim of this conduct then make absolutely certain you are not in any of the same social groups or networks as those causing you the trouble before you go to the higher authorities.

There is a reason for why all of those hotlines for reporting crimes, thefts, and other unacceptable actions all assure anonymity.

Whistleblowers are “NIMBY People”.

NIMBY — Not In My Back Yard — describes how we all feel about police stations, fire brigade detachments, commuter-train stations, and any number of public amenities which make our communities better places to live. We all want to be near them. We just don’t want them to be too close to us. We want these facilities to be close enough to us so we will get the full benefit of their existence, but far enough away so that we don’t have to put up with the traffic and the exposure caused by everyone else making use of these options.  We want maximum benefit with minimum risk.

Whistleblowers. NIMBY people. We all want corruption exposed, bullies denounced, criminals reported, incompetence revealed, and powerful people kept wary of abusing their power. But we don’t want the people who carry out these socially beneficial actions too near us personally.

This is reasonable. If we are taught that only those among us who are without sin should throw stones it follows that each of us has one or two things we would rather not  be generally known to the world. We don’t mind so much when whistelblowers are going after people who are causing trouble for us personally but we also worry just a little that one day the whistleblower’s attention may be directed in our direction.

A whistleblower like this — who complains about a personal difficulty — can be written off as a whiner who can’t accept the same kind of harassment and abuse which the older members of the group had to endure. These people may not have “the right stuff”.

There are other kinds of whistleblowers.

Whistleblowers are also possibly not “team players”. A team player is one who is loyal to the team whether or not it is personally beneficial or whether the team is engaged in illegal or unethical conduct as a group. Honest people who work in companies where dishonest things are taking place are in a triple-bind. They can, first, try to benefit from the dishonesty. If many are taking bribes then taking bribes is not going to cause any of out workmates to expose us. Also, if we don’t take the bribes they may start ridiculing us as seeing ourselves as “superior”. We also become threats because we may have the information necessary to expose the wrongdoing without personal harm.

International Law accepts that people do not have to follow “illegal orders”. The consequences of disobeying an illegal order may result in execution for disobedience but eventually a war crimes trial will show you to have been virtuous.

Loyalty to the tribe or group is an essential aspect of human survival. If you are hired into a group which presents itself as ethical and productive and if after a short time you discover the group is deeply corrupt, you are often told to “go along to get along”.

We are all aware of the fact that whisteblowers are not as likely to be hired by other employers as well.

“Why did you leave your last job?”
“I noticed my workmates were corrupt, lazy, and stupid.”
“Thank you. We’ll be in touch.”

A third reason for blowing a whistle is the failure of the group or corporation or tribe to live up to a “higher” set of standards. This situation arises when the whistleblower personally examines the “spirit” of the laws and finds the group to be in violation of them.

First: we can look at the case of Australian physician Caroline Tan.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-31808512

Caroline Tan was effectively blackballed in the profession of medicine and her career was ruined. Why? Because very early in her first job she was asked for sex by a senior physician. She not only refused but she made her complaints public. Surgeon Gabrielle McMullin states her views this way: “What I tell my trainees is that, if you are approached for sex, probably the safest thing to do in terms of your career is to comply with the request.
“The worst thing you can possibly do is to complain to the supervising body because then, as in Caroline’s position, you can be sure that you will never be appointed to a major public hospital.”

Caroline Tan blew the whistle and her future career at the same time.

It is highly unlikely that every major public hospital in Australia is staffed by sexual predators who don’t want Caroline Tan on staff because she will report them next. Neither is it likely that her sex or the nature of her complaint were totally determinative of her fate. What makes her case so egregious is the realisation that even something which in some ways is the moral equivalent of rape is not enough to justify whistleblowing. Even this excuse is not enough to gain forgiveness.

Second: we have the case of Roger Boisjoly.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Boisjoly

Roger Boisjoly was a mechanical engineer working on the Space Shuttle project. Part of his professional responsibility included assuring the safety of the booster rockets which were used to put the craft into orbit. Boisjoly determined that the Space Shuttle Challenger launch should be delayed because the overnight temperatures were so low some of the o-rings on the boosters could fail to provide an adequate seal. He desperately tried to prevent the launch but failed. A few minutes into the flight the o-rings on a booster section failed and the Challenger was destroyed with the loss of all lives. Boisjoly’s attempts to prevent the launch subsequently resulted in his being fired from his position. He never again was employed as a mechanical engineer.

Technically, Boisjoly exceeded his authority when he tried to prevent the launch. Since he had given his recommendation to his superiors and they had approved the launch his professional responsibilities had been discharged. His error was apparently to overstep his rank and to show disrespect for the chain of command.

Third: we can look at Edward Snowden

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden

Edward Snowden’s case is widely known. He discovered the National Security Agency was violating the US Constitution in the way it was collecting intelligence from electronic surveillance measures. Because he had sworn not to divulge the things he learned at his job with the NSA he is regarded by some as a traitor. Because the things he divulged were violations of the US Constitution which takes precedence over the specifics of the NSA’s regulations other people see him as a hero.

The exact constitutionality of the laws Snowden felt were violations of the Constitution has not been finally decided. Only if Snowden goes on trial for treason and only if his lawyers argue the laws he broke were themselves unconstitutional will this interpretation ever be resolved.

What Snowden did do, however, was to place himself in the role of Constitutional Authority. He exceeded his own personal authority.

International Law as interpreted by the International Court of Criminal Justice seems to suggest individual soldiers on the battlefield are legally competent to know if their orders are violations of the principles of the Geneva Convention.

Snowden’s detractors apparently do not believe that individual computer experts working for the NSA are legally competent to know if their job actions are violations of the principles of the US Constitution.

Snowden is still living in exile in Russia and will almost certainly be deported to the US where he will face trial and imprisonment should he ever find himself back in the USA. Even if he avoids conviction and imprisonment it is unlikely he will ever work in a “position of trust” again.

Three thought experiments can now be carried out: one for each of these cases.

Let’s assume that Caroline Tan actually complied with the sex-request, went on to become a successful hospital administrator, entered politics, and then found herself named as Minister of Health. Let us further assume she then gives a speech in which she confesses her submitting to sexual blackmail, names her assailant, and demands that massive legal and cultural changes be undertaken.

She would no doubt get many offers to speak at graduating classes for medical students, be asked to write a book, a movie deal is not out of the question, and perhaps even a national medal will be awarded to her in the future.

The Prime Minister will express outrage and may promote her to being the Minister of Justice so she can be better able to make the needed changes.

A Roger Boisjoly thought experiment can be less dramatic. Assume Roger is a senior official in the same company, not part of the direct line of responsibility for approving the launch vehicle’s fitness, but of higher corporate rank than the senior engineer. Let us further assume Roger knew enough to spot the potential danger and call of the launch. Much annoyance at the delay and the cost. Roger will be called in to explain himself. Expensive experiments will be carried out. Roger’s concerns will be deemed “plausible” and a redesign undertaken. Roger gets promoted. He may even get a medal.

Edward Snowden can be given a role in a Tom Clancy novel. A Congressional hearing is taking place. Snowden’s concerns are made known to a senior member of the Washington political establishment. Snowden is given a subpoena, given immunity and testifies. Everyone is shocked. Snowden becomes a hero. He is elected president.

What changed? The rank, the power, the authority of the person blowing the whistle.

The takeaway lessons?

First: Virtue is a luxury. It is a privilege. Sepp Blatter won a fifth term as FIFA president. He is in a position to punish those who wanted to remove him from his post.

Second: If you wish to make serious criticisms of the rich and powerful you must be at least as rich and powerful as those you offend.  You should also have sufficient means to allow you to live the rest of your life without having a real job.

Third: Not all whistleblowers are ultimately justified in their complaints. A few may mental-health issues and others can be honestly misinformed. The ones described above are sympathetic and otherwise normal members of society.

Whistleblowers are ambiguous figures in society. Everyone knows of injustice, inefficiency, incompetence, corruption, harassment, bullying, and similar things taking place around them.

Sometimes the phrase “it’s not my problem” is appropriate. Sometimes we are well-advised to stay out of the fray for reasons of self-protection. What we also know is: if nobody ever complains about anything then progress will grind to a halt. We need whistleblowers to play this role.

Just not too near us.

I wouldn’t hire a whistleblower.

Would you?

Which brings us back to the problems we all face. The world is imperfect. Crime does indeed pay.

To recall the words of Thucydides in the Melian Dialogue as found in the Peloponnesian War:

“The strong do as they please. The weak endure what they must.”

This applies to Whistleblowers as much as anyone else.

Postscript: The three different types of whistleblower presented above are adapted from the three kinds of appeals made in Classical Rhetoric. The three levels of emotional appeal are “emotion”, “tribal concepts of character” (ethos), and “logic”. They were first discussed in detail by Aristotle in The Rhetoric..

Why Ridicule Works

Ridicule works for two reasons. First, it displays a lack of fear. Second, it takes a position of superiority. When one person is confronted with another who simultaneously exhibits both contempt and dismissiveness the result is to feel both vulnerable and unimportant.

The physically weak can through other means become valued and protected members of society. Those who are able to inflict injury or deprivation on others will find sooner rather than later some acolytes and followers who will discover we have all manner of personal and intellectual gifts. Those who would be ugly and stupid if poor and without influence are transformed into individuals of “striking features” and “hidden depths”.

Ridicule is a form of aggression which simultaneously denies fearsomeness and relevance. Those who are ridiculed are being told they are without consequence. It combines both personal and social rejection. The personal rejection is the denial of the ability of the other person to instill fear in us. Fear is now generally understood as the most powerful of the primary emotions — perhaps even the first to evolve at all — and so dismissing fear as a salient emotion makes attack possible. Social rejection usually implies a form of uselessness. Useless people will not be missed. People who are not seen has having any meaningful contribution to the community can be discarded without material concern. Ridicule is evidence of the irrelevance, the expendabilty, and the vulnerability of the ridiculed.

It is also a form of communication which takes place in a particular social and psychological context.

In the light of the Charlie Hedbo massacres we are confronted again with the evidence of how irritated people get when their cherished beliefs are held up to ridicule.

Ridicule, mockery, satire, and irony are all devices for expressing dissatisfaction with an idea or a lifestyle or some set of choices.  These options are equally hurtful in their emotional impact but they are all forms of disapproval.

Ridicule can be derived from our aesthetic choices (“You don’t like that kind of music, do you?”),  our selection of social affiliations (“Why do you belong to a club full of argumentative fools?”),  our personal style or wardrobe (“That outfit makes you look ridiculous.”) and endless other options which are part of our daily life. They are things we can control and relate to our choices.  If the way we are treated by virtue of these choices is negative enough we either change the way we present ourselves in public or we find another group of people who share our preferences.

Other kinds of ridicule address our social identity and is something much less easy to escape. Ancestry and biology dictate our native language, our sex, our race, our age, and in most cases our religion.  These attributes also give us our initial sense of how we fit into the social world.  Are we members of a group generally disliked or are we members of a group seen in a positive light by other groups? Are we entitled to deference or special privileges? Are we born into servitude and expected to know our place?

Ridicule is particularly hurtful to those individuals who have no source of support or identity outside the existing social context. Those who accept a transcendent view of the world, those from other cultures who look at their critics as at least different and most likely inferior, those who come from cultures which are strongly individualistic in their treatment of people rather than collectivist,  and those who have the ability to see the viewpoint of their critics as and internally coherent position are all better able to deal with it.

This last point, the ability to see the worldview of those doing the mocking as internally coherent, is a particularly interesting alternative. When taken to its logical conclusion it can lead to questions about common ground and shared aspects of reality. If ridicule leads to dialogue then new options present themselves.

In “The Rhetoric” Aristotle described three major dimensions of disputation: appeals to emotion, appeals to ethnic customs, and appeals to reason. The first one gives us such things as the appeal to fear. The second one gives us appeals to tribalism and ethnocentrism. The third one is different. By its very nature the appeal to reason is an appeal to that which is presumably self-evident. It is an appeal to that which is universal. It is an appeal to that which we all share.

Appeals to reason involve the need for mutually consistent assumptions. If reason is to be applied to the world in which we live — to “reality” — then we will also need to appeal to evidence. The evidence must ideally be something which is also shared. This shared evidence is harder to get than at first we imagine but it is what we mean in the final analysis by the term “objective fact”. What “objectivity” means is a larger topic than this post will allow. For now it is enough to consider that ridicule may, in the proper social and intellectual context, lead to reasoned dialogue.

Now to move the boundaries — the margins — of this comment.

It began with the experience of being ridiculed and only left as an inference the motives for the ridicule.

What if the ridicule was deemed to be the only reasonable response to a refusal to engage in reasoned dialogue? What initiated the ridicule in the first place? Was it mere emotional bullying? Or thuggish ethnocentrism? Or was it a response to the refusal to enter into reasoned dialogue?

It ended with the speculation about responding to ridicule with reasoned dialogue.

Honest, complete and full conversations may result in concluding the only logical option is for separation. It may on the other hand reveal the potential for mutually beneficial coexistence.