Clients and Customers

The lazy man takes another man's ideas and uses them as his own. This is not necessarily unintelligent, and it may be economically rational. But sometimes it is hilarious. I was most amused to see a school principal saying in the national press, "...we are able to use the processes and system to meet the needs of our students, we nowadays refer to as clients or customers."

Quite apart from the awkward phrasing, this is a common idea. Schools provide a service called education, students receive that service. Therefore, students are clients or customers.

But I'd like to suggest that there is something not quite right about that idea. Let us, for example, consider prisons. Prisons provide a service called incarceration (and also, lodgings, food and sometimes education of all kinds) which keep their residents out of trouble. Convicted criminals receive that service. Therefore criminals are clients or customers.

The truth must lie somewhere in there. The problem is that the whole business idea is full of related platitudes such as, "The customer is always right." It's also a common idea that if your services are good, you will get repeat customers. And if you provide inadequate service, your customers should be allowed to sue for compensation.

Schools are a totally different kind of business though. The customer is being provided a service that is designed to show that he is wrong, because if he is always right, he wouldn't need the service. The customer is to be discouraged from repeating the experience, no matter how much he wants to. And if the school provides inadequate service, the example of happy customers will be used to show that the student is a bad one and the school owes him nothing in compensation.

As some of my former students pointed out, not every business gets to incarcerate its clients, dictate their mode of behaviour, and beat them if it feels necessary. The closest you get to this is a rather kinky kind of establishment.

And yet, schools are good things. They are institutional pillars of modern society. One wonders how these contradictions arise, and if anything ought to be done about them.

Responses 010 (2010-2011)

Making ten long responses to ten shorter stems is not a new thing; Moses did it by putting ten commandments in Exodus 20 and then explicating them in Exodus 21-23. (Yes, you can't understand the Ten Commandments unless you realise that they're the executive summary of the next three chapters.)

Well, this is the tenth response to a list of ten questions that I first posted on 17 October. (I'll give a link-list at the end just to be helpful.) Question 10 in the list says, "A model is a simplified representation of some aspect of the world. In what ways may models help or hinder the search for knowledge?"

This is in many ways my favourite question. It's quite clear that by 'simplified' and 'representation', you should already know where the question might lead. There are two main points: a model is designed to simplify things, therefore making it easier to grasp the main points and understand something; a model is a representation, a sort of working miniature of something.

What then are the ways that a model can help or hinder the search for knowledge? (I'll note here that the phrase 'search for knowledge' also occurs in Questions 2 and 7, which is an unusual repetition and can be useful.)

You can analyse this in terms of a) simplicity and its pros and cons, and b) representations and their pros and cons. Let's look at simplicity first, and then representations.

Simplicity is of course a great tool for analysis; the reductio arguments are almost always helpful in cutting away the deadwood. However, oversimplification is a problem. This can occur in two ways: a) elimination of too much, thus making the model lose its power as a representation; and b) reification (or conflation), in which we take many elements of a model and reduce them to one. Examples: a) modeling the human brain as a digital computer of great complexity — which won't capture the various gradient effects of the human nervous system and its chemical environment; b) the infamous IQ model which reduces human intelligence to a single score, despite the fact that intelligence varies by environmental context, can be defined in many ways, and has never been proven to be a survival trait (haha, let us pause here in memory of Arthur C Clarke).

Representations range, of course, from symbols to icons to pictures and so on, scaling upwards. Representations are useful the way that substituting a simpler term for a more complex one can be useful; they are more portable and easier to manipulate. But in this case, we're talking about representations of aspects of the world. The problem in any discipline is whether the representation is valid; that is, does this scaled-down description of the world behave the way the real world should? You may also have the problems of transferability (can you use the model to represent other, similar things?) or reproducibility (can you transplant the model and have it work somewhere else). Representations are also problematic in that when you work with a representation, you may come to believe that it is the real thing; it's like mistaking a glossy brochure about holistic education for the actual attempt to provide an holistic education.

Obviously, there are many more problems and advantages to talk about, but this should provide a good start. Just remember that in science, for example, Ockham's Razor is often taken to be a necessity (the 'principle of parsimony') but there is no logical reason to think that this is true. Justifiable reduction and unjustifiable simplification are very, very close neighbours.

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Here's a list of links:

Question List for 2010-2011

Response to Question 1
Response to Question 2
Response to Question 3
Response to Question 4
Response to Question 5
Response to Question 6
Response to Question 7
Response to Question 8
Response to Question 9

You might also want to check the tags below, and any other tags which the linked posts might have in addition to these.

Responses 009 (2010-2011)

Question 9 in the recent list was a shocker in its blandness — or at least, its perceived simplicity. "Discuss the roles of language and reason in history." That was all, and of course, to students who think that history is just another discipline, this would look easy.

The problem is that history, like art, is one of the BIG core disciplines of knowledge. History is one of the two parents of science; as late as the 19th century, science was either called 'natural history' or 'natural philosophy'. As I've mentioned before, in the posts of the 'Drawing Lines' series back in May 2009 in this blog, there is a very very thin line between history and science, and they are much more alike than people seem to think.

Consider this scenario. A community of professionals obtains and accumulates data. Then they select the most reliable data points by a mixture of methodologies such as critical comparison, cross-referencing, and context. Then they collate these data points and synthesize a body of data which is converted by analysis into a body of information and then knowledge. A critical appraisal follows, and then a conclusion is reached. While all this is going on, elements of the same community keep testing the analysis and conclusions by obtaining new data. Regular publishing and peer review keep the discussion alive and healthy.

Question: is this community composed of historians or scientists? Answer: you can't tell.

But wait, some will say, where is the hypothesis, where is the experiment, where is the inductive or deductive process? They must be historians!

Ha, I would have to say that if your idea of science is purely Baconian (i.e. stolen from Arab and Indian science) or Aristotelian (i.e. stolen from misinterpreted Greek texts) or Popperian (i.e. a negative definition of reality), then Newton and Hawking and Feynman would have harsh words with you. The fact is that there are many areas of science not susceptible to conventional hypothesis or experiment; and all areas of historical research use induction or deduction in various phases.

The thing about history is that its final output, the historical narrative, is a synthesis of historical data points. The most important data points are accounts (oral or written) and artifacts. With Aristotle (who claimed that all things consist of substance given structure), one can argue that these are the substance of history; the process which forms the narrative is the structural principle of history.

By direct comparison, a large part of the substance of history is therefore language, and it is the form in which the narrative is delivered as well. Since language is subject to the classical communication model (i.e. something is put into code, the code is transmitted, the transmission is received, the receipt is decoded, the decoding should give the original something) it is subject to the usual errors (bad coding, bad transmission and/or bad decoding), made worse by time and cultural bias. This is most true of cultural history and least true of scientific history, although there may be localised exceptions. Because historical narratives are in danger of being seen as narratives first and history second, extra pains must be taken to evaluate whether the style and presentation of content are being manipulated (consciously or not) so as to bias the receiver's perception of what the narrative means.

By the same comparison, the structural principle of history is a kind of reason that is mainly to do with chronological sequencing, cause-and-effect, evidence for conjectures about social phenomena, and deduction from empirical findings. Since historical reason may suffer from the problems (in this case) of incomplete data and error from data sources (i.e. the data are there but may be compromised in some way), there may be gaps filled in by plausible conjecture. This kind of reasoning is found in evaluations, for example, of the King Arthur legend — we know somebody (or some bodies) balked the Saxon colonization of Britain for a time, and we can deduce a lot from the accounts and artifacts, but we'll never know the real Arthur. When examining historical narratives, pains must be taken to identify the gaps and evaluate how much is conjecture and how well supported such conjectures may be.

It's interesting to evaluate Samuel Huntington's 1993 book The Clash of Civilisations along these lines. It's not a good historical narrative, although it's a brilliant conceptual trick. He's wrong about some key things, because his historical underpinnings are very shaky. It's an example of how linguistic manipulation can lead to false reasoning and be used to create an iffy narrative. (That book was published 16 years ago, so any IB student who wants to clobber Huntington in a History extended essay can do it now.)

So... what are the roles of language and reason in History? Ha, I think there's enough here to act as a starting-point.

Responses 008 (2010-2011)

Question 8 really looks intriguing. " 'Art is a lie that brings us nearer to the truth.'—Pablo Picasso. Evaluate this claim in relation to a specific art form (for example, visual arts, literature, theatre). " Of course, it is an example of hyperbole, in some sense; the word 'lie' here is not used in the way that we normally use it.

In what sense then is it used? With only a passing reference to Picasso's own works, art can be seen as a way of constructing a physical metaphor for a mental or physical reality. A photograph, for example, is an image of something and not the thing itself; a ballet expresses something but is not itself that thing.

The second part of that quote is 'nearer to the truth'. It is one of those bait-and-switch things, viewed uncharitably. What Picasso implies is that the artist's modality is to make a representation of reality that brings out some underlying truth in that reality which you wouldn't otherwise perceive. In that sense, it is 'nearer to the truth' because you wouldn't otherwise see the truth by looking at the original thing.

An artist's eye (or ear, or tongue, or whatever) is then a specialised tool for bringing out reality by stripping a real thing of elements that conceal other elements; the concealed elements, whether genuinely hidden or implicit or inferrable, are the truth(s) to which the artist seeks to bring you closer.

After that hurdle, everything else is easier...

Impressions of Two Nobel Economists

I've been reading stuff by two winners of the Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences: Amartya Sen (1998) and Paul Krugman (2008). They are separated by about 20 years of age and 10 years between prizes.

I have to say that I find Sen much more readable; Krugman's style is dry to me, hard to get into. Sen's subject matter is more universal: what is the role of reason in ethics, what is justice, what kind of balance should we seek between human freedoms and economic development.

I find myself slipping Sen-ward. Not that Krugman is bad; he is very alive in his own way, although not lively. I read his The Accidental Theorist years ago; I am still working through The Conscience of a Liberal. But I would put Krugman aside for Glen Cook, which I wouldn't do with Sen.

Meanwhile, I've had another look at Sam Huntington. Oh dear, he's full of nonsense.

Responses 007 (2010-2011)

This particular question got to me. On the surface, it seems reasonable: "How can we recognise when we have made progress in the search for knowledge? Consider two contrasting areas of knowledge." Closer inspection shows that it is one of those minefields that is dangerous because of the underlying, real, question.

What is the real question here? I'd say that it's, "How do we know when we know more than we used to know?" And since the problems begin with the definition of 'know', you're in triple jeopardy when answering this question — especially if the 'know' in each case is a different 'know'.

The second and less important issue is, "What constitutes two contrasting areas of knowledge?" To put this into perspective, if I asked you what the main difference was between a red sphere and a green cube, what would you say? And if I asked in what ways they contrasted, would you be able to convince me that they did? What if I said that my criteria were a) is the object coloured (i.e. not uniformly wavelength-distributed as in black, grey or white) and b) is the object a regular geometric solid (i.e. with rotational symmetry on the x, y and z axes)? If those were my criteria, they aren't contrasting objects at all.

Let's take the simplest approach first, though. I'll illustrate with an example, which you really shouldn't adopt without due consideration of the problems it entails.

Assume that there are two kinds of progress in the search for knowledge (however defined) — quantitative and qualitative. 'Quantitative' here means 'more facts' and 'qualitative' here means 'facts approached differently'. Assume also that we are going to say something like 'science and the arts are contrasting areas of knowledge'. Note that this is what I call the naïve approach — it's simple and you can decide (at your own risk) to ignore complications.

Then we have four cases to present, analyse, exemplify, explicate, summarise, and draw a conclusion from. These would be:

1. quantitative progress in science
2. qualitative progress in science
3. quantitative progress in the arts
4. qualitative progress in the arts

How would we know if we'd managed any (or all) of these four kinds of progress?

Again, to simplify:

1. do we have more data? did we convert that data into information? is that information like what we had before, but more so, or does it affect our consideration of previous information? if yes, then progress achieved.
2. do we have more data? did we convert that data into information? is that information of a different category from previous information? if yes, then progress achieved.
3. have we done more of the same kinds of art that we've been doing? do we have more data about how people respond to this? did we convert all this into information? does it affect our consideration of previous information? if yes, then progress achieved.
4. have we done a different kind of art? if so, then progress achieved.

Now all you have to do is illustrate with real-life examples, do your explication, summarise, and go on to your conclusion.

But it's obviously not that easy. How do your different ways of knowing relate to these areas of knowledge? How do you define 'data' and 'information'? Is this a valid way to consider 'progress'? And are science and the arts truly contrasting — and if so, in what way? (Some help in thinking about contrasts can be obtained from this post and its predecessors.) And what about the big picture of 'the search for knowledge' and not just bits and pieces of knowledge?

For that last bit, I'd say that you would have to analyse paradigms. At what point do we recognize that a seismic shift (in the underpinnings of an area of knowledge) has occurred? How is this process or event of recognition different in two very unalike areas of knowledge? This is the advanced version of the simple line of reasoning I employed earlier.

Enjoy yourself. But keeping it under 1600 words is not easy.

Responses 006 (2010-2011)

Just past the halfway mark in the new list, you'll see the egregious Question 6: " 'There are no absolute distinctions between what is true and what is false'. Discuss this claim. " It makes you wonder if Alchin and gang, setting these questions, were out to entrap the most easily gulled students.

Let's consider the possibilities.

If the claim is absolutely true, then you would have to say that some things can be partially true. For things to be partially true (i.e. true to a limited extent) then there must be some things that are completely true (so that the extent can be limited). This would require you to draw an absolute distinction between truth and falsehood. In fact, by asserting that the claim is true, you are making a statement of absolute truth.

If the claim is not absolutely true, then there must be, in some cases, absolute distinctions between what is true and what is false. Which means, of course, that you can define absolute distinctions, and it can't be true that there are none.

If the claim is indistinct — that is, we cannot evaluate it to be absolutely true or not absolutely true — then there exists at least one thing (this claim) for which the claim is true (i.e. that there are no absolute distinctions between true and not true, or false). Since in the case of this claim, it can be shown that it must be true, the claim is false. This is a paradox, which means the statement is linguistically inexact or something like that. It must therefore be a bad statement, and this is a bad question.

I wouldn't advise anyone to answer this question without ammunition related to ambiguity and paradox, especially as it pertains to ways of knowing such as language and logical reasoning, and as it pertains to disciplines such as mathematics, history and art.

Responses 005 (2010-2011)

The fifth installment already? My, my, how time flies!

Question 5 in that long list is, "To what extent are the various areas of knowledge defined by their methodologies rather than their content?" It's a question that's quite related to the older one about whether areas of knowledge are discovered or invented.

In this case, however, the question can possibly be rewritten to read, "To what extent is an area of knowledge defined by 'how you know' rather than 'what you know'?" This means that, in order to answer it, you'd have to explain your judgement as to what position to take between two extremes. These extremes are: a) when you apply a certain methodology or approach to finding out things, all the things you find out in that way form a unified body of knowledge; or b) a unified body of knowledge consists of all the things you decided to put together.

The question's relationship to the discovery/invention problem is now more obvious. If you apply a methodology and discover facts by means of this methodology, and then say that your facts form an area of knowledge, this is the 'discovered area of knowledge' idea. If you have a lot of facts discovered in (presumably) different ways, and you put them together to form an area of knowledge, this is the 'invented area of knowledge' idea.

The answer is not a clear-cut one; that is why this question really does require a 'to what extent' in it. When scientists say that science consists only of knowledge obtained and justified by the scientific method, they are saying that the methodology creates an area of knowledge. When artists say that whatever they do is art, no matter how they do it, they are saying that the content defines an area of knowledge — you know it when you see it, it doesn't matter how it came about.

To some extent, you also have to ask yourself the question, "Is knowledge assembled from facts (like a house is made from bricks — haha, some of you might remember that question) or is knowledge constructed by a method, regardless of what that method produces?" For every area of knowledge, this will be different — and for some areas of knowledge, it will be hard to tell anyway.

The problem, I suppose, with this question, is that it requires a general argument which defines the situation and offers guidelines for dealing with any area of knowledge; you then need to apply that argument to a wide enough range of areas of knowledge. These example will then show how your argument works and help you give an answer to the question of to what extent one approach or the other defines an area of knowledge.

This question isn't one I'd tackle without a good working knowledge of how areas of knowledge are defined. Then again, all students of courses like the IB are supposed to have that working knowledge, instilled by months of working with highly intelligent and dedicated teachers who know all about the paradigms of knowledge construction/collation. Right?

Short Dynasty

Last night I was reading about the Qin (or Ch'in) Dynasty. Ruthless and powerful, it swept to power on a pragmatic philosophy based on ignoring the norms of civilised behaviour.

Qin Shi Huang Di, the first Qin emperor, was the first unifier of what we now call China in his short-lived dynasty's honour. He was persuaded by his chancellor to carry out the first Burning of Books, a purge of scholars and knowledge that established a pattern for ruthless anti-intellectuals throughout future ages.

He became paranoid, ordering metal objects to be melted down and converted to baroque statues, drinking mercury to prolong his life, and desperately searching for alchemy that would make him immortal. Nevertheless, he also instituted great works; his was the fist that started the building of the Great Wall and the Lingqu Canal. The famous terra-cotta army was just one of his crazy projects that we now look upon with awe.

He never planned a succession, being afraid that he would be supplanted prematurely. This was to lead to chaos when he died in 210 BC.

The appalling dynasty had lasted just fifteen years. Squabbling among the key figures of power behind the throne resulted in calamity and collapse; by that time, all moderating and stabilising influences had been rooted out and purged. The chief rebel won, and the Han Dynasty was born, and with it, modern China really began.

You can learn a lot from such things.

Responses 004 (2010-2011)

The fourth question in the list was, to me, a sign of examiner mental fatigue. It sets in around the fourth question in any list of ten. That question was: 'To what extent do we need evidence to support our beliefs in different areas of knowledge?' This is such a core epistemological question that to make it the fourth of ten is somehow lazy.

My first instinct with this question is to ask, "What do we use to justify belief in an area of knowledge?" For example, let's say you have an AOK like music. You assert that a symphony is beautiful. Why do you believe this? What is the evidence?

There are two opposing extreme approaches here. You can say that for a very subjective domain, there is no absolute way to justify any belief. This means that either you need extraordinary evidence (the 'extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence' pseudo-rule) or that you don't need any evidence except your own subjective experience (the 'I know it when I see — or hear, or smell, or taste, or otherwise experience — it' philosophy).

The key to answering this question in a manageable way is to choose areas of knowledge that are well-established and well-defined. The criteria will then be obvious, as will the levels of evidence required for various levels of claims.

But there's a tiny little kink in the question, though. Perhaps in some areas of knowledge (if they can be called that), one needs no evidence at all to believe something. Is that possible at all? Can knowledge exist without justification of the evidential type? Heh.

Relativism

Relativism can be summarised in many ways, some of which are pithy, some of which are earthy, some of which are rather salty. The most important point about relativism is that it is the bastard child of the idea that there is no absolute reference point in the universe. That might be true of an infinite universe with no centre; it is not true of our human universe, which has no choice but to be anthropocentric.

That said, things like moral relativism can be compared to robot artificial intelligence when applied to shape/colour combinations and asked to make qualitative judgements about them. For example, consider a large blue sphere and a small red cube: which of them is closer to the ideal of a medium-sized blue cube? Or a medium-sized green cylinder?

This is the problem; given any complex single human concept such as morality, you can apply various schemata to decompose it into dimensions. Then you will find that it is hard to say which dimensions are more important, because if you've done it right, they should be orthogonal — that is, not related to each other at all.

For example, the classical idea of what ought to be learnt comprises three dimensions: what is truth, what is goodness, and what is beauty. Neil Postman and Howard Gardner between them pointed out that teaching mathematics, history and art would thus suffice for a full basic curriculum; in theory, the argument went, mathematics is all about defining truth and falsehood, a grasp of history would teach the difference between good and evil, and art (or music) would teach the difference between beauty and the lack of it.

That's obviously far too simplistic. You'd end up asking if art could be seen as false or evil, or if mathematics could be seen as beautiful, or if history could be false. These seem like legitimate questions, and the difficulty of answering them drives people into relativism (or insanity, which is about the same thing). The fact is that we believe in absolutes. A relativist must believe that there is a relationship of some sort between the things he connects by relativism; this relationship either exists or it does not, and if he claims that it is of unknown quality of existence, then he makes his own argument dubious.

In my last few months of research, looking at so-called Eastern and Western paradigms, I've found only two differences worth noting. Firstly, the original languages of thought expression were different; this made both sides believe that the other side had something fundamentally different. Secondly, the historical and cultural backgrounds were different, and each side made the most of it to claim exceptionalism or reverse exceptionalism.

That's all nonsense. As the Preacher said, there is nothing new under the sun. The same kinds of thoughts have been expressed in every civilisation, in every faith, and in every language. It is only the problem of information demodulation or decryption that has made it seem not so. The only different thoughts are thoughts linked to material objects or phenomena that have not been observed before by someone else.

A person who has watched the intense event of childbirth is not exactly the same as another one who has done so, but he is very much different from one who has not seen such a thing at all. A green ball may not be a blue ball, but it is definitely more of a kind than a red cube would be with either.

Responses 003 (2010-2011)

The third question in the list was this: "'Doubt is the key to knowledge.'—Persian proverb. To what extent is this true in two areas of knowledge?" I laughed when I read it, because it so happened that I had just been reading Amartya Sen's amazing collection, The Argumentative Indian.

In the title essay, Sen argues that doubt, and actively heterodox doubt at that, is the basis of reason. The Indian is argumentative because he very early on realised that all things were dubious (i.e., 'doubtable'). It is the point of the quotation I mentioned earlier, in this post. Hinduism, as I learnt a long time ago, ranges from the pantheistic to the polytheistic to the agnostic to the atheistic; which is why it can sprout a religion like Buddhism, which is semi-atheistic (try comparing Mahayana with Theraveda), or any one of the many other Indian religions, and also obtain insights into reality and science (see, for example, Lokayata).

The point, to put it bluntly (haha) is that if you don't question your perceptions, there is nothing to think about. In modern educational parlance, we say that cognitive dissonance leads to learning; that is, when you have a situation in which things don't match what you know or believe, you have a de facto learning experience. You must doubt either the new input or the old basis. And whatever you decide about the new and the old, you are being presented with potential knowledge gain — either you will learn what's wrong with what you know, or you will learn what's wrong with what you have just received.

In fact, skepticism is a necessary tool in asking questions. This is true of all philosophical traditions, whether South Asian, East Asian, West Asian or Mediterranean. By the time these traditions had finally reached the western shores of the Eurasian continent, it had become firmly established as the single root of all lines of argument about knowledge.

The very idea of epistemology (theories of knowledge) is a list of four questions with their accompanying doubts:

• What is knowledge?
• How is knowledge acquired?
• What do we know?
• How do we know what we know?

The doubts that must underlie these questions are questions like 'Is it ever possible to define knowledge?' and 'Having defined it, how can we know we have it?' If you have no doubts, there is no point asking the questions, and there is no need to differentiate between knowledge and the lack of it.

Doubt, therefore, is indeed the basis of knowledge, in a general sort of way. The problem for someone trying to answer Q3 is to apply this argument to specific areas of knowledge. This is easy. Or maybe not. You should ask the Vedas. Haha...

Responses 002 (2010-2011)

This is the second expansion of my thoughts on the most recent list of questions. The second question in that list says, "How important are the opinions of experts in the search for knowledge?"

Of course, as most people would agree, you'd have to define 'expert' first, as well as 'important'. The word 'expert' was actually the adjectival form of the word 'experience' — it is the older form of the clunky 'experienced', now made into a noun. The word 'important' actually means 'having import (i.e., significance)'.

So what we're actually asking is, "How significant are the opinions of the experienced in the search for knowledge?"

I have a few thoughts here.

1. It depends on whether they are experts in the domain where you are searching; generally, those who are more experienced in one domain have more useful things to say about it.
2. On the other hand, remember what Arthur Clarke said: "When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong." (Clarke's First Law, first published in Profiles of the Future, 1962.) This of course implies that expertise is only useful where experience has already been accrued; it is less useful when looking for something for which you have not much relevant prior experience, or which is contrary to prior experience.
3. To link this to logic, consider the problem of induction. In induction, you observe a pattern and derive a law. For example, you watch swans go by: black swan, black swan, black swan, black swan... ah, all swans are black. But just one pink swan will break your law. A swan expert could never predict a pink swan, because his expertise tells him all swans are black.
4. The problem of deduction, on the other hand, is that deduction proceeds from axioms — and axioms are foundational statements that are accepted without proof. An expert who is proceeding by deduction from rules could never conceive of a new axiom. It's like saying 'all black things are swans' and then seeing a raven; the axiom 'ravens exist' cannot be derived from a universe of swans, and so a raven must merely be a case of swan.

These thoughts, I suppose, lead to the conclusion that Clarke's First Law summarises the whole essay for the more convergent disciplines.

But what about the arts and humanities? I'd have to say that this is probably true of them as well. An expert can always tell you what has been experienced before and, on that basis, predict what will therefore be likely to occur in future. But this assumes the basis remains constant. For the arts, this is even more unlikely because the basis is emotional response; for the humanities, the basis is humanity and therefore vague where axioms are concerned.

So what do experts tell us about where to search next? The obvious major contribution is that experts can often tell us where we've already searched. That's why any paper or thesis normally includes a literature review — what the experts say or have said so far about the thing you are researching. Then you say why your research is different and goes to places where others haven't been before; you can also say how prior researchers have given you reasons or ideas for adopting this line of research.

And that's more or less what I think of Question 2. More to come later.

Responses 001 (2010-2011)

This is the first planned expansion to... no, not some MMORPG. Rather, it's the first follow-up to this post about the questions that plague some people.

In that list, Q1 reads, "Consider the extent to which knowledge issues in ethics are similar to those in at least one other area of knowledge."

What knowledge issues are these? The big one is, of course, "How do we know what is right?"

Any domain of human knowledge requires underpinnings, and a superficial look at the domain of ethics shows that people in general have a range of ideas about what constitutes the morally-correct response to any possible human situation. This in turn leads to the ugly spectre of relativism, in which it is claimed that there are no such things as absolute moral values.

The argument against absolute moral values points out that there are practices such as female circumcision and cannibalism that are sanctioned by some cultures and not by others. This is a daft argument for a simple reason: these are practices, but not values. They are indicative of values, but not descriptive or prescriptive.

Take female circumcision, for example. The point, from various perspectives, is to amend sexual behaviour in a way that a particular society prefers it. This is something every society does; it's just that it's not so extreme in most cases. I in no way condone the practice, but it should be understood as a purely cultural approach (barbaric though it is) to the idea of appropriate sexual constraint or restraint. Most mainstream cultures support the general moral idea of restricting sexual behaviour.

The example of cannibalism varies from culture to culture as well — in fact, Fernandez-Armesto lists it as the very first idea in his excellent survey, Ideas that Changed the World. In all cultures, eating your fellow men for nutritional purposes is a bad thing; in those cultures that practise cannibalism, the idea is either a) to honour the dead, or b) to conserve the life-force of the society. In all cases it is a ritual thing, much caricatured by societies that don't practise it. Note again, that the general ideas are unexceptional.

What all this means that the domain of ethics can be compared to something like mathematics, in that it has fixed axioms which require working out to give a consistent answer. (See, for example, my previous post on why mathematics and theology are similar.) It can also be compared to something like history, in that there is empirical evidence, but this evidence tends to be interpreted in some kind of context which may seem horribly alien from another frame of reference.

So to what extent are knowledge issues in ethics similar to those in other domains? Well, pretty much the same: "How do you know?" "How can you justify your beliefs in this domain?" "What is it necessary to know?" "How does it apply to your life?" and so on.

The danger here is that at the shallowest level, there is no difference between ethics and any other domain, especially if you confuse the domains by some philosophical paradigm such as utilitarianism or attempt to conflate economics (or law) with ethics. Perhaps the greatest threat to all such domains, anyway, is the attempt to apply a materialist paradigm — the so-called scientification of all things.

Well, that's my response. It is deliberately supposed not to be a guide to writing an answer to the question. It's meant to provoke some thought, and I hope it's done that.

Creativity

I can't read Sanskrit, but I am grateful for translations. Here is the last part of the Hymn of Creation:

Who really knows? Who here will proclaim it? Whence was it produced?
  Whence is this creation?
  The gods came afterwards, with the creation of this universe.
  Who then knows whence it has arisen?

Whence this creation has arisen — perhaps it formed itself, or perhaps not — the one who looks down on it, in the highest heaven, only he knows — or perhaps, not.

It is quite interesting to read through old pre-Hindu texts and realise just how much perfected agnosticism there is in them. The Indians have a long tradition of skepticism, both against divine and human authority. Even Hinduism, from an empirical perspective, ranges from heavily supernatural and almost polytheistic to agnostic to atheist. Buddhism, that most agnostic of religions, is part of that tradition too.

The more one reads older texts, the more one realises that the philosophers of the classical world borrowed heavily from the philosophers of the earliest civilisations. One goes back in time, and in returning to one's roots, one finds oneself. From whence did all this come? Nobody really knows — or perhaps, not.

Faith is Weak

It was not always that way. As Matthew Arnold once wrote, the Sea of Faith was once, too, at the full. But since then has come the Enlightenment and the rewriting of the histories and lives of men.

In the past, you could believe. These days, belief is so weak that you need proof, without which you cannot believe. These days, faith is so weak that you need signs. I watch my fellow journeymen, my fellow Christians, and I realise that our common danger is that we are either Judaists or Graeco-Roman philosophers, just as is implied in this passage.

The key verses from the first epistle to the Corinthians read:

For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom — but we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness; but unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

This is it. The Judaists require signs to establish faith; the Greeks require philosophy (sophia means 'wisdom') — but the Christian faith in its strength needs neither. There is no need for proof; only defence of belief and reliability of witness.

To the material world, which I sometimes spend time debating, I have one main argument: how do you know what you know? The answer normally is either given in terms of signs (sensory perception, data) or by sophistry and logic. But none of these is reliable except by itself; it is reason that makes us trust reason, and our senses that lead us to trust our senses. All these things are circular in nature.

But I assert that which I believe: that though I am doomed in my sins, I am saved by God through no inherent virtue of my own. At which point, the materialist says, "You make this assertion, you have to prove it." And I reply, "No, I need not prove it except to convince you. And only the Spirit of God can do that. I need not prove it to myself, because flawed as I am, I believe."

The materialist says, "Your God is inconsistent, he defies logic." My answer is, "If He were consistent, then He could not be God." But isn't consistency a virtue? Isn't it true that God says He is the same always? No, He never says He is logically consistent; He is always the same but He is never quite perceivable as the same, being infinite.

How else would an infinite deity behave? Any of the proofs a materialist might demand would immediately make a not-God. Any limitation on His morality, His powers, His behaviour, His reason, this would make Him the slave of the material.

And so, I rest in a faith that is stronger than I. My own faith does not avail, for I am a scientist, a teacher, a philosopher, a person who must learn to put all that aside for this most important single matter. Then only, can I believe.

Alarums and Excursions

"Every sufficiently complex institution will produce sufficient paranoia and rumour-mongering to create an alternative reality of that institution that is at least the same size as the original." There, that's one of the laws I'm going to put in my book. The evidence is irrefutable that once an institution hits about 60 people or more, it is certain to be 'sufficiently complex'.

You thought I was joking, didn't you? Well, the old place has erupted once more with rumours that, quite possibly, originated at a higher level than before. Somebody who knows a lot is talking about changes in the principalities and powers, the dominions and authorities. Amazing.

Consider this scenario. Let's say that... I've been listening in on some of the discussions held in the little rooms behind the glass. Obviously, nobody thought to look for electronic aids when I left, so until the little batteries run out, the transcripts produced are an endless source of entertainment.

Now, if this were true, what should I do next? The answer is obvious. I should laugh a lot and wait until the principal actors retire. Then, like other people in official capacity who have stepped down, I should publish the real story.

But obviously, it would be paranoid to think that this scenario was true. I'm not that kind of person, contrary to what at least one young person suggested, after looking in the wrong direction.

Yet, listening to who-said-what-to-whom, there are days that I feel a vague desire to have been that kind of person. This is why you should be alert and keep evil at bay. The desire to 'do others before they do you', as Simon Templar once said, can be irresistible.

In the meantime, just sit back and watch the fun. Shakespeare was good at manufacturing this kind of scene. He normally gave the stage directions as 'alarums and excursions', followed by lots of cast movement.

Intermediates and Paradigms

Over the last few months, I've seen debates between various stripes of atheists and various stripes of religionists. Those aren't the only kinds of debates. But it strikes me that real-life debates are a lot more contentious and shifty than the sterile closed debates of the Worlds championships, university competitions, and the like — simply because the limits to argument are fewer and less restrictive.

This doesn't mean the debates are more focussed, or that the quality of debate is better. But it does highlight the point that whereas competitive debate is designed to win by achieving a higher score, real-life debate may have real consequences (for example, whether the US gets proper health care or not) or at least, real but unquantifiable effects (for example, whether some religionist reassesses his faith or not).

Sometimes however, I find myself irked by the fact that historical evidence is taken so lightly by both sides. Christians, in particular, are terrible at accepting the awful parts of Christian history. They aren't much better at using the good parts of their history in defence. In general, Christians (and often their cousins the Muslims) tend to have this illusion that their faith has been unchanged for centuries. They share one trait in common with scientists: what I call psychological archaeology.

By psychological archaeology, I mean that these people are convinced that as they unearth more and more of reality, the underlying structure will be revealed and shorn of all distractions until it is a perfect and untainted revelation. For Christians, the phrase, "we see as through a glass darkly, but then face to face" comes to mind; for scientists, the idea that reduction to ever more basic principles, unto grand unification, is a holy grail.

Both look at the world with this in mind; if you tell a Christian that Christian principles don't apply to all aspects of life — or if you tell a scientist that scientific principles don't — the rejection of your statement would be nearly automatic. Both are reductionist in their philosophy; the former will say that for everything God has a purpose, the latter will say that there is nothing that cannot be explained in principle. It is the common idea that 'in the end' or 'as time goes by', we will see more and more clearly.

What I believe, historically, is that science has never been possible without religion. Their close ideological kinship, in the sense of assuming that explanations for certain phenomena must exist, and that it is possible to think logically about what they might be, is made obvious when the historical record is invoked. Mathematics arises from one aspect of religion — the need to measure the world and its changes, such as seasons, tides, and food production. Technology arises from another aspect of religion — the assumption that the world has been given to us to manipulate, or that the world can indeed be manipulated by superior force.

The modern world, from a non-theistic perspective, tends to think that religion doesn't ask questions, that religion makes no tests or advances no theories about reality. Historically, that's untrue. The Bible, for example, is a most contention-riddled book; its protagonists often engage in debate with their God, apply tests by experimental comparison, and advance theories about why God does this or that. Sometimes, God refutes them; sometimes God answers in the affirmative.

Similarly, the track-record of Islamic science is only exceeded by the track-record of technology from the more Asian side of the Eurasian continent. Until the great disruptions engendered by the eventual Western renaissance, and the unfortunate temporary descent of China into introspective feebleness, religion and the philosophy engendered by it were the main driving force of civilisation.

It is easy to say, as many non-theists do, that barbaric things have been done in the name of religion, or that religion predisposes humans to such things. It is also easy to say, as many religionists do, that barbaric things have been done in the name of science, or that science predisposes humans to such things. Both are right, for a simple reason: both are human constructs based on either an implicit or explicit belief that there really is a fundamental truth, and humans are predisposed to occasional acts of barbarism (since by definition, all barbarians are humans).

But it is better to take the historical approach and dig into the heart of all these practices and what how their paradigms can be described. They are remarkably similar. And all of them have intermediate stages. All of them have fundamental tenets which are adapted for new realities, and have these adaptations 'written into' canon or at least footnotes.

Proponents of Islam and Judaism may disagree, because their fundamental tenets (or at least, texts) are closely guarded in the original form (or as close as centuries of human guardianship can make it). But new interpretations for new technologies and new ideas happen all the time. Are painkillers prohibited or proscribed? Is evolutionary psychology evil? Do we have free will even if we seem not to have?

In the secular world, these questions are equivalent to the question of whether the United Nations has been a good thing. The answer, quite obviously is 'yes' with the caveat 'but not yet good enough'. It is the same, on a different timescale, with science. Consider the life of the UN from 24 Oct 1945 till today. Based on 54 years of uneven performance, some of us judge its results and make mocking noises. What then do we do with science, based on (conservatively) 500 years of uneven performance? Or Christianity, with about 2000 years of uneven performance?

The answer has to be a historical one. What was the state of the world when X was started? What is the state of the world now? Is it possible to directly attribute any of the changes to X? What is the evidence? Is it unequivocal? And so on. These questions are difficult to answer, and the answers we get may be equivocal or ambiguous.

But more likely, what you will find is that the historical argument will show that science is an evolutionary offshoot of religion, and that both branches continue to thrive in their own niches. Competition between the two is fierce, and yet in the fertile savannas of the mind, there is likely to be more than enough food and water to sustain them both for a long time more to come.

The World is Not Flat

No, contrary to what many learned men have said, and others have frequently parroted, the world is not flat. With inequity and inequality of all kinds everywhere you look; with barriers to information, capital, services, and materials; the world is only flat looking down from Olympus. As Chesterton said so well, "One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak."

It is tempting to use the quote blandly as it is, without context. But the amazing story from which it comes, one of the finest detective tales of the entire English canon, was Chesterton's 'Hammer of God', in the collection The Innocence of Father Brown. It is a tale that bears reading, that demands you take the time to have a look.

The lesson in it is clear. Moral forces are as much part of the universe as physical forces. One may be tempered by conscience or thrown awry by the lack of it; the other seems immutable but may be misperceived. Both are incredible miracles when closely examined. But one is more of a miracle than the other.

The world is not flat. It is capable of both rotation and revolution as an oblate spheroid that moves in space. And this is true both morally and physically.

Love in a Time of Choler

The current age of man is neither reflective nor intellectual; since it is not sanguine either, it must be an age of choler — an age, as the ancients might say if exposed to modern jargon, dominated by the yellow bile of intemperate drive and antipathetic task orientation. In such an environment, our concerns become curiously short-sighted. Our priorities become curiously ill-defined and long-term. In short, there is a gap between what concerns us and what has prior claim on our vision.

It is this, I suspect, which makes love so difficult for some people. I've come to that suspicion not only by looking at others, but also at myself. It is easy to say in a vague sort of way that you love someone, that you will miss them when they're gone, and so on. It is harder to be concrete in the medium term.

For example, it's easy to say something like, "Today I'll give X a treat," or, "Today (or tomorrow), we'll go to Destination Y and do Z." It's easy to think of birthday presents and even the writing of a poem or two. It is also easy to say, "I'll be waiting for you after you finish university; it's only four years more," or, "Someday, we'll look back and think about all the times we've spent together."

But what are our concrete plans for developing the thick layer of affection between the seed of passion and the skin of compatibility? What are the things we work towards together? If we can have 5-year plans for schools that are never carried out, yet call this progress, is there hope for 5-year plans for human relationships that are carried out and are the true workings of a conscious and deliberate love?

Yes, I realise that some people do shy away from linking 'conscious' and 'deliberate' to 'love'. But 'love' is not just a noun, a thing, an emotion; 'love' is also a verb, an act, a process.

In my experience, to treat love purely as an emotion is to dilute its power and its impact, to make it vague and somehow thematic but not concrete. It makes the question of whether you love someone one of whether you feel that you love someone. And that makes it easier to confuse or deceive yourself.

It's not that we don't love the people we say we love; rather, it makes it harder because our emotions change with time, temperature, distance and the concentration of caffeine in our bodies. But things done are done; things to be done are things that you can objectively see will be (or won't be) done.

That's not to say, either, that you must measure love only in terms of things done and objectives attained, plans carried out and 'areas for improvement' improved. That would make it something like one of those schools-run-like-a-business.

What I think love is, to borrow the analogy of the four temperaments again, is that it has to have the short-term enthusiasm of the sanguine, the short-term focus of the choleric, the long-term persistence of the phlegmatic, and the long-term introspection of the melancholic. But it can't be four separate things, because the medium-term gap appears. It has to be an integrated programme.

This means that the enthusiasm and focus must be stretched, while the persistence and introspection must be anchored to the near future. Think about the next year, the next two years. Look back at the last year or so. And learn to enjoy every bit of it, without anxiety for the next day or the next ten years.

If you're in love, love will abide. But it also needs some deliberate positive cultivation, not just the deliberate negative avoidance of bad things. And somehow, your relationship will stretch to bridge the gap; before you know it, you will have loved someone for a year, two years, five years, ten years, twenty years and more. But that's as far as I've got.

Poverty

"They were born in poverty, but they should stay in school." I saw this line in one of those little Facebook ads that pops up at the side while you're thinking of something else.

I wondered what if you swapped the nouns. "They were born in school, but they should stay in poverty."

Or what if you changed the verbs around. "They were staying in school, but they should have been born in poverty."

Of course, what if staying in school IS being in poverty? No no, can't think that way, we're all taught that people with more education earn more. The statistics seem to shown that. Then again, maybe rich people go to school more.

Urgh. I must learn not to think so hard about advertisements.

Maintenance

I had this odd dream. I was looking at the inside of my head. It had little Transformer-like bots crawling around polishing stuff, optimising neurons, laying down special nanotubule arrays, adding odd processing modules. Or nodules. Or something. There was a sign posted near my sinuses: Maintenance and upgrading in progress. We apologize for the inconvenience.

I remember saying something like, "Hey that's my brain, I need to use it!"

A small blue and gold bot said, "Sorry sir, we need to maintain it. Besides, it will work better next year."

Argh.

Anchorage

Today my father's sister's husband died. To me he was a shepherd, one of few, always a rock and a pillar around which I clung as a child when in need of consolation. For he always attempted to be cheerful, and yet he was always firm about what ought to be, and what ought not to be; to a child, these are powerful things. He too was a teacher, in many ways and to many people.

I am persuaded that he — like a great ship of war in times of war, a great ship of trade in times of peace — has come to anchor at last in a safe and secure harbour. It was a harbour he had always sought, like a pilot seeks the light of port, whether in tower or lighthouse or burning beacon of flame. In the epistle to the Hebrews it is said, "Wherein God, willing more abundantly to show unto the heirs of promise the immutability of his counsel, confirmed it by an oath; that by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us: which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast — and which (the soul) enters into that (hope) within the veil."

I think of bagpipes and comfort, I think of the shepherd who enters into the shepherd's rest, I think of how good it was to see him last, and as a Christian, how good it will be to see him again. Goodbye uncle, not only adieu, but au revoir. For that is the hope in which we live.

The first hymn I thought of is the one I shall reproduce below, in memory of my uncle's life:

Will your anchor hold in the storms of life,
When the clouds unfold their wings of strife?
When the strong tides lift and the cables strain,
Will your anchor drift, or firm remain?

Refrain:
    We have an anchor that keeps the soul
    Steadfast and sure while the billows roll,
    Fastened to the Rock which cannot move,
    Grounded firm and deep in the Saviour’s love.

It is safely moored, ’twill the storm withstand,
For ’tis well secured by the Saviour’s hand;
And the cables, passed from His heart to mine,
Can defy that blast, thro’ strength divine.

Refrain

It will surely hold in the Straits of Fear—
When the breakers have told that the reef is near;
Though the tempest rave and the wild winds blow,
Not an angry wave shall our bark o’erflow.

Refrain

It will firmly hold in the Floods of Death—
When the waters cold chill our latest breath,
On the rising tide it can never fail,
While our hopes abide within the Veil.

Refrain

When our eyes behold through the gath’ring night
The city of gold, our harbour bright,
We shall anchor fast by the heav’nly shore,
With the storms all past forevermore.

Refrain

(Words by P J Owens, 1882)

One Size, Fits All

In Atlantis, it is well-known from the literature that the High Priests discern the fit from the unfit by a method derived from the Shell Game. For so are all appraised, that must be appraised; for so are all upraised, that must be upraised; and so are all praised, that must be praised. And this is what is well-known.

However, it occurs to me that not all can effectively be appraised by the same Game. The High Priests are not St Paul, that they should say, "I am made all things to all men." For there are many parts of the body of those who should be civil in service — but not all parts are the same. The parts that should be hidden should be treated with honour, and yet those that are of use, are of use. But all the parts are different, and surely one would not appraise a foot the same way one would appraise an eye?

Yet this is what is done. All are appraised for 'helicopter vision', yet not all need such lofty sight. Even where the specifics are different (for teachers, indeed are appraised in terms of teaching), the method of appraisal is the same. It is what makes all Atlantean teachers good only if they have, in their souls, the daimons of politics and bureaucracy. A teacher with neither of these will never be considered a good teacher, no matter how many positive strokes that teacher receives.

And so, slowly, slowly, the principalships are mostly filled with people who, if they are good at analysis and leadership, developed such skills by accident and not by design. And since now they are recruited when young, and not allowed to be elevated when older, they ofttimes have not the mentored experience to be principalities and powers. Rather, they are placeholders and props, designed to support the creaking mass of the Atlantean system without undermining it.

Ah, there are still powers and principalities among them, true. But there are precious few. The principle behind their selection, Procrustean in essence, makes those with long legs shorter, those with mighty arms feebler. It is all one size. And fits.

Skill-Based Technical Change

There's this loony hypothesis in economic circles that had me in stitches (especially after reading what I've been reading for the last 18 months on technological history). It's apparently a fairly entrenched idea that economic inequality stems to a large extent from technological change; the reasoning is that those with technical skills can parlay those skills into economic force multipliers or something, so they get richer faster. This is called 'skill-based technical change' (SBTC) theory.

I don't think so. That's not how technology (not itself a well-understood term) works. But apart from that, there are actually two models of technological spread that are very different, and work against the SBTC model.

Firstly, there's the 'ubiquity' model. In this model, technology spreads very quickly until everyone has the tech. This is the empirical case with many technologies — washing machines, refrigerators, toasters, radios, MP3 players, pottery, the plough, road-building, brick-making. Given a general technological level in a society, some techs will become ubiquitous very quickly. Once the coiled-coil tungsten wire technology became available, incandescent bulbs became ubiquitous within years.

Secondly, there's the 'patent control' model in which the tech originator deliberately makes it hard for the tech to become ubiquitous. But because the only way that's possible is if the tech requires a very high level of tech (e.g. stealth materials tech (and in the past, steel), requiring a large industrial base to be economically viable) or it is very arcane (e.g. stealth materials tech (and in the past, steel), which very few people understand in detail). Such tech is too expensive to give people an advantage.

Real-life examples are doctors and lawyers. The two are oft-cited examples of professional middle-to-upper class prosperity. But as my doctor and lawyer friends will tell you, the economic benefits aren't as obvious as you might think. Doctors have it worse; they tend to get sued more often and need far more supporting tech — lawyers only need information and brains.

The real money-makers often don't have a tech advantage at all; if anything, they are really good at networking and deal-making, which are social advantages. They make use of technology, but the advantage of technology is unclear at best. Any tech they do use doesn't enable them to get rich faster then the next 40% of population, simply because tech of that kind is ubiquitous tech — computerised trading systems etc. It's again brain and skill.

So is inequity accelerated by technology? I don't think so. The same people who argue for SBTC models also acknowledge that a large middle class is created by tech ubiquity, which means the bottom moves up faster than the top. Which, in turn, means technology should actually work against wealth inequity. Maybe some economist can correct me on this point.

Forgotten Lands

It's taken me a long time, but I've finally found my way through Parag Khanna's The Second World: How Emerging Powers are Redefining Global Competition in the Twenty-First Century. It's all about the new geopolitics and the new maps of the world.

Many amazing things that we've all forgotten come back to light; the fact of how big Xinjiang and Tibet are compared to the rest of China; the size of Brazil compared to that of the USA (8.5 million sq km vs 9.8 million sq km); how many pieces of desert with oil under them can be found in central Asia; the fact that on a clear day you can see Pakistan from Oman; the list goes on. It is a fantastic survey of all the world.

Quite often, in our obsession with the First World and the Third World, we forget that there was a Second World, once full of life and humanity, but drained by the First World over the last 150 years or so. As we head towards a new multipolarity, the mass of China, the European Union and the American hegemony will set these up as the new powers. True, the USA has a huge military edge — but what can it do with that edge?

Meanwhile, China and the EU chip and chisel away at the former Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact, Africa, west Asia, and even South America. It all depends on which way the remaining lesser powers of the First and Second World decide to go; huge Brazil, innovative Japan, massive India and its neighbour Pakistan, Mexico, Canada, Australia, and others. What a wonderful world!

Gangsterism in Schools

I spent some time thinking about this topic recently. A lot of sociologists and psychologists give the standard reason that gangs and tribes are part of normal human behaviour, so it's all a question of how these groups are formed and to what ends they act. But it seems to me that, if schools are indeed agents of socialisation, they should be determining the way gangs behave.

What troubles me more is the equivalent of white-collar gangs. Intellectual gangs. Debater gangs. Children-of-privilege gangs. Scholarship-leads-to-power gangs. This kind of gangsterism is what drives the big crimes, the ones that aren't really crimes and are condoned by society. There are dark imperatives building in that area between black and white, where you can't tell which are the men in either colour.

Get your scholarship. Get an advanced degree. Become a boss. Treat people like crap and eliminate your rivals using everything they taught you at the local civil service training centre, and some things they didn't dare teach you. At any sign that an employee is unhappy, that's disloyalty, for why would he be unhappy with your regime? After all, you have the God-given wisdom to know what's best for him. Best get rid of him then, no need to find out why he is unhappy because that would surely be his lack of wisdom, not yours.

The mafia of the new academic world are not sub-educated grunts, but over-educated villains. And like the stereotypical Bond villain, they have no sense of humour but make you feel like laughing. Of course, if you do, you will suffer drastic consequences.

The Mechanical East

About two weeks ago, I think I made a bad mistake. I was reading Cyril Aydon's A Brief History of Mankind and I looked at his comments about how the Industrial Revolution never came to China, and I said that it sounded right to me. That's what I posted, because that's what I thought.

But as my readers know, I've never been one to leave stuff like that alone. Something didn't seem right, because I knew that China had all the ingredients for an Industrial Revolution, and in fact had invented all those things centuries before the western barbarian tribes could even think of such things as non-magical.

So I dug around, dutifully and assiduously, for old books and newer ones. I found Arthur Cotterell's Western Power in Asia: Its Slow Rise and Swift Fall (1415-1999), Simon Winchester's Bomb, Book and Compass: Joseph Needham and the Great Secrets of China, and John M Hobson's The Eastern Origins of Western Civilisation, among others. After digesting about a dozen books on related material, and re-reading what Fernand Braudel and Felipe Fernandez-Armesto had to say about it (often in contrast with other scholars such as J M Roberts) I came to a new conclusion.

The past is a world too tangled to be disentangled. But the same methodology that tells us who King Arthur must have been also tells us that China's influence on the past of the world is a lot more significant than most historians (especially those of the Anglo-American sphere) would have us believe. The artifacts and the documents, the weight of commercial and technological history, all point us to the fact that the Chinese were innovators, that the world's first major industrial revolution was that of the Song Dynasty, and that the Chinese fell upon hard times through terrible mismanagement on the part of the Manchus.

The view in 1975 was already turning against the colonial views of the preceding century. Documents from that time, such as this one, point out (although in Western terms) the things which led to China's debasement and which were leading to its resurrection.

(It's also interesting to see what they had to say about a certain 'Prime Minister Yew' of a tiny city-state further south. Spiro Agnew found in Singapore "one of the most advanced societies on earth," and John Connolly called the city-state "the best-run country in the world." Prime Minister Yew's formula was simple: "Nothing is free.")

As China completes its rise to great power, perhaps the words of John Hay, US Secretary of State in 1899, will be remembered: "The storm center of the world has gradually shifted to China... whoever understands that mighty Empire... has a key to world politics for the next five hundred years."

Responses 000 (2010-2011)

After a quick first look at yesterday's list of questions, my intuitive response was that questions 4 and 5 are far too general; each of them is a major chunk of epistemology, and no particular focus is provided. Question 2 looks as if you'd have to define 'expert' first, and since that's not susceptible to a useful definition in this context, I wouldn't touch it.

Questions 1, 3, and 7 are traditional, with the advantage that they are straightforward comparisons. Q1 goes so far as to give you one of the knowledge domains to be compared, so it's marginally easier.

Question 6 is a variant of the 'there are no absolute truths' trick. Since you can't say the statement is true, you have to say it is false. Then you discuss why it is false, which is a waste of time to me, since there really isn't much of a counterclaim.

Questions 8 and 9 limit the discussion to specific domains of knowledge. However, they are also kind enough to tell you what to discuss, which makes them good candidates. Don't overstretch on either, though; it's possible to read these questions in such a way that you come up with too many answers or no answer at all.

Left to my own devices, I'd answer Q10. It is easily structured, yet complex enough to provide lots of good points and examples. Ah well, if anyone remembers my lectures, I used to do this one implicitly all the time!

And so, those are my initial responses in 2009 for questions to be answered by 2010-2011. Enjoy!

Gorgon

I'm looking at the report on Barrow Island, Australia. They've got a saltwater reservoir 2.3 km underneath it, into which they're injecting 3.3 megatonnes of carbon dioxide per year in an attempt to sequester the stuff and reduce global warming. This sequestration experiment is called Gorgon, after the Greek mythological entities who could turn humans to crystalline calcium carbonate statues.

3.3 megatonnes is a lot. it's 3.3 million million grams. 3,300,000,000,000 g of carbon dioxide. If that much carbon dioxide escapes, it will form a bubble with a volume of 1.8 billion cubic metres at room temperature and pressure. The land area of Australia is about 8000 billion square metres. That's great, because it means that if Barrow Island goes off after one year, it will only cover Australia to a depth of 0.225 centimetres. No big deal.

Atlantis, on the other hand, would be overwhelmed. At only about 0.7 billion square metres, we'd be covered to a depth of more than 250 centimetres in carbon dioxide. Most of us would be dead.

This is all crazy reasoning, actually. What is more likely is that the dense bubble of 1.8 billion cubic metres would move bloblike, shoved around by the winds, randomly killing people by asphyxiation. Who would it kill? I don't know; maybe people running the Gorgon Gas Project.

What's that, you ask? Haha, well it's funny, but carbon sequestration tends to coexist with petrochemical plants. The Gorgon Gas Project is designed to produce 1.1 billion billion cubic metres of natural gas a year. That's a billion times larger than the carbon dioxide annual input.

Amazing, those Aussies. You should go look at their top-secret wind turbines in the desert too.