POSIWID

Does the Higgs Boson particle have a secret mission?

2009-10-17T16:11:00.004+01:00

Why do we have no evidence for the existence of the Higgs Boson particle? Why have several experimental quests for the Higgs Boson particle ended in expensive failure, most notably the recent failure at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)?

(Update November 2009: a second failure involved a bird and a baguette [Register, Guardian]. You couldn't make it up.)

If you want a crazy idea, ask a physicist. Holger Bech Nielsen and the Japanese physicist Masao Ninomiya suggest a novel hypothesis that sounds like science fiction. Their idea is that the Higgs boson particle goes backwards in time to erase evidence of its existence, including retrospectively sabotaging the experiment that would produce it. It is called the God particle, after all.

And for their second crazy idea, Nielsen and Ninomiya have suggested a way to test the hypothesis, based on a random procedure that looks like a rejected Derren Brown script.

Underlying these crazy ideas there is perhaps a serious criticism of the research methodology behind the Large Hadron Collider. According to Cern's director of communications James Gillies, the experiment is "a bit like firing knitting needles from across the Atlantic and getting them to collide half way" [BBC News, 16 October 2009]. But does this ballistic metaphor, which Newton would have understood, make any sense in terms of the latest thinking about subatomic physics? Is this extremely expensive experiment capable of producing any meaningful results? How long is a piece of string theory?

For details and commentary, see New York Times, New Scientist, Register, Reuters, Dorigo and (highly recommended) Discover. And see my previous post: CERN and conspiracy theories.

Hard Cases Make Bad Law

2009-09-15T14:56:00.001+01:00

Heated debate in the UK about the new anti-paedophile checks in the UK (Parent driver checks prompt row, BBC News 11 September 2009). On the one side, people suggesting that the new system is a disproportionate response to a single appalling case (Ian Huntley murdering two schoolgirls in Soham); on the other side, people adopting the "no check is excessive if it makes our children safe" line of argument.

It's a big if. Any vetting or screening system will produce false positives and false negatives. Nobody knows how many. There are people cleverer and more devious than Huntley, and they will know more than Huntley did about how the system works, so it is fairly certain that some of them will manage to get through the check undetected. In any case, the check only picks up people who already have a police record. If the check creates a sense of false security, then it potentially makes our children less safe.

Meanwhile, honest volunteers who have been the subject of false allegations in the past may prefer to avoid having these allegations raked over again; so there may be fewer people willing and able to run scout groups, youth clubs, and so on, leaving kids with little option but hanging around on street corners. Nobody knows how many. (Whatever happened to evidence-based policy? Whatever happened to joined-up thinking?)

Furthermore, as one of the detectives responsible for catching Huntley points out (This CRB-check paranoia won’t stop another Soham, The Times, 15 September 2009), the girls knew and trusted Huntley not because he happened to be a caretaker at a completely different school, but because they knew and trusted his girlfriend, Maxine Carr. The logical implication of this is that CRB checks should cover not only classroom assistants (such as Ms Carr) but also their boyfriends. Perhaps the designers of the CRB system already have a cunning plan to extend the scheme later, as soon as its inadequacy becomes apparent.

This seems to be one of those schemes (along with DNA testing and identity cards) where a partial scheme is pushed through as a compromise. The logic of the scheme suggests that it will only work properly if the entire population is covered, and covered far more thoroughly than the present scheme can, but the politicians rightly recognize that this would be politically unacceptable. So they grab what they can get, and wait for a later opportunity to make the scheme yet more totalitarian.

Tough Decisions

2009-08-24T01:07:00.005+01:00

Many people have been quick to criticize the Scottish decision to liberate Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, the Libyan convicted of the Lockerbie bombing.

The general tone of the criticism is shocked, puzzled or angry. Before the decision was announced, Hillary Clinton described the possibility of Megrahi's release as "absolutely wrong" [BBC News 19 August 2009]. Following the announcement, Barack Obama has denounced the release as a mistake [Guardian 21 August 2009], the head of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation has launched a scathing attack on the Scottish government [BBC News 22 August 2009], and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm Mike Mullen said: "This is obviously a political decision" [BBC News 23 August 2009]. As if these powerful and (presumably) well-informed people considered the decision to be quite straightforward. Or perhaps they are simply aggrieved that their own wishes haven't prevailed.

Two main lines of conspiracy theory are emerging. One line is that the release is in return for arms sales or some other secret deal. (So that's why the US government are complaining?) The other line is that the authorities have privately conceded that the conviction was unsound (as the UN observer believed at the time, and as Paul Foot documented in great detail in a 2001 Private Eye special report) and now wish to release Megrahi before an appeal against the conviction can be heard (as a CIA spook now suggests).

Hans Köchler: I saw the trial – and the verdict made no sense (Independent 21 August 2009)
Libyan Takeaway (Private Eye #1243 21 August 2009)
CIA spook says Megrahi was freed before appeal humiliated justice system (Sunday Mail 23 August 2009)
Malise Ruthven, Deception Over Lockerbie? (New York Review od Books, Volume 56, Number 15, 8th October 2009)

Perhaps it's inevitable that people are going to be angry about the decision if they don't know all the facts. And it's easy to criticize from your armchair, if you aren't the one making the tough decisions. As always, my recommendation is to think of a frame in which the decision appears to make sense. Compassion or conspiracy - you choose.

Obama Heathcare Plan

2009-08-20T12:50:00.005+01:00

What kind of nitwit (asks @RSessions ) would believe Obama's health care plan wants to kill the elderly? Roger cites a New York Times article, Obama Calls Health Plan a 'Moral Obligation' (20 August 2009).

Another way of putting this question is as follows. Within what frame or worldview does this outcome (killing elderly people) seem both likely and deliberate? And what are the characteristics of those people who view Obama's healthcare plan in this way?

One of the hotly contested frames is the religious one. Obama is specifically addressing the religious lobby, and is hoping to get the moral high-ground. Obama turns to faith leaders Josh Gerstein (Politico, 20 August 2009).

Care for the elderly has apparently become a focal point for opposition to the healthcare plan. Conservative religious leaders such as Dr Alveda King (niece of Dr Martin Luther King jr and supporter of John McCain in the recent presidential election) adopts the rhetorical trick of stringing emotive words together ("health reform ... unborn ... elderly ... genocide"), which may create the desired effect in some audiences without the need for detailed (and refutable) argument.

One of the interesting things here is the way a single word or phrase (in this case "elderly") becomes a substitute for a proper argument and well-articulated worldview. This is a very common phenomenon: the word acts as a totem, creating a frame around itself. The power of words.

Sources

Health reform fact check: Euthanasia of the elderly, Cindy House. Rocky Mountain Independent, 10 August 2009
Fox & Friends crew frighten elderly viewers: health-care reform is 'a subtle form of euthanasia' David Neiwert Crooks and Liars Blog, 27 July 2009

School League Tables

2009-08-19T12:29:00.008+01:00

Is assessment in schools fit for purpose? asks the UK Teaching and Learning Research Programme. (Full report pdf, press release pdf, BBC News)

Obviously the answer depends on what you imagine the purpose to be. The report identifies a wide range of possible (and sometimes conflicting) uses, and politely pours scorn on the view expressed last year by David Bell, who as permanent secretary at the Department for Children, Schools and Families told MPs:

“While I hear the argument that is often put about multiple purposes of testing and assessment, I do not think that it is problematic to expect tests and assessments to do different things.”

As the report points out, the reason that this expectation is problematic is that assessments have two different effects: they provide information and they influence what people do. These effects generally conflict: measurement (especially targets) distorts performance.

Using Stafford Beer's POSIWID principle to determine the real (de facto) purpose of assessment, we can identify four real purposes, one internal to the educational establishment, and three external.

For head teachers and bureaucrats, assessment is a way of competing for resources. Assessment results are used to allocate funding to schools, and to cost-justify a wide range of innovations and initiatives, and are therefore subject to strong vested interests from various stakeholders within the education system.

For politicians, assessment provides a way of claiming that education standards have improved monotonically since records began, with especially good progress during the current regime. (I don't actually know anyone outside the "system" who takes these claims very seriously.)

The schools at the top of the league tables can attract the best teachers and the best pupils, and therefore should be able to maintain their position at the top of the table in perpetuity. (A bit like professional football.)

Therefore, for ordinary people, assessment provides a way of selecting the "best" school for your child, and helps to increase and maintain property prices within the desirable catchment areas. (Obviously this effect is viewed differently by those families who can afford these property prices and by those who cannot.)

In summary, despite an official Government agenda for innovation and change, the league table system helps to maintain an unsatisfactory status quo. POSIWID.

As a champion of systems thinking, I find it encouraging that so many ordinary people (almost everyone except politicians and bureaucrats) understand the problems with target-setting. One of the effects (and therefore the POSIWID purpose) of the target-setting regime may be to encourage people to embark on real system thinking. And by "systems thinking", I don't just mean the John Seddon approach to service design but holistic joined-up thinking. I live in hope.

The Benefits of Doubt 2

2009-08-04T21:23:00.003+01:00

@ghall49 (Gerald Hall) writes: "Birthers are a great example of how impervious delusional beliefs are to reason and evidence. They only accept what they want to believe."

According to the BBC, a growing number of Americans (the so-called Birthers) doubt the circumstances of Obama's birth [Q&A Obama's Birth Certificate]. Some of them suggest that he might possibly be Kenyan or Indonesian.

Birthers do not seem overly concerned at the absence of evidence for either of these suggestions. Obviously the absence of evidence merely proves that the evidence has been destroyed by the conspirators. For them to feel morally justified in rejecting the authority of the elected president, it is apparently sufficient that there is a smidgeon of doubt about the documentation that the President has produced. The fact that Obama is supported by a "fairly significant faction" puts him into the same historical category as the mediaeval antipopes.

Do Birthers actually believe that Obama is Kenyan? Or do they merely believe that he might be Kenyan, that he might as well be Kenyan? Or that, like Macduff, he was not of woman born? Birthers don't have to be certain that Obama is this or that, they merely have to be uncertain that he is American. The real delusion is not about the circumstances of Obama's birth, but about the relevance of these doubts to the American polity.

Meanwhile, some Birthers have discovered a further reason to deny President Obama the respect owing to a duly elected president. According to the latest theory, Obama's middle name is not Hussein or Mohammed but Lucifer.

Here's the method. First take the following verse from the Bible, "I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven." (Luke 10:18). Now insert the Aramaic word for "lightning" (barak) and the Hebrew word for "from the heights" (bamah). Obama isn't just Kenyan, he's also the Antichrist?

Just the faintest possibility that he might be the Antichrist? Isn't that enough?

Testing the System

2009-07-23T10:07:00.002+01:00

for @DevilsRefugee (Theo Priestley)

I used to work in an office where, every now and again, an announcement would be made over the tannoy. "The fire alarm system will be tested at 11 o'clock. Please stay at your desks."

What exactly was this "fire alarm system" that was being tested here? My idea of a fire alarm system involves people responding appropriately and without panic to some kind of audible signal. The purpose of the fire alarm system is to get people safely out of a burning building, and the purpose of the test is presumably to make sure that the system works.

But if the office manager's idea of a successful test was that people stay at their desks despite the signal, then obviously that's not the system she meant. Probably focused on testing the wiring. (To my mind, that's just a subsystem.)

Teaching people to ignore fire alarm signals is a really stupid idea, isn't it? I worked in another office with proper tests of the fire alarm, where we all had to leave the building without prior warning and not using the lifts. But there was a guy on my floor on crutches, and he would be told of the drill in advance and advised to remain at his desk. When we figured this out, we just looked over to him when the alarm signal sounded; if he was ignoring it, we knew it was just a test.

Okay, so the test proves we can get all the able-bodied people out of the building quickly. What does that imply for my friend on crutches? Was the office manager not bothered whether he could get out of the building in a real fire?

How someone goes about testing a system reveals what exactly they think the system is, as well as what they think is important about it.

The Benefits of Doubt

2009-07-22T18:45:00.006+01:00

Some people seem to care enormously about the circumstances of President Obama's birth. Was he perhaps born a citizen of some other country, or was he really Malcolm X's lovechild? If they could only prove some problem with his provenance, then his presidency (they imagine) would be over.

For some of these conspiracy theorists ("Birthers"), the most convincing evidence is the fact that President Obama doesn't (perhaps cannot) produce documentation sufficient to allay their suspicions. Do they imagine he's got nothing better to do than prove that he exists?

But sometimes the best strategy when faced with irrelevant accusations is to leave people wondering. For example, David Cameron refused to specify his youthful chemical indiscretions (BBC News 14 Oct 2005). A fictional example is provided by Stephen Byerley, in Isaac Asimov's short story Evidence.

Leaving something like this open to doubt (or even deliberately sowing the seeds of doubt) may serve a useful purpose. Your enemies may make a big fuss and waste a lot of energy; if they can't find something more important to talk about, people will stop paying much attention to them; meanwhile there is a mystery and glamour that may even enhance your appeal.

See my earlier post: From Malcolm X to Barack Obama.

Comforting Maxims

2009-07-16T09:45:00.003+01:00

There are some sayings that are plainly not true, but people like to repeat them anyway. Here are a few. If you have any more, please add to the comments.

1. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

This maxim is often attributed to Frederick Nietzsche. I found an application of this maxim to the history of Turkey by adriangzz.

Geva Perry adds: "In Israeli military we used to say: What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, and what DOES kill you makes your mom stronger."

The satirical website Newsbiscuit mocks the maxim. "What doesn’t kill you may not actually make you stronger, warn doctors."

"Doctors have discovered that among those conditions which won’t leave you feeling better than before are cancer, HIV/AIDS, strokes, Parkinson’s disease, a broken spine, Ebola, heart attacks, radiation poisoning and massive trauma to the head. ... There are no recorded instances of a rejuvenating bout of typhoid or a restorative case of the clap."

2. Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me.

Oh yes they can. Robert Fulghum, US author and Unitarian clergyman, coined a counter-maxim: "Sticks and stones will break our bones, but words will break our hearts..." (via Suzette R. Hinton, eZine Articles).

Commentary

Clearly there is a short-term purpose in these comforting maxims - to comfort those who have suffered or are suffering, and to encourage people to take command of their lives and move on. But there is also a disturbing erosion of truth, which ultimately lead us to regard all such maxims as vapid cliché, and to distrust the old wives who supposedly tell these tales. As Francis Bacon said (not the painter, the other one)

"So whosoever shall entertain high and vaporous imaginations, instead of a laborious and sober inquiry of truth, shall beget hopes and beliefs of strange and impossible shapes." (Advancement of Learning)

Purpose of Labour Pains

2009-07-13T02:53:00.007+01:00

In my post on Back Pain, in response to Scott Adam's complaint that back-pain was evil, I asserted that pain has a perfectly valid function, and it is painkillers that are evil.

Pain has a perfectly valid function - it is the body's way of communicating something important to the mind. If you ignore a small child, it will misbehave louder until it gets your attention. And pain works the same way. If you completely ignore your back until it seizes up, then you shouldn't be surprised if it seizes up from time to time. That's how systems work.

In my view, it is painkillers that are evil - or rather the casual use of painkillers - because they interfere with the natural communication between the mind and the body, and the natural balance of work, rest and play.

However, although this is the general function of pain, it sometimes doesn't seem to work properly. For example, in some chronic situations such as cancer, the body sends excessive pain signals to which the only possible response appears to be some kind of signal blocking mechanism such as drugs or TENS. Alternative therapies in this category might include acupuncture and hypnosis.

Childbirth is another situation where pain-killing drugs and TENS machines are commonly used. Why should mothers suffer labour pains?

Childbirth is a natural and, if all goes well, perfectly healthy procedure; many people therefore think it is inappropriate to treat childbirth as a medical condition. And there is a common ideology of "natural" childbirth: many women adopt birth plans that aim to avoid excessive medical intervention, not just out of bravado or authenticity, but also for fear of unnecessary side-effects.

But it is one thing to oppose or refuse excessive medical intervention; quite another to assert that labour pain has a positive function, as does Dr Denis Walsh.

"Pain in labour is a purposeful, useful thing, which has quite a number of benefits, such as preparing a mother for the responsibility of nurturing a newborn baby." [Observer, 12 July 2009]

Dr Denis Walsh is an associate professor of midwifery at the University of Nottingham; he is described by the Observer as "one of the UK's leading midwives". The basis for his claim is apparently set out in an article Dr Walsh has written for the Royal College of Midwives journal Evidence-Based Midwifery. (See note below)

Evidence-based midwifery, huh? I wonder what kind of evidence can Dr Walsh produce for the purpose of labour pains? Is this perhaps the kind of hypothesis that can only be evaluated by evolutionary biologists? Labour pains have doubtless co-evolved with maternal care, many other species lacking both, but can we really conclude that labour pains are an adaptation that help to promote maternal care? I think it is more plausible to say that labour pains are a side-effect of a much more important adaptation, namely large brains.

In any case, evolutionary biology offers one possible meaning of the word "purpose" - some functional trait that has evolved or co-evolved for a reason. If that's not what Dr Walsh means, what else could he possibly mean?

Note 1: Dr Walsh has an article in the current issue of Evidence-Based Midwifery (Volume 7, Issue 2, June 2009), but this seems to be about something else and I couldn't find the word "purpose"; he had an article on the Role of the Midwife in a previous issue, but this is for subscribers only. However, I did find an interesting editorial in the current issue by one Professor Marlene Sinclair, Practice: a battlefield where the natural versus the technological, citing Elul, Habermas and Ihde.)

Note 2: I didn't know whether evolutionary biologists had ever studied labour pains as a separate phenomenon, so I tried Google and found an abstract of an article by Wulf Schiefenhövel called Perception, Expression, and Social Function of Pain: A Human Ethological View (Science in Context, 1995). I have sent an email to Professor Schiefenhövel asking for his opinion on Dr Walsh's claim.

Note 3: When I previously blogged on pain, I got a lot of comments from people trying to sell dodgy pain relief. Any such comments will be quickly deleted, so please don't bother. I am only interested in retaining comments that discuss the points in this blog.

Purpose of a Nation

2009-07-07T23:05:00.006+01:00

James Liu posted a question to the Linked-In Systems Thinking Group.

What is the purpose/aim of a nation (such as US, UK... ) as a system? How can we get there if we don't know the aim of our nation?

The following is edited from my contributions to this discussion.

My first response was to suggest that nations only exist because other nations exist. I'm not sure it makes sense to talk about a nation in isolation. The system whose purpose I'd like to understand is the system that has (often violently) carved the world into the nations we have today, and still threatens to split existing nations into smaller ones and/or create new ones. What purposes are served by the concept of "Nation"? And how does a single instance of this concept relate to this international context?

This prompted an interesting response from Joseph Higginbotham, who rephrased my suggestion in terms of alterity (Otherness) - the organization of the nation is an answer to the threat posed by organization of the Other. But that doesn't quite explain what triggers the process of nation-forming in the first place.

Joseph went on to speculate about the end of this process of nation-forming.

So what is advancement? A Utopia where humans only organize to accomplish something that can only be accomplished through cooperation, not because they feel threatened? And of course, as the world grows "flatter" and more interconnected and more interdependent, we have to ask if One World Government is inevitable, right? I mean, theoretically, can wars be eliminated if we're all One World?

Obviously if there is only one government, then there cannot be wars between governments. But history tells us about many other kinds of war - civil wars (British, American, Spanish), revolutions, guerrilla and terrorism. The nation-state pattern (one nation = one country = one government) is not a universal one. And from a systems perspective, the notion of historical inevitability is highly problematic.

A vision of competition being replaced by cooperation suggests that there were in fact two different questions under discussion: not only what the purpose of a nation actually is, but also what the purpose should be. Some of us may have a personal preference for cooperation over competition, or for peaceful resolution rather than violent conflict, but getting large complex systems (such as Global Politics) to follow our personal preferences is a highly political activity.

Joseph says the challenge would be to agree on why we have a government or a nation. That is certainly a challenge, but I see it as primarily a political challenge. A systems-thinking challenge (I hesitate to say "the" challenge) would be to agree on a systematic or systemic way of exploring and perhaps improving the purpose of governments or nations, without being constrained or coopted by any single political or ethical position.

James offered an answer to his original question: "Currently the primary aim of a democratic nation is to help its citizens to enhance their quality of life." This answer has added two important words: currently and democratic.

I take the word "currently" to indicate that this is his observation of the AS-IS purpose of a nation (what it already is), rather than his aspiration of the TO-BE purpose (what he thinks it ought to become).

I also note the addition of the qualifier "democratic". Democracy has long been a key component of how America has perceived itself, and how it has been perceived by others. In his classic book Democracy in America, the 19th century Alexis de Tocqueville sought to understand why republican representative democracy had succeeded in the United States while (at that time) failing in so many other places. He sought to apply the functional aspects of democracy in America to what he saw as the failings of democracy in his native France. (Book summary based on Wikipedia.) A useful read if you want a historical perspective on the purpose of a democratic nation.

Today, many Americans sees one important purpose of the United States of America as being a Beacon of Democracy. If you search the Internet for "beacon of democracy", you will also find this phrase being applied to other nations, including Canada, Ghana, India, Mongolia and Taiwan, as well as some imaginary future state of Iraq.

But is this systems thinking as opposed to straight politics? By straight politics I meant undiluted politics, which Churchman identified as one of the Enemies of the Systems Approach. I wasn't thinking specifically of realpolitik.

James's second question (How can we get there if we don't know?) seems to be making an assumption about the nature of goal-directed systems. However, with large complex systems, we can achieve (happen upon) all sorts of wonderful outcomes without knowing the purpose in advance. I often use Stafford Beer's POSIWID principle to try and work out the hidden agendas of complex systems.

Joseph acknowledged that governments and government officials have many different purposes, some of them declared and some hidden. But then Joseph went on to say that "we cannot apply systems thinking to government until we can agree on what government is trying to accomplish". My view is the exact opposite of Joseph: we MUST apply systems thinking to government IF WE WANT TO MAKE SENSE OF what government is REALLY trying to accomplish. (This is perhaps a classic example of the POSIWID principle.)

Joseph thought that my position (that systems thinking must be applied to figure out what government is trying to accomplish) has at least three logical flaws:

It assumes humans always act rationally and that their plans always reflect their intent. I can use systems thinking to analyze the probably outcome of a government policy or I can go the other way and start with the outcome and work backwards from the outcome through the system that produced it to the cause but I still don't know what that government intended. Only if they are consistent systems thinkers who intentions always align with their policies can I assume that.
It assumes our policy makers are good enough systems thinkers themselves to reason from intent to plan to implementation to execution to outcome. We don't know if our leaders are systems thinkers. We don't elect them for their systems thinking skills. We elect them because they say what we want to hear and then we pray they meant what they said. Of course, most of the time they don't.
Policy keeps changing and pretty soon, due to budget cuts, elections, changes in party, lack of political will, lack of public support, etc., by the time we get enough data to start looking backward from outcomes to processes to causes to intents, we don't know what was intended.

Thus Joseph stood by his original statements that we have to know what a government is really trying to accomplish in order to use systems thinking to get it there.

My approach to systems thinking is careful not to make any of the assumptions he imputed to me, and I don't accept that there were logical flaws in my argument. But it became increasingly clear from our discussion that Joseph and I had completely different notions of what systems thinking actually was. He acknowledged the validity of logically walking backwards from outcomes through processes to ask questions about systems, such as "Your system is perfectly designed to deliver X, was that your intent? Did you know your system was designed to produce X or do you just not know what you're doing?" But he didn't seem to regard this line of inquiry as a form of systems thinking. I do, although it's not the only kind of systems thinking I recognize.

What Joseph is calling systems thinking seems to be limited to a particular rationalist style of systems design. As it happens I am currently re-reading Churchman's book on the Systems Approach and its Enemies, where this practice is described as Objective-Planning. But this leaves out what Churchman calls Ideal-Planning (working out the objectives in the first place), which I regard as an important (perhaps the most important) element in Systems Thinking.

To the extent that this discussion was taking place in the Systems Thinking group, I expected to see some willingness to find systems-thinking answers to some important questions about nationhood, and I hoped such answers would be different to the answers we might have found in a Political Study group (if there were one).

James thought it was interesting to see totally different perspectives from different groups. And he thought that this diversity suggested it was a question worth to ask and discuss.

Diversity is often a sign that there is something problematic about the question. Systems thinking often helps us by changing the question. The Linked-In Group was certainly having an interesting discussion about something important, although the exact nature of the question (as often happens with discussions about complex systems) seemed to be shifting kaleidoscopically, and I was interested to see the interplay between different systems concepts - purpose, role, causal loops, and so on.

Some later contributions to the discussion seemed to be converging on identifying a purpose for the discussion itself - perhaps to identify how people (such as ourselves) can make a difference to the political formation of the nation and its activities (including diplomacy and warfare).

And this is a strong theme within some styles of systems thinking - the need to rephrase the original question into "What is the purpose/aim of OUR ASKING ABOUT a nation (such as US, UK... ) as a system?

Someone else talked about the discussion "drifting around" - and calling it that makes it sound as if it's always better to follow a charted course. But then you will only arrive at pre-ordained destinations.

When you set out for Ithaka
ask that your way be long,
full of adventure, full of instruction.

Purpose of Sex

2009-06-18T14:01:00.002+01:00

If we want to redesign sex, it would help if we knew what sex was for.

Writing in The New Scientist (15th June 2009), Nick Lane asks Has the mystery of sex been explained at last? , and quotes Canadian biologist Sally Otto.

"sex is most advantageous when there's a lot of variation in a population, when mutation rates are high and selection pressures are great"

Does this explain why even the most physically unattractive politicians seem to have vigorous sex lives? See my post on Sex and Stress.

Sex and Design

2009-05-07T20:33:00.006+01:00

If you are interested in the design of the human sex organs, there are some fascinating theories suggesting how they may have evolved in order to perform some complex biological functions.

Scientific American recently recycled a theory about the design of the penis propounded by Gordon Gallup. (Secrets of the Phallus, April 2009. Gallup's theory had been published by the BBC and New Scientist several years ago: Penis is a competitive beast, August 2003.) According to this theory, the shape and thrusting action of the penis has the function of removing old semen (including that of rival lovers) before depositing a fresh load. The partial lost of erection after ejaculation is an important design feature; it makes sure that the new semen is not removed as the penis is withdrawn.

Meanwhile, a separate theory, the delightfully named "upsuck theory", explains how the female organs are designed to select the sperm from the most desirable lover, pumping it upwards towards the uterus during orgasm.

There are significant problems with both theories. See for example Harry, Sally and Evolutionary Biology, which suggests that if these evolutionary mechanisms really worked, then humans would by now have evolved to have mind-blowing sex all the time. See also my earlier post on Female Pleasure, and an interview with Elisabeth Lloyd in Thinking Meat.

But it is what happens when you put these two theories together that bothers me here. Both theories appear to rely on POSIWID thinking - looking at some biological feature and trying to infer its purpose (in terms of a positive contribution to the survival and reproductive success of its owner). But it is usually incorrect to think of a single biological feature in isolation. These bits of biology interact to form complex systems, frantically pumping live semen in all directions.

So what (if anything) does POSIWID tell us about the whole system and its purpose? As Žižek argues (in To Read Too Many Books Is Harmful), human sexuality is not limited to the biological sphere: "sexuality is the very terrain where humans detach themselves from nature ... a drive that gets thwarted as to its natural goal (reproduction) ... thereby explodes into an infinite, properly meta-physical, passion".

The POSIWID principle doesn't mean we have to reduce all explanations to unobservable biological mechanisms. Human behaviour is driven or constrained by many forces, including social and spiritual ones.

See also my post on Redesigning Sex.

Sarcasm causes Cancer

2009-05-06T14:40:00.005+01:00

( for @bengoldacre )

Practically anything you can think of has been named either as a possible cause of cancer or as a possible preventative or cure.

January 2008 marked the launch of an ambitious project, the Daily Mail Oncological Ontology Project, which was going to follow the Daily Mail’s ongoing mission to divide all the inanimate objects in the world into those that cause or cure cancer. After only four days, the project was abandoned in despair. (Like a typical New Year Resolution, perhaps.)

But why pick on the Daily Mail? Even the BBC is constantly running stories like these.

How to respond to this endless array of pseudo-oncology without sarcasm?

But all is not lost. A New Daily Mail Oncological Ontology Project rises from the ashes. So that's all right then.

Does fortune-telling work?

2009-04-13T04:23:00.004+01:00

A recent survey shows a significant proportion of people believing in astrology and Tarot (BBC News, 12 April 2009). The number of believers is slightly down from the 1990s, but still much higher than in the 1950s.

One reason why these beliefs are popular is because they appear to work: practitioners of fortune-telling sometimes produce excellent insights. However, this can be explained as follows.

We start with the theory that the human brain is divided into leftbrain and rightbrain.

We then observe that fortune-telling typically involves a complicated procedure, and sometimes complicated calculations. This applies to a range of practices, including astrology, iChing and Tarot. Sceptics typically dismiss this as pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo.

However, all of these procedures and calculations have the effect (and so perhaps the purpose) of occupying the leftbrain, while the rightbrain quietly produces some interesting and relevant insight. In other words, the more complicated the procedure the more effective it is.

See my post on Confirmation Bias

Is History One-Sided?

2009-03-14T10:33:00.005Z

Not everyone liked Robin Hood. According to myth, he stole from the rich to give to the poor.

But shock horror: a document critical of Robin Hood has been discovered ('Negative' attitude to Robin Hood, BBC News, 14 March 2009).

(Notice, by the way, how the BBC subeditors insert coy quotation marks around the word "negative" - just in case anyone might think the BBC might be taking sides in this controversy - even though surely the word "attitude" already indicates that they are merely reporting an opinion.)

Julian Luxford of St Andrews University, described by the BBC as an expert in medieval manuscript studies, said: "Rather than depicting the traditionally well-liked hero, the article suggests that Robin Hood and his merry men may not actually have been 'loved by the good'.

Here are two important clues about the document.

1. It was written in Latin.
2. The manuscript is owned by Eton College.

According to the tradition that I learned as a boy, Robin Hood was well-liked by the poor and well-hated by the rich, including bishops and abbots. And of course the Sheriff of Nottingham.

Let me see: who would write a document about Robin Hood, in Latin, and deposit it in the Eton College Library? Obviously not a poor peasant.

So how does this discovery affect the "traditional" depiction of Robin Hood? Not much, as far as I can tell from the BBC report. It seems to tell us rather more about Dr Luxford and his notion of who were the "good" people in late mediaeval England.

I expect that Dr Luxford is reasonably competent as an art historian, and "well-liked" by his peers. However, like many other academics before him (see this blog for more examples), he has allowed his research to be popularized in a way that makes him look rather silly.

Update: Dr Luxford was interviewed on the BBC Today Programme this morning (17 March 2009). He didn't repeat his point about "good people", and James Naughtie made a point of saying why we might expect monks to dislike Robin Hood (following, but possibly not triggered by, my tweet to the programme), so misrule is restored.

It turns out that Dr Luxford's discovery conveniently parallels the plot of a new novel by Adam Thorpe, so we also have another entry for the life-imitating-art category.

Of course the evidence for Robin Hood's real character is very thin either way. All I'm saying here is that we shouldn't just jump to the Robin-Hood-Bad theory on the strength of a single, predictably hostile document.

See also Alex Hudson, Prince Among Thieves (BBC 17 March 2009)

Science and Public Policy

2009-02-27T18:09:00.007Z

What is the purpose of science in society? Let me start with three data points.

1. The UK Parliament has asked the British public what science issues it should investigate (via Bad Science).

2. The media are constantly packed with celebrity scientists, who pontificate on a wide variety of subjects, often way outside their narrow specialism, unconstrained even by the feeble discipline of "peer review". For example, Baroness Professor Susan Greenfield, who appeared on BBC Newsnight on Tuesday, debating the perils of Facebook with Dr Aric Sigman and Dr Ben Goldacre. [The Perils of Facebook, “Facebook causes cancer”, There is a Greenfield far away, Susan Greenfield Profile]

3. The UK Prime Minister has set targets to increase the number of pupils in secondary school in England taking science subjects, in particular the "triple science" GCSE exam. [BBC News, 27 February 2009]

As it happens, my son is currently doing a triple science course at his high school. I find myself particularly puzzled by the chemistry syllabus, which doesn't seem to have very much to do with the chemistry I did at school. My hunch is that they have taken out much of the real science in an attempt to make the subject more "relevant". Sadly, the more they vainly try to make these subjects "interesting", the fewer students appear able and willing to study these subjects seriously at university.

What these three data points have in common is the idea that foolish and shallow notions of relevance, and ill-considered pseudo-scientific pronouncements by people who should know better, may create a barriers to the development of a genuine interest and deep understanding of science, as well as to properly informed debate on public policy based on good and authoritative science.

The Prime Minister obviously thinks that science education is a Good Thing. He has doubtless been briefed by his officials that British Industry needs so many scientists a year, whatever it is that scientists do, contributing (in Harold Wilson's phrase) to the White Heat of Technology. (As it happens, Britain has only had one prime minister with a science degree, and I think I may have read somewhere that she thought being a scientist-PM was an even more unlikely achievement than being a woman-PM.)

But I question the educational value of undifferentiated science. Are schools supposed to teach children lots of random and incoherent bits of science, so that they may grow up to be white-coated experts on a wide range of policy issues? Or is there some macroeconomic formula that depends on a fixed percentage of science graduates? Surely this isn't what science is about.

When an expert witness is called in a court case, there is the possibility of challenging not only the expertise itself, but also its relevance to this particular case. Perhaps similar challenges should be institutionalized whenever contributions to public debate rest on some claim of scientific authority.

My suggestion to the Parliament Select Committee will therefore be to investigate the nature and source of scientific authority in a democratic society, and to ask how society should assess and evaluate the available scientific expertise.

Not yet quite back into the fold after all ...

2009-02-27T17:18:00.003Z

What exactly is the purpose of an apology?

The Vatican has rejected an apology by Bishop Richard Williamson, who had denied the full extent of the Holocaust, and said the bishop needed to "unequivocally and publicly" withdraw his comments. [BBC News, 27 Feb 2009]. This follows Bishop Williamson's earlier excommunication (which was for reasons unconnected with his opinions about the Holocaust) being controversially cancelled, as I discussed here a few weeks ago [Back into the Fold].

The Catholic Church now feels that Bishop Williamson's apology is ambiguous and grossly inadequate.

In September 2006, the Pope himself was forced to apologize after making some comments about mediaeval Islam. Some Moslems were dissatisfied with the Pope's apology; they felt that his Holiness appeared to be apologizing for the response rather than for the words themselves.

As I said at the time, an apology - especially a forced apology - often reveals a disconnect between intention and outcome. [Papa Ratzi 4]

Test of Character

2009-02-15T23:41:00.003Z

Here's an interesting juxtaposition: two stories from the BBC News, 15th February 2009.

US uses songs to deter immigrants The US Border Patrol is turning to traditional style Mexican songs, known as corridos, to dissuade illegal immigrants from trying to cross the US-Mexican border.

US army 'wants more immigrants' The US army is to accept immigrants with temporary US visas for the first time since the Vietnam war, a report says.

Is this an unlucky coincidence - a classic example of two branches of government working at cross-purposes? Or is it a very clever piece of joined-up government? Thus sensitive and risk-averse Mexicans should remain south of the border, and only the most courageous and determined Mexicans are welcome for military posts.

Bank Bonuses

2009-02-10T16:38:00.003Z

Why is it a good idea for banks to pay bonuses to their employees, when there seems to be a severe shortage of funds needed by real businesses to survive?

For many years, the banking industry has attracted many of the cleverest young people from the top schools and universities, and assigned them to playing transiently profitable number games. We are now told that the banks must continue to pay large bonuses to these people, so that their talents are retained within banking.

The apparent purpose of these bonuses is to perpetuate a discredited system, in which a significant pool of intelligence is still being denied to the industries that might actually create real wealth. Where would they go instead? Fields, factories and workshops perhaps?

Some cynics suggest that the current bank employees are so damaged by their experience, that letting their talents loose on wealth-creating industries would cause further economic and social catastrophe.

However, it would be a disgrace if new generations of bright students continued to be lured into gambling with other people's money by the prospect of high bonuses and zero accountability.

Perhaps we should get the bankers to do some real banking - along with hedging and ditching. See Somerset Guide to Restoring Hedgerows (pdf).

Nuclear Disarmament

2009-01-30T01:13:00.006Z

Why does Britain need to invest in a new generation of nuclear weapons? There is no conceivable circumstance in which these weapons will ever be used, even in self-defence.

The old argument was that the possessors of nuclear weaponry would use their power wisely to deter other nations from developing such weapons. This has clearly failed. There is no credible threat of ever using nuclear weapons against Iran or North Korea, let alone any non-state terrorist organization; the fact of proliferation is therefore completely uninfluenced by the fact that the Western powers have some expensive and untested nuclear warheads corroding in a bunker somewhere.

The supporters of multi-lateral disarmament say that it would be an excellent thing if everyone were to abandon nuclear weapons at the same time. But they don't believe that Britain's taking a unilateral move away from the possession of nuclear weapons will persuade any other country to disarm. Therefore we must continue to develop ever more advanced nuclear weapons. I heard the Foreign Secretary David Miliband putting this argument on the BBC News this evening.

Unilateral disarmament is traditionally associated with liberal philosophers and left-wing Christians - from Bertrand Russell to Bruce Kent. However, an increasing number of military top brass are openly questioning the acquisition of nuclear weapons that can never be used. [Generals in 'scrap Trident' call BBC News 16 January 2009. General calls for Trident rethink, BBC News 29 January 2009]

In the past, some supporters of unilateral disarmament have put forward the view that we don't have to wait for others to disarm, we can set a moral example. Once we lay down our arms, other countries will be shamed into doing the same.

Supporters of multilateral disarmament believe this is unlikely, and perhaps they are right. But they go on to draw a fallacious conclusion - that because our abandoning the bomb would have no effect on other countries, therefore there is no purpose in our abandoning the bomb, therefore we should keep it.

In other words, they are still hoping to use the bomb - not as a way of killing millions of innocent citizens but as a bargaining chip in some game of international politics. Keeping the bomb allows us a seat at a diplomatic table at which no meaningful agreement is ever going to be reached. What a wonderful way of spending $20bn of taxpayers' money.

Back into the Fold

2009-01-24T23:22:00.006Z

It is a time for reconciliation and return. Old political rivals welcomed back (Hillary Clinton, Peter Mandelson, Ken Clarke). And the Vatican has restored relations with the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX), a traditionalist Catholic organization, founded in 1970 by the French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. Most controversially, the Vatican is cancelling the excommunication of four SSPX bishops, including Holocaust denier Richard Williamson.

I don't know whether this is bad luck or bad judgement on the part of the Holy Father, but Bishop Williamson appeared this week on Swedish television, denying the existence of the gas chambers. So much for Jewish-Catholic relations then.

The Holy Father appears to have a precise legalistic mind, in which there is no logical connection between the original reasons for Bishop Williamson's excommunication and his extreme views on the second world war. If the excommunication no longer serves a valid purpose, it must be cancelled; you cannot keep someone in a state of mortal peril just because you disagree with, or even disapprove of, his opinions.

Many will be offended by the pardon for Bishop Williamson and his SSPX friends, interpreting it as a further sign of an anti-Semitic turn at the Vatican. However, His Holiness doesn't seem to worry much about offending people.

Meanwhile, the Society of St. Pius V (SSPV), an organization that split from SSPX in 1983, holds that the papal seat is currently vacant ("sedevacantism"), as all the popes since 1958 (or perhaps 1963) are excessively modernist and therefore heretical. Perhaps Benedict XVI is trying to win their approval and acceptance.

Sources

Pope 'to lift SSPX excommunications' just as Bishop Williamson denies Nazi gas chambers (Telegraph, 22 January 2009)
Pope could welcome Holocaust denier back into the fold (Times Online, 23 January 2009)
Bishop faces probe for Holocaust outburst (Independent Online South Africa, 23 January 2009)
Pope move ignites Holocaust row(BBC News, 24 January 2009)
Bishop Richard Williamson, Holocaust Denier, Reinstated By Pope (Huffington Post, 24 January 2009)
Pope lifts SSPX excommunications (Ruth Gledhill, 24 January 2009)
Benedict and the SSPX: the backlash begins (Telegraph, 22 January 2009)

Relationships built on self-interest

2009-01-22T23:11:00.003Z

A number of bloggers have reproduced a photograph of Barack Obama at a blackboard, teaching something called Power Analysis, with a diagram captioned "Relationships built on self-interest". This is supposedly based on the work of Saul Alinsky.

BAGnewsNotes: Obama As Machiavelli
JustOneMinute: The Time To Lead Is Later
Politics & Prosperity: Obama and the Saul Alinsky Method
The Union News: How Obama organized America: Alinsky-style

First Family

2009-01-22T22:30:00.005Z

Like several of his predecessors (Johnson, Nixon, George W Bush), President Obama has two daughters.

Kennedy and Carter had interesting brothers; Ford, Reagan and Clinton had interesting wives. Who was the last president with a son? Oh I remember, it was George HW Bush.

The Wrong Side of History

2009-01-21T20:02:00.003Z

In his inaugural speech yesterday, President Barack Obama spoke the following words: "To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history." [President Barack Obama's Inaugural Address]

Anyone who thought those words were directed at the Cubans or the Iranians or the Filipinos or Israel or Jimmy Carter or Microsoft would have been alerted to their true target by the swift censorship of the Chinese authorities, which excised these words from the Chinese translation (along with some unfavourable references to communism and blaming the West) [BBC News 21 January 2009].

As BBC Journalist James Reynolds reminds us, President Bill Clinton used similar words before making a "friendship" visit to Beijing in 1998. "When it comes to human rights and religious freedom, China remains on the wrong side of history" [CNN, June 1998]. And in his speech at Beijing University [BBC News, 29 June 1998] he asked his hosts "How do we work together to be on the right side of history together?" Apparently Clinton's views on history were shared by disgraced former Chinese leader Zhao Ziyang [New York Times, 25 June 1998] See also Jonathan Fenby [Guardian, March 2008]

Does history have a right and wrong side at all? Is history some kind of bully, that we have to stay on the right side of or get beaten up? Is there an inevitable march of progress and freedom, or is that just what Butterfield called The Whig Interpretation of History? (See commentary by Dr John Warren). Butterfield charged earlier historians who believed naively in such progress, especially Macaulay, with "fatuous and complacent optimism". Carl Becker levelled similar charges against Jefferson (see David Noble, Historians Against History, p 91).

Pray Obama does not succumb to fatuous and complacent optimism.