Collision in particle and opinion

I'm not sure where this is going, but yesterday, I read some arresting thoughts about two kinds of collision; one relating to particle physics, and the other to colliding opinions in the realm of metaphysics.

This rather surprising theory proposes that Super Colliders might be rendered inoperable by some force of retrospective self-preservation within the universe, because a devastatingly harmful particle might be created in one of them.

Importantly, the two physicists who have spawned this theory also propose a test for the point beyond which sheer "luck" becomes statistically something else in the context of one of these particle colliders.

I also read This article, In which Eric Reitan analyses "Collision", a documentary describing the verbal joustings of Hitchens V Wilson ("New Atheist" V "Conservative Evangelical").

I think Reitan's piece is required reading for anyone, like me, who is terminally pissed off by the aridity of polarised discussion. I must read some more of his stuff.

Debating to win is a skill and good mental discipline, and belongs in debating societies, where you may be called upon to defend some preposterous notion, and you do your best to drum up such arguments as you can, hoping your opponent will make a mistake. It can be good fun. I remember a debate from school days:
"This house would rather be a contented pig than a discontented philosopher".But a lot of people are going to run their lives on the basis of their religious convictions, so this latter "collision" should be beyond gamesmanship. Whereas the two physicists are proposing a testable theory in their area of collision, I accept Reitan's analysis that Hitchens and Wilson are not. Firstly, the existence or non-existence of God cannot be proved in the same way that Boyle's Law can be proved, and secondly, I agree with Reitan that the atheist and the evangelical are preaching to their own constituency. they are colliding but colluding. As long as their particular faithful get the approved message from their particular champion, they can shake hands and walk away afterwards like a couple of boxers, but with their prejudices intact.

Scientists at their best advance human knowledge by proposing testable hypothesese. Metaphysicists who defend an already established position, rather than exploring their assumptions or conceding the necessary weaknesses in unprovable positions, are merely massaging the prejudices of their own converts, and massaging their own egos in the process.

Debating to win can be addictive; debating to learn may be less vain glorious for the participants, but might have some merit beyond sound and fury.

The thirst for legitimacy

I know I haven't written the two posts I said I would, but I still might do it, and surprise you.

Meanwhile the present bee in my present bonnet is very unsurprising, and certainly nothing new. What always astonishes me about our human thirst for legitimacy is how easily we deceive ourselves that what we want is somehow justified by science, God ETC.

I was listening to a BBC program in a series on "Scotland's Black History", in which the notion of eugenics that we might call Scientific Racism was used in support of the legitimacy of the imperial adventures undertaken by various countries in the 19th century. Such ideas postulate that there is some kind of hierarchy of races, and divine sanction is often cited as well. Such a theory renders oppression not just excusable, but a sacred duty for the oppressor - the infamous "white man's burden". It has of course subsequently been used as a pretext for liquidating millions of people in Europe and Africa.

As another example of this, somewhat less destructive, at least overtly, God, or a particular interpretation of God, is wheeled out in order to punnish those whom believers consider to be sinful, while making the believers feel suitably virtuous. If this position is challenged, we definitely have a feeling that the righteous are extremely upset by the possibility of being cheated of the vengeance due to them for foregoing all that pleasure.
Thanks to Annie via Twitter for This article, in which something of the sort seems to be going on.

Now I'm asking myself if I can possibly be that easily self-deceived? Does the possibility of self-deception never occur to those who can make bigotry or zealotry work for them in their lives? Doesn't it strike themhow convenient these beliefs happen to be for their purposes? Has anyone ever proposed a racial hierarchy in which the proposer languished firmly at the bottom? The vast majority of the proponents of damnation seem to believe themselves to be saved from it. How convenient. If I am basing my life and its values on such handy and helpful constructs, made to fit the desired outcome, please somebody tell me.

Reason not to be cheerful

We all have different ways of coping with life, and we naturally choose those which fit our temperament. I like to take the hopeful view most of the time. Not because I know the best will always happen, but because it suits me better to act as if it will, while knowing it may not.

However, brain chemistry being what it is, there are days when I wake up feeling slightly less optimistic. On days like those, I should sensor my reading a little. I should not, for example read This article

or This article.

Now I know about politics being the art of the possible, and that we're all supposed to be pragmatic realists, but there are limits.

If Senator Franken's amendment is about to be dumped or diluted, are we really saying that a corporation's profit trumps someone's human rights? If we are saying this, how are we justifying it?

In terms of health care policy, are we really saying that it is in any sense OK to countenance the avoidable death of fellow human beings in the midst of conspicuous affluence? How are we justifying this?

To me, this is simply to defend the indefensible.

As for how to proceed with necessary reform, my belief in "gradualism" as the right approach was brought up short the other day when listening to a BBC program on "Scotland's Black History#". A black abolitionist spoke in Glasgow in support of the campaign to abolish slavery in the United States. The motion was that slavery should be abolished "as soon as possible", and the guest speaker announced his opposition to the motion to the consternation of the meeting. He explained that sin could not be walked away from by degrees. If it were sin, it should be renounced completely and at once. I am not myself a Christian, but his position makes a lot of sense to me. And for many of the protagonists in the current debates, his words should surely speak loudly, since they profess themselves to be Christians.

Cam we imagine Christ entering the Temple and, confronted by the money changers,saying, "Now listen guys, I know there are cost issues here for you, but I wonder if we can't sit down and discuss the medium to long term possibility of your vacating these precincts"?

I think not. Any society worth its salt has to have some clear sticking points.

Finally, I would ask the question can political systems which have allowed the power of money in a few hands to over-ride the common humanity of the electorate, any longer call themselves democracies? This is plutocracy isn't it, rendered respectable by elections giving the people choices between 2 versions of the same thing.

If someone needs access to vast amounts of money to get elected to high public office, there's the end of democracy right there.

I have cheered up since I had these thoughts, but the questions remain.

Opinions as identity, and learning

I have always enjoyed expressing myself, via words or music. The advent of the Internet into my life has proved very liberating, in affording me the opportunity to do both very cheaply. Of course I don't take sufficient advantage of the Internet, either as a resource or as a channel for expression. The sporadic nature of this blog attests to the latter.

I have been on some stimulating email fora (sorry, did some school Latin and have to show off), but blogging is quite new for me, and has accompanied a lot of changes in my life. Those changes, and reading blogs are making me increasingly interested in learning rather than indulging in language as a self advertisement.

As in daily life, you get more out of people by being concilliatory, and I find myself increasingly drawn to a less flamboyant, or at least less confrontational, mode, in an attempt to find out what others are saying, or mean by what they say, rather than the trench warfare which characterises polarised exchanges, which often don't merit being described as discussion.

Things I have to watch out for to keep a constructive focus.

Understanding the difference between testing/exploring someone else's views in order to better understand them, and trying to win the argument. There's more to belearned from the former, and arguing, even as in debating, can be more fraught with danger than I used to think.

By way of explanation, I need to digress, but it's my blog so I'll digress if I want to.
My recent experience of debating online had been via the mailing list of my former school, a boarding school for blind kids which combined selective entry by competitive examination with a non-fee paying environment, since our fees were paid by our local education authorities. I joined this list a very long time after I left that school, during which time I had deliberately avoided all things to do with blindness and related issues. But, in the nature of such things, even after a long gap, I found, and perhaps wanted to find, that the former students' mail list retained something of the ethos of the place as I remembered it. Although, as boys between 11 and 18, we had our share of physical competition and fights, in this blind and partially sighted environment, it's not perhaps surprising that vigorous debate was very much part of the fabric of everyday life, and I dropped back into that very easily.

Then I encountered blogs, and my natural impulse was to assume that Worcester rules would apply, and everyone would understand that, since I'm crap at chess, debating could fill much the same role, even if discussing matters of genuine importance.

So we all make assumptions about what the rules of engagement are. The chemistry of inter-personal dynamics is, to me at least, very mysterious, in that tension communicates itself to us, and suddenly a discussion can begin to feel like our value has become embodied in our views, and we are defending ourselves, rather than simply stating our opinion about something. So, to be clear, the whole focus of a discussion can change, not just for one party to it, but for both, and to both parties' surprise.

This is of course a particular danger for people who care about what the other thinks, and people who have thought their insecurities safely concealed. So this has left me temporarily somewhat tentative about the rules of engagement for online debate, and I'm concentrating on asking questions related to learning and understanding. Being right and winning are, after all, much less important, or should be.

As a final thought, I would add that, in our dialogue, we need to find a way to convince each other of the difference between "this is what I think", and "I know I am right".

This isn't the post i intended to write, but it's the precursor to the next two which, hopefully, will be what I intended to write.

Making the first move - forgiveness

Ever since yesterday evening, when I played James Taylor's "Belfast to Boston" on my weekly radio show, this recurrent preoccupation of mine has resurfaced. Conscious of the fact that I have nothing new to say, I feel compelled to say something.

James Taylor's song was written before the efforts of UK politicians, the good offices of the Irish government, and particularly the tireless efforts of US Senator Mitchell, with the backing of President Clinton, produced the current level of peace in the north of Ireland (Ulster), and brought an end to the daily horror of "the troubles".The song is a very direct, and therefore quite courageous, message to Taylor's Irish-American countrymen to stop funding this terrorist campaign through organisations such as Noraid. Terrorism doesn't work because it doesn't give people the kind of present in which they can make rational decisions about their future. It is negative and disruptive, practised by people whose chief concern is some kind of self-fulfillment.

This is all well known. Those whom the terrorist claims to represent are urged to lay aside their sense of grievance and go forward through reconciliation and forgiveness. Because there were terrorists on both sides in Northern Ireland, the aftermath of the troubles has been easier to manage. The difficulty comes when one side of a conflict is enjoined to embrace non-violence, while the other side basks in self-righteousness.

This is why Senator Mitchell has a much tougher assignment in the case of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Both sides have shown contempt for the life of civilians, and a version of God is alleged to agree with both of them. Because of their vastly greater might, the Israelis have managed to kill and starve much more effectively, while citing the efforts of their poorer neighbour by way of justification. One is defending its security, while the other is a terrorist. Why? Because Mr Balfour drew a line on a map?Isn't the God of the Jewish people, and therefore its state, a merciful God? Is it not for the mighty to exercise mercy? Besides which, repressed peoples can never be permanently and reliably disabled by repression, and military solutions to political problems never work. By deliberately smashing the Palestinian economy, and reducing the inhabitants of the West Bank to 15 litres of water per day (the U N minimum for "emergency" water supply), do successive Israeli governments really believe that this is somehow going to magically disable every Palestinian with rage in his heart, so that the Israeli citizen can sleep peacefully, as promised by God? With its own particular history, the Jewish nation surely cannot believe that the aspirations of others for some kind of homeland can be persecuted into extinction.

Northern Ireland shows us that some kind of reasonable life expectations are the basis for any kind of rational debate. No-one should be expected to debate the fine distinctions between legitimate national security and terrorism while they're hungry, thirsty, unemployed, and in fear of reprisal missile attacks. I certainly can't imagine myself being very motivated under those conditions.

The fact that all the affluent nations stand by and allow this to continue is completely indefensible. If financial clout ultimately has more value to us than the mercy, magnanimity and forgiveness advocated by the scriptures of all the major world religions, then we shouldn't be surprised if the triumph of power over compassion has consequences for us rather closer to home than TV images from east of the Mediterranean.

Isms and ists

As human beings, we are attracted to isms. I think there are strong anthropological motivations going on here. In fact, the evolutionary routes of such behaviour may be the same as the rational case which might be made for isms in general. I'm not, of course, talking here about the virtues of any particular ism, any particular bundle of views, which may be sufficiently structured to qualify as an ideology or system of thought. I'm talking about what draws us to want to be part of something bigger than we are.

If we come across a body of thought which vaguely represents our position, we get that coming home feeling. If it's a position that others may attack, we are going to draw comfort from the safety of being among the like minded, and from feeling less vulnerable to being picked off as some crazy loaner. We will have our sacred texts and the thoughts of the wise originators of our chosen ism to which we can refer to bolster our opinions, and add weight to them by quoting those whose scholarship we admire; scholarship which might impress the opposition.

But here's the danger zone in my opinion. Because the ism can easily take on an institutionalised life of its own, and render us less critical of what it says than we might otherwise be. Our luminaries can easily take on almost sacred status, and we may almost imperceptibly start feeling nervous about entertaining thought which doesn't toe the party line. We would somehow be acting disloyally, betraying "the cause". How nuch accommodation are we making to this tendency in us? Are we allowing our instinctive, if rationally defensible, need for solidarity to undermine our capacity for independent thought?

I'm aware that being an anti-ismist is itself an ism in the making. I'm simply suggesting that if we choose to define ourselves as any kind of ist, we might do well to think how far that ism reflects our true views, and how far we any longer permit ourselves to have such views without reference to higher authority.

Politically correct purposes

For newcomers to Tangentville, what follows is the output of someone who reads less than most denizens of the blogosphere. It's just mulled over thoughts written down.

On the subject of political correctness, its excesses have been lampooned at length by others - others better at lampooning. What struck me just now is a question about what political correctness is for? Do we need it and why?

I assume it had its genesis in a well intentioned wish to help increasingly heterogeneous societies peaceably come to terms with their heterogeneity, in a social context in which commonly accepted codes of "good manners", or "common courtesy" seem to be less generally accepted (discuss).

This impulse was enthusiastically embraced by thosee who think we can't get by without a manual, hopefully and profitably written by them. The implication is that us poor regular folks don't understand the huge anthropological complexities which experts can plumb, allowing them freely to consort with aliens from alien cultures. And that's not so bad: It's just the good old self-help industry we know and love.

What struck me as more worrying was a change of emphasis. The focus seems to have movved towards self-advertising virtue. "Look at me, I use all the right language, therefore I am a mature integrated person".

If we are genuinely concerned about the comfort of others in social situations, as represented in posters or on the screen ETC, what should we do? For what it's worth, my experience of meeting all kinds of people over many years is, if you want to know, for instance, how you should refer to them, you - surprise surprise - ASK THEM, and then they tell you, and then that's what you call them. Is that difficult?

We have laws designed to protect the vulnerable against physical and/or verbal abuse, negative discrimination and hatred. Maybe we need better laws, or maybe a better sense of humanity and community would help us to better inforce those we have.

The fact is that human decency will not be encouraged by means of someone else's lexicon. Political correctness is often a self-agrandising triumph of style over content. If we are serious about treating one another like human beings, we need to look beyond someone else's linguistic prescriptions; labels are not enough.

Politicians talk a lot about "The contest for hearts and minds". Any contest is within our own heart and our own mind. Are we truly interested in demonstrating the respect for others which we expect to be shown to us, or are we using the words of the Political Correctness word factory as a means of convincing ourselves that we're the people we would like to be?

It is how we really feel and how we act which will make a difference.