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Though truth is not self-revealing (as Cartesians and Baconians thought), though certainty may be unattainable, the human situation with respect to knowledge is far from desperate. On the contrary, it is exhilarating: here we are, with the immensely difficult task before us of getting to know the beautiful world we live in, and ourselves; and fallible though we are we nevertheless find that our powers of understanding, surprisingly, are almost adequate for the task – more so than we ever dreamt in our wildest dreams. We really do learn from our mistakes, by trial and error. And at the same time we learn how little we know – as when, in climbing a mountain, every step upwards opens some new vista into the unknown, and new worlds unfold themselves of whose existence we knew nothing when we began our climb.

Thus we can learn, we can grow in knowledge, even if we can never know – that is, know for certain. Since we can learn, there is no reason for despair of reason; and since we can never know, there are no grounds here for smugness, or for conceit over the growth of our knowledge.

It may be said that this new way of knowing is too abstract and too sophisticated to replace the loss of authoritarian religion. This may be true. But we must not underrate the power of the intellect and the intellectuals. It was the intellectuals – the ‘second-hand dealers in ideas,’ as F. A. Hayek calls them – who spread relativism, nihilism, and intellectual despair. There is no reason why some intellectuals – some more enlightened intellectuals – should not eventually succeed in spreading the good news that the nihilist ado was indeed about nothing.

From The Open Society and its Enemies Volume 2. Princeton University Press 1966

BBC: Afghanistan Taliban ‘Using Human Shields’

Gen Mohiudin Ghori said his soldiers had seen Taliban fighters placing women and children on the roofs of buildings and firing from behind them.

Mahmood Delkhasteh: Rapists in Iran’s Regime

Sexual assault against men and women is being systematically used in Iran in an attempt to stifle opposition.

Pajamas Media: What Did You Say About Muhammad?!

Which is more likely to elicit an irate Muslim response: 1) public cartoons of the Muslim prophet Muhammad, or 2) public proclamations that Muhammad was a bisexual, sometime transvestite and necrophile, who enjoyed sucking on the tongues of children, commanded a woman to “breastfeed” an adult man, and advised believers to drink his urine for salutary health?

BBC: Somali Ban on ‘Christian’ Bells

Islamist militants al-Shabab have banned teachers using bells to signal the end of class in the town of Jowhar, 90km (56 miles) north of Mogadishu. Al-Shabab said the bells sounded too much like Christian church bells. This comes after last week’s order by the Hizbul-Islam group that radios stop playing music because it is un-Islamic.

Washington Post: Somali Islamist Rebels Ban English, Science Lessons

Somalia’s hardline Islamists have banned English and science studies in schools in the southern Afmadow town after the education centers there ignored the rebels’ call for fighters, residents and teachers say.

Paul Canning: US and UK Failing to Take Iraq’s Gay Progrom Seriously

Both countries deny any Iraqi state involvement in anti-gay militias, but LGBT supporters suggest otherwise.

Jaxon Van Derbeken: 3 held in alleged anti-gay BB shooting in S.F.

Three cousins from Hayward have been charged in San Francisco with a hate crime and assault for allegedly firing a BB rifle at the face of a man they believed was gay, an attack the men videotaped, authorities said Wednesday. Mohammad Habibzada, Shafiq Hashemi and Sayed Bassam, all 24, are scheduled to be arraigned today in San Francisco Superior Court. They are free on $50,000 bond apiece.

SF Appeal: Hayward Men Out On Bail After Admitting They Came To SF To Shoot Gay Folks

Three Hayward men are scheduled to be arraigned on assault and hate crime charges in San Francisco next week for allegedly shooting a man they thought was gay with a BB gun. The Feb. 26 incident took place at about 10 p.m. outside a Mission District bar at 16th and Guerrero streets, according to police. The 27-year-old San Francisco man had just come out of the bar when he was shot once in the cheek by suspects in a nearby car, which then drove off, police spokesman Officer Samson Chan said. [...] According to Chan, they allegedly admitted to the crime. “The suspects did make a confession, basically stating that they came to San Francisco to target gay people,” he said.

Dustin Gardiner: Dad Accused in ‘Honor Killing’ Will Not Face Death Penalty

Because they seek “some level of assurance that there is no appearance that a Christian is seeking to execute a Muslim for racial, political, religious or cultural beliefs [in Arizona].”

Weekly Blitz: Women Detained for Not Wearing Veil in Bangladesh

Golam Minhaz, an inspector with Detective Branch of Bangladesh Police at Rangpur district detained 19 women in various areas in the city for ‘not wearing veils’.

The Observers: Runaway Wives Sentenced to Public Flogging by Warlord

In some Afghan provinces, warlords still reign supreme. Under their authority, the treatment of women is bleakly reminiscent of Taliban rule; as this video of a woman being whipped in public goes to show.

New York Times: Afghan Child Brides Escape Marriage, But Not Lashes

What in most countries would be considered a criminal offense is in many parts of Afghanistan a cultural norm, one which the government has been either unable or unwilling to challenge effectively.

CNN.com: 3 Women Caned in Malaysia for Adultery

Malaysian authorities have caned three Muslim women under Islamic law for acts of adultery. The canings are a punishment that persists across Malaysian society since the British colonial era of the 19th century.

BBC: Forced Marriages Awareness Tour

The first UK roadshow aiming to stop South Asian youngsters being forced into marriages abroad is due to get under way.

Ayesha Nasir: I Should Have Read My Islamic Marriage Contract

Why do Pakistani women agree to marriage contracts without scrutinizing them first and making sure they won’t be sorry later?

Bint al-Sultan: Ending the Culture of FGM

Like many girls in Sudan, I suffered genital mutilation – but with education, attitudes are beginning to change.

Mail Online: Postal Voting System is a Farce that Shames Democracy

Almost all the worst instances of fraud since 2000 have arisen in places with large concentrations of Asian voters, such as Blackburn, Oldham and Tower Hamlets. In the Birmingham local elections of 2004, six Muslim men stole thousands of ballot papers and marked them for Labour candidates. The Election Commissioner, Richard Mawrey QC, said at their trial that the contest ‘would have disgraced a banana republic’.

Mail Online: Innocent Couple Killed After Their House Was Fire-Bombed in ‘Bungled Honour Killing’

An innocent couple died in a house fire at the hands of assailants who got the wrong address in a botched honour killing, a court heard today. Abdullah Mohammed, 41, and his wife, Aysha Mohammed, 39, were overcome by smoke and fumes after an accelerant was poured through their letterbox and set alight. Their killers were ordered by another man to avenge his family’s honour but instead of firebombing 135 London Road in Blackburn, Lancashire, they started the blaze at 175 London Road.

BBC: Irish ‘Plot to Kill Cartoonist’

Seven people have been arrested in the Irish Republic over an alleged plot to kill a Swedish cartoonist for depicting the Prophet Muhammad, police say. The four men and three women are all Muslim, according to media reports, though a police statement did not confirm this.

Mail Online: ‘Follow the Islamic Way to Save the World,’ Charles Urges Environmentalists

In an hour-long speech, the heir to the throne argued that man’s destruction of the world was contrary to the scriptures of all religions – but particularly those of Islam.

All articles continue at links. Part of a series that never ends… [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12] and etc.  In the mainstream media there is a general rule.  You can call them Islamist militants, a group, Islamist rebels, hardline Islamists, rebels, men, Hayward men, suspects, warlords, Afghans, Asians, South Asian youngsters, Pakistani women, assailants, Irish, dads, Malaysian authorities, people – just make sure to call them anything but what they call themselves.  And what they call themselves is Muslims.  Because if you call a Muslim a Muslim, if you name Islam as Islam, then you are going to have a harder time reconciling what Muslims do on the one hand and what you might want them to do on the other.  You might want them to maintain their cuisine and language, add a bit of color to the workplace, but otherwise cotton to Western notions such as ‘don’t set women on fire’ or ‘if you don’t like a comic then don’t look at it.’  That’s what you might want Muslims to do, but that’s not what they’re doing.  If a Muslim does something good, or if they are talking about your idea of a Muslim instead of a real Muslim, then the mainstream media will use the words Muslims use to describe themselves.  Perhaps I am painting with a broad brush, confusing a vocal minority for a more passive minority.  Fair enough.  As that passive majority stops sheltering the vocal minority, as they cut them out like a tumor, then so will I grant my full apology.  Until then, the Muslim world can consider itself to be made up of ‘good Germans.’

The early history of philosophy, especially the history from Thales to Plato, is a splendid story. It is almost too good to be true. In every generation we find at least one new philosophy, one new cosmology of staggering originality and depth. How was this possible? Of course one cannot explain originality and genius. But one can try to throw some light on them. What was the secret of the ancients? I suggest that it was a tradition – the tradition of critical discussion.

I will try to put the problem more sharply. In all or almost all civilizations we find something like religious and cosmological teaching, and in many societies we find schools. Now schools, especially primitive schools, all have, it appears, a characteristic structure and function. Far from being places of critical discussion they make it their task to impart a definite doctrine, and to preserve it, pure and unchanged. It is the task of a school to hand on the tradition, the doctrine of its founder, its first master, to the next generation, and to this end the most important thing is to keep the doctrine inviolate. A school of this kind never admits a new idea. New ideas are heresies, and lead to schisms; should a member of the school try to change the doctrine, then he is expelled as a heretic. But the heretic claims, as a rule, that his is the true doctrine of the founder. Thus not even the inventor admits that he has introduced an invention; he believes, rather, that he is returning to the true orthodoxy which has somehow been perverted.

In this way all changes of doctrine – if any – are surreptitious changes. They are all presented as re-statements of the true sayings of the master, of his own words, his own meaning, his own intentions.

It is clear that in a school of this kind we cannot expect to find a history of ideas, or even the material for such a history. For new ideas are not admitted to be new. Everything is ascribed to the master. All we might reconstruct is a history of schisms, and perhaps a history of the defence of certain doctrines against the heretics.

There cannot, of course, be any rational discussion in a school of this kind.  There may be arguments against dissenters and heretics, or against some competing schools. But in the main it is with assertion and dogma and condemnation rather than argument that the doctrine is defended.

The great example of a school of this kind among the Greek philosophical schools is the Italian School founded by Pythagoras. Compared with the Ionian school, or with that of Elea, it had the character of a religious order, with a characteristic way of life and a secret doctrine. The story that a member, Hippasus of Metapontum, was drowned at sea because he revealed the secret of the irrationality of certain square roots, is characteristic of the atmosphere surrounding the Pythagorean school, whether or not there is any truth in this story.

But among Greek philosophic schools the early Pythagoreans were an exception. Leaving them aside, we could say that the character of Greek Philosophy, and of the philosophical schools, is strikingly different from the dogmatic type of school here described. I have shown this by an example: the story of the problem of change which I have told is the story of a critical debate, of a rational discussion. New ideas are propounded as such, and arise as the result of open criticism. There are few, if any, surreptitious changes. Instead of anonymity we find a history of ideas and of their originators.

Here is a unique phenomenon, and it is closely connected with the astonishing freedom and creativeness of Greek philosophy. How can we explain this phenomenon? What we have to explain is the rise of a tradition. It is a tradition that allows or encourages critical discussions between various schools and, more surprisingly still, within one and the same school. For nowhere outside the Pythagorean school do we find a school devoted to the preservation of a doctrine. Instead we find changes, new ideas, modifications, and outright criticism of the master.

(In Parmenides we even find, at an early date, a most remarkable phenomenon – that of a philosopher who propounds two doctrines, one which he says is true, and one which he himself describes as false. Yet he makes the false doctrine not simply an object of condemnation or of criticism; rather he presents it as the best possible account of the delusive opinion of mortal men, and of the world of mere appearance – the best account which a mortal man can give.)

How and where was this critical tradition founded? This is a problem deserving serious thought. This much is certain: Xenophanes who brought the Ionian tradition to Elea was fully conscious of the fact that his own teaching was purely conjectural, and that others might come who would know better. I shall come back to this point again in my next and last section.

If we look for the first signs of this new critical attitude, this new freedom of thought, we are led back to Anaximander’s criticism of Thales. Here is a most striking fact: Anaximander criticizes his master and kinsman, one of the Seven Sages, the founder of the Ionian school. He was, according to tradition, only about fourteen years younger than Thales, and he must have developed his criticism and his new ideas while his master was alive. (They seem to have died within a few years of each other.) But there is no trace in the sources of a story of dissent, of any quarrel, or of any schism.

This suggests, I think, that it was Thales who founded the new tradition of freedom-based upon a new relation between master and pupil and who thus created a new type of school, utterly different from the Pythagorean school. He seems to have been able to tolerate criticism. And what is more, he seems to have created the tradition that one ought to tolerate criticism.

Yet I like to think that he did even more than this. I can hardly imagine a relationship between master and pupil in which the master merely tolerates criticism without actively encouraging it. It does not seem to me possible that a pupil who is being trained in the dogmatic attitude would ever dare to criticize the dogma (least of all that of a famous sage) and to voice his criticism. And it seems to me an easier and simpler explanation to assume that the master encouraged a critical attitude – possibly not from the outset, but only after he was struck by the pertinence of some questions asked, by the pupils perhaps, without any critical intention.

However this may be, the conjecture that Thales actively encouraged criticism in his pupils would explain the fact that the critical attitude towards the master’s doctrine became part of the Ionian school tradition. I like to think that Thales was the first teacher who said to his pupils: ‘This is how I see things-how I believe that things are. Try to improve upon my teaching’ (Those who believe that it is ‘unhistorical’ to attribute this undogmatic attitude to Thales may again be reminded of the fact that only two generations later we find a similar attitude consciously and clearly formulated in the fragments of Xenophanes.). At any rate, there is the historical fact that the Ionian school was the first in which pupils criticized their masters, in one generation after the other. There can be little doubt that the Greek tradition of philosophical criticism had its main source in Ionia.

It was a momentous innovation. It meant a break with the dogmatic tradition which permits only one school doctrine, and the introduction in its place of a tradition that admits a plurality of doctrines which all try to approach the truth by means of critical discussion.

It thus leads, almost by necessity, to the realization that our attempts to see and to find the truth are not final, but open to improvement; that our knowledge, our doctrine, is conjectural; that it consists of guesses, of hypotheses, rather than of final and certain truths; and that criticism and critical discussion are our only means of getting nearer to the truth. It thus leads to the tradition of bold conjectures and of free criticism, the tradition which created the rational or scientific attitude, and with it our Western civilization, the only civilization which is based upon science (though of course not upon science alone).

In this rationalist tradition bold changes of doctrine are not forbidden. On the contrary, innovation is encouraged, and is regarded as success, as improvement, if it is based on the result of a critical discussion of its predecessors. The very boldness of an innovation is admired; for it can be controlled by the severity of its critical examination. This is why changes of doctrine, far from being made surreptitiously, are traditionally handed down together with the older doctrines and the names of the innovators. And the material for a history of ideas becomes part of the school tradition.

To my knowledge the critical or rationalist tradition was invented only once. It was lost after two or three centuries, perhaps owing to the rise of the Aristotelian doctrine of epistémé, of certain and demonstrable knowledge (a development of the Eleatic and Heraclitean distinction between certain truth and mere guesswork). It was rediscovered and consciously revived in the Renaissance, especially by Galileo Galilei.

First published in the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society NS 59, 1958-9.  From Conjectures and Refutations. Routledge 1989

One of the most important ingredients of our western civilization is what I may call the ‘rationalist tradition’ which we have inherited from the Greeks. It is the tradition of critical discussion – not for its own sake, but in the interests of the search for truth. Greek science, like Greek philosophy, was one of the products of this tradition, and of the urge to understand the world in which we live, and the tradition founded by Galileo was its renaissance.

Within this rationalist tradition science is valued, admittedly, for its practical achievements; but it is even more highly valued for its informative content, and for its ability to free our minds from old beliefs, old prejudices, and old certainties, and to offer us in their stead new conjectures and daring hypotheses. Science is valued for its liberalizing influence as one of the greatest of the forces that make for human freedom.

According to the view of science which I am trying to defend here, this is due to the fact that scientists have dared (since Thales, Democritus, Plato’s Timaeus, and Aristarchus) to create myths, or conjectures, or theories, which are in striking contrast to the everyday world of common experience, yet able to explain some aspects of this world of common experience. Galileo pays homage to Aristarchus and Copernicus precisely because they dared to go beyond this known world of our senses: “I cannot,” he writes, ”express strongly enough my unbounded admiration for the greatness of mind of these men who conceived [the heliocentric system] and held it to be true [...], in violent opposition to the evidence of their own senses.” This is Galileo’s testimony to the liberalizing force of science. Such theories would be important even if they were no more than exercises for our imagination. But they are more than this, as can be seen from the fact that we submit them to severe tests by trying to deduce from them some of the regularities of the known world of common experience by trying to explain these regularities. And these attempts to explain the known by the unknown (as I have described them elsewhere) have immeasurably extended the realm of the known. They have added to the facts of our everyday world the invisible air, the antipodes, the circulation of the blood, the worlds of the telescope and the microscope, of electricity, and of tracer atoms showing us in detail the movements of matter within living bodies.  All these things are far from being mere instruments: they are witness to the intellectual conquest of our world by our minds.

First published in Contemporary British Philosophy, 3rd Series, ed. H. D. Lewis, 1956. From Conjectures and Refutations. Routledge 1989

Since the terms ‘reason’ and ‘rationalism’ are vague, it will be necessary to explain roughly the way in which they are used here. First, they are used in a wide sense; they are used to cover not only intellectual activity but also observation and experiment. It is necessary to keep this remark in mind, since ‘reason’ and ‘rationalism’ are often used in a different and more narrow sense, in opposition not to ‘irrationalism’ but to ‘empiricism’ ; if used in this way, rationalism extols intelligence above observation and experiment, and might therefore be better described as ‘intellectualism’. But when I speak here of ‘rationalism’, I use the word always in a sense which includes ‘empiricism’ as well as ‘intellectualism’; just as science makes use of experiments as well as of thought. Secondly, I use the word ‘rationalism’ in order to indicate, roughly, an attitude that seeks to solve as many problems as possible by an appeal to reason, i.e. to clear thought and experience, rather than by an appeal to emotions and passions. This explanation, of course, is not very satisfactory, since all terms such as ‘reason’ or ‘passion’ are vague ; we do not possess ‘reason’ or ‘passions’ in the sense in which we possess certain physical organs, for example, brains or a heart, or in the sense in which we possess certain ‘faculties’, for example, the power of speaking, or of gnashing our teeth. In order therefore to be a little more precise, it may be better to explain rationalism in terms of practical attitudes or behaviour. We could then say that rationalism is an attitude of readiness to listen to critical arguments and to learn from experience. It is fundamentally an attitude of admitting that ‘I may be wrong and you may be right, and by an effort, we may get nearer to the truth’. It is an attitude which does not lightly give up hope that by such means as argument and careful observation, people may reach some kind of agreement on many problems of importance; and that, even where their demands and their interests clash, it is often possible to argue about the various demands and proposals, and to reach – perhaps by arbitration – a compromise which, because of its equity, is acceptable to most, if not to all. In short, the rationalist attitude, or, as I may perhaps label it, the ‘attitude of reasonableness’, is very similar to the scientific attitude, to the belief that in the search for truth we need co-operation, and that, with the help of argument, we can in time attain something like objectivity.

From The Open Society and Its Enemies Volume 2. Harper Torchbooks 1967.

I suggest that we need a new professional ethics, mainly, but not exclusively, for scientists. I suggest that it be based upon the following twelve principles:

1. Our objective conjectural knowledge goes further and further beyond what any one person can master. So there simply cannot be any ‘authorities’. This holds true also within specialized subjects.
2. It is impossible to avoid all mistakes, or even all those mistakes that are, in themselves, avoidable. All scientists are continually making mistakes. The old idea that one can avoid mistakes and is therefore duty bound to avoid them, must be revised: it is itself mistaken.
3. Of course it remains our duty to avoid mistakes when ever possible. But it is precisely so that we can avoid them, that we must be aware, above all, of how difficult it is to avoid them and that nobody succeeds completely. Not even the most creative scientists who are guided by intuition succeed: intuition may mislead us.
4. Mistakes may be hidden even in those theories which are very well corroborated; and it is the specific task of the scientist to search for such mistakes. The observation that a well-corroborated theory or a technique that has been used successfully is mistaken may be an important discovery.
5. We must therefore revise our attitude to mistakes. It is here that our practical ethical reform must begin. For the attitude of the old professional ethics leads us to cover up our mistakes, to keep them secret and to forget them as soon as possible.
6. The new basic principle is that in order to learn to avoid making mistakes we must learn from our mistakes. To cover up mistakes is, therefore, the greatest intellectual sin.
7. We must be constantly on the look-out for mistakes. When we find them we must be sure to remember them; we must analyse them thoroughly to get to the bottom of things.
8. The maintenance of a self-critical attitude and of personal integrity thus becomes a matter of duty.
9. Since We must learn from our mistakes, we must also learn to accept, indeed accept gratefully, when others draw our attention to our mistakes. When in turn we draw other people’s attention to their mistakes, we should always remember that we have made similar mistakes ourselves. And we should remember that the greatest scientists have made mistakes. I certainly do not want to say that our mistakes are, usually, forgivable: We must never let our attention slacken. But it is humanly impossible to avoid making mistakes time and again.
10. We must be clear in our own minds that we need other people to discover and correct our mistakes (as they need us); especially those people who have grown up with different ideas in a different environment. This too leads to toleration.
11. We must learn that self-criticism is the best criticism; but that criticism by others is a necessity. It is nearly as good as self-criticism.
12. Rational criticism must always be specific: it must give specific reasons why specific statements, specific hypotheses, appear to be false, or specific arguments invalid. It must be guided by the idea of getting nearer to objective truth. In this sense it must be impersonal.

I ask you to regard these points as suggestions. They are meant to demonstrate that, in the field of ethics, too, one can put forward suggestions which are open to discussion and improvement.

Lecture delivered to the University of Tubingen on 26 May 1981.  From In Search of a Better World, Routledge 1984.

“I think that what is common to art, myth, science and even pseudo-science is that they all belong to something like a creative phase which allows us to see things in a new light, and seeks to explain the everyday world by reference to hidden worlds [...] These hypothetical worlds are, as in art, products of our imagination, our intuition. But in science they are controlled by criticism; scientific criticism, rational criticism, is guided by the regulative idea of truth. We can never justify our scientific theories, for we can never know whether they will not turn out to be false. But we can subject them to critical examination: rational criticism replaces justification. Criticism curbs the imagination, but does not put it in chains.” – Sir Karl Popper, In Search of a Better World

UniSci: Bacterium Can Alter Evolution Of Another Species

Scientists have found the most convincing evidence yet that a parasite can contribute to splitting a species in two, thanks to a phenomenon in which a wasp’s damaged sperm can be “rescued” or fixed only by mating with particular females.

Chemical & Engineering News: Chemotaxis

The droplet, composed of 2-hexyldecanoic acid in either dichloromethane or mineral oil, travels several centimeters through a maze with a pH gradient. The pH is high at the maze entrance and low at its exit. Once in the maze, the droplet travels toward the lower pH, and in doing so, Grzybowski notes, it always finds the shortest path through the maze.

BBC News: Sushi May ‘Transfer Genes’ to Gut

By eating sushi wrapped in the seaweed, people probably ingested these bacteria along with the genes coding for that digestive enzyme.

BBC News: Neanderthal Genes ‘Survive in Us’

The genomes of 1% to 4% of people in Eurasia come from Neanderthals.

The Guardian: Gene-Swap Plan to Thwart Diseases

Researchers from Newcastle University say their breakthrough will help women whose children are at risk of a range of mitochondrial diseases. These disorders can be mild or very severe, and can cause muscle weakness, blindness, heart and liver failure, diabetes and learning disabilities. They affect one child in every 6,500.

Mark Changizi: Turning Vision Into A Programmable Computer

Might it be possible to harness our visual computational powers for other tasks, perhaps for tasks cognition finds difficult?

BBC News: Singing ‘Rewires’ Damaged Brain

By singing, patients use a different area of the brain from the area involved in speech. If a person’s “speech centre” is damaged by a stroke, they can learn to use their “singing centre” instead.

Science Daily: Hand Gestures Linked To Better Speaking

New research at the University of Alberta suggests that gesturing while you talk may improve your access to language.

Maths.org: Maths and Hallucinations

So common are geometric hallucinations, that in the last century scientists began asking themselves if they couldn’t tell us something fundamental about how our brains are wired up. And it seems that they can.

Science Now: Researchers Turn Mosquitoes Into Flying Vaccinators

A group of Japanese researchers has developed a mosquito that spreads vaccine instead of disease. Even the researchers admit, however, that regulatory and ethical problems will prevent the critters from ever taking wing—at least for the delivery of human vaccines.

Washington Post: Somali Islamist Rebels Ban English, Science Lessons

Somalia’s hardline Islamists have banned English and science studies in schools in the southern Afmadow town after the education centers there ignored the rebels’ call for fighters, residents and teachers say.

First of a series that could end at any moment.

The Bell Curve is a book published in 1994 worried about an increasingly isolated cognitive elite, a merging of the cognitive elite with the affluent, and a deteriorating quality of life for people at the bottom end of the cognitive ability distribution.  The authors documented these claims as something they were against.  Much is claimed in the book, but this blog post concerns exactly one claim and no other.  I think it is true that cognitive partitioning along IQ lines is occurring in the USA, and with it comes some profound threats to liberty.  Replace the word “book” with “blog” in the excerpt below and see if it rings true…

The college population has grown a lot while its mean IQ has risen a bit. Most bright people were not going to college in 1930 (or earlier) – waiting on the bench, so to speak, until the game opened up to them. By 1990, the noncollege population, drained of many bright youngsters, had shifted downward in IQ. While the college population grew, the gap between college and noncollege populations therefore also grew. The largest change, however, has been the huge increase in the intelligence of the average student in the top dozen universities, up a standard deviation and a half from where the Ivies and the Seven Sisters were in 1930. One may see other features in the figure evidently less supportive of cognitive partitioning. Our picture suggests that for every person within the ranks of college graduates, there is another among those without a college degree who has just as high an IQ – or at least almost. And as for the graduates of the dozen top schools, while it is true that their mean IQ is extremely high (designated by the +2.7 [standard deviation]s to which the line points), they are such a small proportion of the nation’s population that they do not even register visually on this graph, and they too are apparently out-numbered by people with similar IQs who do not graduate from those colleges, or do not graduate from college at all. Is there anything to be concerned about? How much partitioning has really occurred?

Perhaps a few examples will illustrate. Think of your twelve closest friends or colleagues. For most readers of this book, a large majority will be college graduates. Does it surprise you to learn that the odds of having even half of them be college graduates are only six in a thousand, if people were randomly paired off? Many of you will not think it odd that half or more of the dozen have advanced degrees. But the odds against finding such a result among a randomly chosen group of twelve Americans are actually more than a million to one. Are any of the dozen a graduate of Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Princeton, Cal Tech, MIT, Duke, Dartmouth, Cornell, Columbia, University of Chicago, or Brown? The chance that even one is a graduate of those twelve schools is one in a thousand. The chance of finding two among that group is one in fifty thousand. The chance of finding four or more is less than one in a billion.

Most readers of this book – this may be said because we know a great deal about the statistical tendencies of people who read a book like this – are in preposterously unlikely groups, and this reflects the degree of partitioning that has already occurred. [...]

The point of the exercise in thinking about your dozen closest friends and colleagues is to encourage you to detach yourself momentarily from the way the world looks to you from day to day and contemplate how extraordinarily different your circle of friends and acquaintances is from what would be the norm in a perfectly fluid society. This profound isolation from other parts of the IQ distribution probably dulls our awareness of how unrepresentative our circle actually is. [...]  When people live in encapsulated worlds, it becomes difficult for them, even with the best of intentions, to grasp the realities of worlds with which they have little experience but over which they also have great influence, both public and private.

I have raised my happiness set point (among other things) [...]. Some of the details are lost to memory, but below, I reconstruct for your analysis what I can of the process. It contains lots of gooey self-disclosure; skip if that’s not your thing. In summary: I decided that I had to and wanted to become happier; I re-labeled my moods and approached their management accordingly; and I consistently treated my mood maintenance and its support behaviors (including discovering new techniques) as immensely important. The steps in more detail:

1. I came to understand the necessity of becoming happier. Being unhappy was not just unpleasant. It was dangerous. [...]
2. I re-labeled my moods, so that identifying them in the moment prompted the right actions. When a given point on the unhappy-happy spectrum – let’s call it “2″ on a scale of 1 to 10 – was labeled “normal” or “set point”, then when I was feeling “2″, I didn’t assume that meant anything; that was the default state. That left me feeling “2″ a lot of the time, and when things went wrong, I dipped lower, and I waited for things outside of myself to go right before I went higher. The problem was that “2″ was not a good place to be spending most of my time. [...]
3. I treated my own mood as manageable. Thinking of it as a thing that attacked me with no rhyme or reason – treating a bout of depression like a cold – didn’t just cost me the opportunity to fight it, but also made the entire situation seem more out-of-control and hopeless. [...]

Article continues, at the always remarkable Less Wrong.

Recently I purchased a new file cabinet to hold my writing. What had been divided in many boxes, folders, envelopes and shelves is now in one place in chronological order. Putting it all together reminded me of many things I’ve written and forgotten, and the life I was living when I wrote them.

Among these papers were notes for a science fiction role playing game setting I wrote at the age of 24 in 1990. The setting was partially what I thought the next twenty years would be like and partially a dramatic invention to move the narrative forward. Here are some of those notes from twenty years ago.

A person who is a very proficient technician. This person is hired by some of the top corporations to solve software problems. They could be hired on to any of these corps at a high fee, but instead they are contacted via a net equivalent of a mail drop, do their work from afar, and post their fee which is then deposited in a special account. Sometimes the problem software is left at the drop then picked up later, sometimes access is given to the problem spot for the technician to get to. This person operates in this way to be able to work with the systems they find challenging without running the risk of being “owned” by the corp. If they worked in the open they would be committed to a limited environment and almost certainly not allowed to retire.

There are many ways this person could be brought into a game. The characters could see them slipping through the net in places other have found impossible to pass (yet this person appears to be a low-power individual… their net image isn’t particularly well armed.). They could get curious & follow them around. The characters could be hired to discover who this person is by a corp who wants to “hire” them. The characters could see (accidentally) the passage open to this person and run down it themselves. It would never be the case that this person would contact the characters.

Once the characters meet this person (which should be extremely difficult, even as an accident – remember, they’ve been evading the corps for a while now) they will be faced with the choice of keeping their identity secret and preserving their freedom (with the possibility the person will reward them) or of selling this information to one (or more) corps for a substantial amount. The second choice could result in acquisition of a powerful enemy but also the support of the corp (for a while at least).

A variation on this idea might be that there are two of these people, in different places, who may have never even met. This would allow for each variation on this idea to be carried out, or the same one carried out twice. If there are two they could cover each other too. If there are two they need not appear as two… if the characters are looking for one person and they discover the handle they are looking for is more than one person that would be a big shock.

An Autoduel subsection? Good chance for pure mayhem & violence. Could be optional, a thing observed but not participated in.

Telephone Operator, Shadow in Vain, Replicas.

Eventually the US Government is going to have enough pressure from the corps (and troubles of its won) to regulate ownership of all but the most simple of computers and much software as well. Computers able to link with other computers (ie: most) must be registered by manufacturer, serial number, owner, place and date of purchase. This applies to Complexity 2 computers. Each Complexity level of a computer requires a special permit to own. The higher the Complexity, the more rigorous the requirements for ownership and expense of the permit. Cyberdecks have been completely outlawed for the general public. However, several industrious Cyberdeck corps have gotten around these laws by incorporating Cyberdeck technology into items with functions other than netrunning. One is the Home Flight Simulator, which is indeed a flight simulator but also can be used for the Net. The Net Environment is expressed in flight related terms, be it WWI triple wings or intergalactic space ships. Another kind of Cyberdeck is built into a special automobile. It is a car, and a good one, but it has driving simulations that are net-accessible. The third type of cheat-Cyberdeck is the Home Studio, a musical environment. The last is the Model Home, a home management deck that controls temp, lights, etc. This also lets you speculate about adding new “rooms,” etc. This last kind is also called the Smart Toaster. In descending order of cost and power, the sneaky Cyberdecks are Flight Simulator, Car, Music and Smart Toaster. The Flight Simulator might actually be in an air/space ship of some sort, but would more likely be in the relaxation lounge of a big corp or wealthy netrunner. None of these Cyberdecks can interact well (which creates some problems with the rules) if at all. Speaking of interfacing, I see it pretty obvious not all computers will interface. Many will, but plenty of low Complexity but indispensable ones will not without a special adapter.

What will be the mode of self-expression for people who choose not to be “naturals,” who never go outside or exercise or eat anything but pills, who know they live in a totally climate controlled environment? [...] Perhaps changes to digestion and certain neurodrives (hunger-related, like a kill joy?). This will be very appropriate to people in space or under sea, but some city dwellers may chose this too.

New York City has been nuked to rubble by terrorists. NYC would be a force to really shape this game, but I’m taking the easy way out by saying its just not here any more. Which in turn allows for the story development before (who & why nuked) and after (where are the NYers to go? Both as a people and as a cultural icon?). Combustion engines will almost certainly be gone. Battery powered cars & buses will be the new main mode of transport. This will certainly effect the politics of the OPEC nations. They will have been over run long ago by superpowers. Gas engines will be outlawed in cities once battery cars are common. Only in the country will you find them in use as farm tools. Old car collectors will develop cultures similar to motorcycle clubs, a legitimate hobby with social stigma.

Cloning [will not be prevalent] except as a means to produce certain foods. Big vats of self-replicating protein soy-glorp will feed many people. [...] Super artificial hearts.

Corps are going to outright own more towns. Some will be like miner towns (essentially a fiefdom) while others will be like Oak Ridge [Tennessee]. The US Government will still exist but will include libertarians & even socialist & communist members at high levels. Electronic at-home voting is tried one year – a netrunner elects a total nobody as president as a joke. The whole election has to be re-done, creating a 4 month period with essentially no government. During this time there are big shake-ups in structure. The corps come out strong, the military & police grant themselves new powers, some attempts at secession are made (perhaps one or two tiny ones succeed). This even plus the NYC nuking are two big factors culturally that shape the US. The NYC nuking results in martial law for a while, which erupts into something of a civil war.

Terrorism hits the US in a big way?

All sorts of marriages are recognized. A future Pope makes some stupid remark and the Catholic Church splits again. A US Papacy is established. Holy wars? Roman Catholics vs. New Catholics.

New drugs that give shared (if simple) experiences developed. Example: hallucination of telepathy (real or not). Age limit on alcohol removed. Lots of horrible new drugs. Tracing the potential telepathy drug from scientist to corp to government to black market could be a story line. If it is a telepathy drug this could provide a happy ending or at least a radical change the characters could be involved in.

AIDS kills half or less world population before vaccine developed. This is optional, and doesn’t even cure people. It just makes it non-fatal.

The Rifkin Act wrapped up genetic research in so much red tape it came to a halt. The Rifkin Act requires most genetic research to be made a public affair: the total ramifications of all experiments must be reviewed by politicians, citizen groups, medical groups, ecologists, etc. This slows down research. A theory must be worked out in full on paper, reviewed, and if it is approved and changed it must be re-reviewed. Certain diseases are cured, some birth defects vanish (from the West), soy vats feed much of the world. But no clones or organ banks.

All this BS about leaving an electronic trail – it’s just moving technology backwards while putting in in tomorrow’s clothes. The present is paper shuffling, a step ahead of wagon ruts in the ground. This electronic trail stuff puts the wagon ruts in the computer that replaces paper shuffling.

I could base my net on my personal postal network, at least in part. At least locate them in cities that correspond to my own access points (Rensselaer, Dallas, San Francisco, etc.).

Pirate telephone networks. Not just worms in existing systems, whole pirate systems. To launch or liberate a satellite might be might be all that is needed. Implications of powerful / rick hacker here – I want to avoid that.

The different types of Cyberdecks are definitely not compatible. Above even the Flight Simulator is the type of Cyberdeck the military has. It uses actual head plugs. The other monitor subvocalizatoin, eye movements, as well as outright control with hands and body. The government Cyberdecks could control robot explorers in sea and space, or a robot fighter. Netrunning capabilities won’t be a main focus, I’d say.

There will be large contaminated areas from nuclear accidents in countries other than superpowers. Maybe the Middle East or South America. Safe soft energy will be common. Solar collectors in space that beam down microwaves to power batteries are an important part of the power system. Credit cards & checks will be the common currency. Government money will exist but will be useful only to the underground economy due to its anonymity. Debit cards will have been attempted & shown to be too easy to monkey with.

“What would it look like to travel across the known universe? To help humanity visualize this, the American Museum of Natural History has produced a modern movie featuring many visual highlights of such a trip.” – Astronomy Picture of the Day for 20 January 2010.

Please note that your problems and mine are insignificant. – Trevor Blake

For centuries Great Britain has served as a safe haven for refugees from political persecution. The reason Britain has been so attractive is its long tradition of political tolerance. This is history Britain ought to be proud of, even if it has been abused by people such as Karl Marx.  What made Britain unique was that the British public was tolerant of larger issues such as politics and religion while remaining decidedly intolerant of petty issues. The curtain-twitching disapproval of “alternative lifestyles” remained strong in Britain until the 60s generation rebelled against such moral sternness. While Britain in the 50s was a repressive society in many ways that many could not accept, just because Britain has a proud tradition of tolerance, it does not mean that intolerance does not have its own advantages.

To see what a society looks like when tolerance goes wild, observers only have to look at southern Europe or much of the third world. China shows what a socially tolerant society looks like. While China is not tolerant of political differences, the people are generally tolerant of behaviours that would not be acceptable in Britain. In China, smoking, talking loudly, using mobile phones in theatres or restaurants is perfectly normal behaviour. This is extended to a nearly complete indifference to public spaces and to other people that comes as a surprise to any newly arrived visitor to the People’s Republic. Driving in China is usually a shock even to those used to third world traffic as other drivers simply ignore anything not a direct danger to themselves.  As an example of the problems of excessive tolerance just compare the status of larger social issues such as crypto-science. While anyone in Britain who makes dubious claims for medical treatments can expect both the wrath of the authorities and public disapproval, in most of the rest of the world tolerance is extended to those claiming they can cure cancer or HIV with herbs.

In fact in China belief in the benefits of Chinese herbal medicines is extremely common, despite a noticeably lack of evidence to support such views. This extends up and down the social scale with the most educated Chinese often also being the most credulous towards such claims. Qian Xuesen, the American-educated founder of China’s rocket programme, for instance, was also a strong supporter of various Qigong groups, including Falun Gong before it was banned.  This tolerant attitude may well have played a part in China’s lack of an industrial revolution. For while British tolerance has not allowed the persecution of heretics in recent times, that has not been extended to their ideas. British scientists have inherited the Christian tradition of intolerance and that has driven technological progress. [...]

As the British have become more tolerant of petty transgressions it is no surprise that such behaviours have increased. Litter is much more common than it was 50 years ago, as is antisocial behaviour in general. However, this increasing tolerance extends from the housing estates to the Houses of Parliament. Behaviour that would have led to resignation half a century ago is now viewed with benign tolerance. Civil servants are not dismissed no matter how badly they manage public projects; politicians no longer resign no matter how badly they have behaved.

None of this is inevitable. Litter is not unavoidable and should not be tolerated. The waste of billions of pounds in badly designed IT projects is not a fact of nature but a blot on society we choose to accept rather than challenge. We can find our inner Inquisitor and we should express disapproval of behaviour that we do not need to tolerate. Britain can be the tidy, clean and safe place it was 50 years ago if only we, as a society, have the will to embrace intolerance for antisocial behaviour.

[Article continues.]

There are at least two laws being discussed to change health care and insurance in the United States.

S.1679 Affordable Health Choices Act (Placed on Calendar in Senate) reads in part:

The essential benefits provided for in subparagraph (A) shall include a requirement that there be non-discrimination in health care in a manner that, with respect to an individual who is eligible for medical or surgical care under a qualified health plan offered through a Gateway, prohibits the Administrator of the Gateway, or a qualified health plan offered through the Gateway, from denying such individual benefits for religious or spiritual health care, except that such religious or spiritual health care shall be an expense eligible for deduction as a medical care expense as determined by Internal Revenue Service Rulings interpreting section 213(d) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 as of January 1, 2009.

H.R.3200 – America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 reads in part:

Sec. 125. Prohibition of discrimination in health care services based on religious or spiritual content.

Alternative medicine, Christian Science, the healing powers of prayer, Scientology auditing, exorcisms and more will get federal funding if these proposals become law.  If any kind of medical care gets federal funding I’d prefer it be evidence-based.  When you have to pay taxes and the taxes pay for this kind of nonsense, it isn’t alternative medicine any more.

Followup:
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger, Healthcare provision seeks to embrace prayer treatments [November 3, 2009]

BBC, Universal phone charger approved:

A new mobile phone charger that will work with any handset has been approved by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a United Nations body. Industry body the GSMA says that 51,000 tonnes of redundant chargers are generated each year. Currently most chargers are product or brand specific, so people tend to change them when they upgrade to a new phone. However, the new energy-efficient chargers can be kept for much longer. The GSMA also estimates that they will reduce annual greenhouse gas emissions by 13.6m tonnes.

I remember hearing about the Universal Serial Bus (USB) in the mid 1990s.  There never was a good reason for having so many different kinds of cables to connect electronic equipment, and pending a way to do it wirelessly the USB sounded like a good solution.  Not even twenty years after the introduction of the USB, I count more than ten different kinds of USB cables at the Wikipedia entry.  It’s not quite universal if it’s not… universal.  I’m old enough to remember BETA and VHS tapes in video stores, stores now crowding out the DVDs to fill the shelves with Blue Ray.  And so while I greet the news that phone chargers may have a standardized form soon, I have been misled by such claims before and I’ll believe it when I see it.

Outside of the problems raised by so many different forms of chargers are the problems of so many types of alternating current.  There’s no engineering reason for home users to have different kinds of power based on their nationality, but that’s how things ended up.  Rail gague varies by country so that the enemy’s trains can’t just roll into town.  When was the last time that happened?  I think alternating current varies by location so that each location’s companies / governments can sell us new equipment.  That’s a good capitalist decision, just like my preference in buying less redundant stuff is a good capitalist decision.

Those who know me know that I’ve got a soft spot for R. Buckminster Fuller.   Fuller wrote about the savings that could come if we were to link the world’s energy networks.  The global energy network could save billions of dollars and prevent a great deal of pollution the moment it is turned on.  Leading the charge for this effort is the Global Energy Network Institute.  This proposal requires no new technology that I’m aware of, only the cooperation of governments and corporations.  Fingers crossed…

I think that the people who approach the social sciences with a ready-made conspiracy theory [...] deny themselves the possibility of ever understanding what the task of the social sciences is, for they assume that we can explain practically everything in society by asking who wanted it, whereas the real task of the social sciences is to explain those things which nobody wants – such as, for example, a war, or a depression. (Lenin’s revolution, and especially Hitler’s revolution and Hitler’s war are, I think, exceptions. These were indeed conspiracies. But they were consequences of the fact that conspiracy theoreticians came to power – who, most significantly, failed to consummate their conspiracies.)

Lecture delivered to the Third Annual Conference of the Rationalist Press Association on 26 July 1984.  From Conjectures and Refutations, Routledge 1963.

As if the issues surrounding socialized medical care weren’t complex enough… should the United States expand its tax-supported medical care programs to cover all tax payers, here are some of the issues that will have to be addressed:

U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Puerto Rico’s Largest Medical Facility Unlawfully Fired Nurse Because He Refused to Disobey His Religion:

Puerto Rico’s largest medical center violated federal law when it refused to accommodate a male nurse’s religious beliefs, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) charged in a lawsuit it filed yesterday. Further, the EEOC said, Hospital Auxilio Mutuo unlawfully suspended and fired the employee because of his religion. According to the EEOC’s suit, EEOC v. Hospital Auxilio Mutuo, Case No. 3:09-cv-1797, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Puerto Rico, a male registered nurse told the hospital he could not cut his hair short as an observance of his religion, Santeria. Nevertheless, the man was suspended after he explained his religious beliefs to the hospital and asked for an accommodation. Further, the EEOC said, the hospital retaliated against the nurse by firing him after he complained about the discrimination. The hospital’s policy allows female employees, but not males, to wear their hair any length, the EEOC said.

Barbara Anderson, Hmong shamans help at Valley hospitals:

Staff at most hosptials would be baffled by an instruction like this on a bedside chart: to prepare patient for surgery, provide 15 minutes of soft chanting and tie a red string around the neck. It’s different at Mercy Medical Center in Merced. There, nurses know they must call a shaman. Mercy is the nation’s first hospital with a formal policy for Hmong shamans, allowing the traditional healers, working alongside doctors, to help patients recover. Hospitals across the country are paying attention as they seek to accommodate cultural beliefs of diverse patient populations. In the San Joaquin Valley, the Hmong are one of a few ethnic groups — including some indigenous Mexican cultures — that practice shamanism. For those with traditional beliefs, calling on a spiritual healer is as important to good health as making an appointment with a doctor. They may go without care if they can’t have a shaman nearby, sometimes with devastating consequences.

American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance, Understanding Satisfaction with Shamanic Practices among the Hmong in Rural California:

The Hmong are a group of people from Southern China, Laos, Northern Vietnam, and Thailand who have immigrated to the US and who have settled in rural counties in Central California. The literature suggests, the Hmong routinely use the services of shamans as part of their health care services. The purpose of this study was to determine the difference in the levels of satisfaction among Hmong clients who use shamans and their services in Fresno County with regard to factors associated with animal sacrifice, gender of the shaman and the practices inside or outside of the client’s home. Data were collected from 115 study participants in a rural California county. Findings from this study suggest that clients who had shamans conduct the rituals at their own homes and those who used live animals were significantly more satisfied than those had to travel to meet the shaman and those whose shamans’ use dead animals.

If the State must offer medical care, and if the State is forbidden from establishing one religion over another, and if medical care and religion are considered one in hospitals, then the State is forced into the position of paying for religious services – all religious services – if they are claimed to be “medical” or “traditional” or “healing.”  Is there anything that religion can’t make more complex and oppressive and harmful?  The alternative is for the State to insist only on secular medicine, leaving “alternative” services to the patient in question.  That seems reasonable to me.  Will that happen?  Is that happening now?

“If you want, you can have this future.”

Japan, the world’s second largest economy, is facing a demographic crisis that will shrink the population dramatically. The Japanese aren’t having babies, and the country won’t accept immigrants to help bolster the population. But Japan may have a unique solution – Robots!

If you are someone who thinks or writes about race, immigration, labor, technology, population or culture in the USA this video of how things are done in another country might be of interest.

Once an ambiguous look was interpreted, it biased subsequent perception.

Believing Is Seeing: Thoughts Color Perception — Implications From Everyday Misunderstandings To Eyewitness Memory

Until now there have been no reports of regular use of more than one type of tool to prey upon army ants. [Some people call them 'bushmeat.']

Chimpanzees Develop ‘Specialized Tool Kits’ To Catch Army Ants

“There may be much cheaper ways [of cutting emissions], for example by preserving tropical rainforests or decarbonising China and India’s rapid coal-based economic growth,” he says. The EU is relying on renewables, which are underdeveloped and reduced demand

Random Targets And Excessive Profits: Climate Change Policies Not Working