301. Missing matter found in deep space

Comment #183394 by hungarianelephant on May 22, 2008 at 3:17 am

So we're ruling out the theory that the missing matter is the polystyrene chips that the universe came packed in, then?

302. Teenager faces prosecution for calling Scientology 'cult'

Comment #183392 by hungarianelephant on May 22, 2008 at 3:12 am

102. Comment #183145 by mrjonno on May 21, 2008 at 12:51 pm

The law he was arrested under seems to be vague and badly worded. It means a single policeman has to make a value judgement about how much offensive/hatred etc is being generated etc.

In this case he got it wrong however I hardly think this is the end of the world. The police do have a right to arrest you if they suspect you of commiting a crime. Whether you have or not committed the crime is actually irrelevant The important word is suspect.

Excuse my bluntness, but that whooshing sound was the noise of the point whistling past your head.

As other posters have pointed out, the most invidious aspect of Section 5 is precisely that it places all the judgments in the hands of the policemen present. This enables them, on the spot, to decide whether you are showing insufficient respect and accordingly whether they should arrest you.

Whether or not this plucky young man will be prosecuted is beside the point. The point is that the police can effectively tell him to stop what he is doing because they personally disapprove of his behaviour. Most people will comply at that point. Others can be arrested. It is difficult to think of a more effective means of suppressing free speech - or most likely particular forms of free speech - if that is what you want to do.

This is not some obscure and unused law nestling in the increasingly unwieldy statute book. It is the prime weapon of the police up and down the UK. Worse, they don't even seem to realise how illiberal it is. Any given episode of Night Cops on Sky One shows section 5 in action. It is shocking what the police get up to. But they actually seem to be proud of the fact that they can arrest someone who has committed no other offence, in front of the television cameras, for telling them to "fuck off and leave me alone".

In another case, an Oxford student was arrested and fined for telling a mounted policeman that "your horse is gay", and "I hope you feel comfortable riding a gay horse".

All this - well, maybe not the bit about the gay horse - was predicted by pinko lefty lawyers when it was enacted during the Thatcher years. Subsequently those same pinko lefty lawyers got themselves into government. But by then, they had discovered that it was quite useful to have such measures on the statute book. They enable you to do more or less whatever you like, such as arresting Free Tibet demonstrators when the Chinese premier is in town.

For those of you who think that Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights will come to his aid, think again. Here's why:

ARTICLE 10

1. Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. this right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. This article shall not prevent States from requiring the licensing of broadcasting, television or cinema enterprises.
2. The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or the rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.

Yup, that's right. Freedom of expression is subject to pretty much whatever government says it is. Sooner or later, people will cotton onto the fact that despite its name, the ECHR is intended as a means of oppression, not liberation. I hope they don't find out too late.

In a proper country, you have freedom of expression enshrined as the cornerstone of the constitution, not some pleasant optional extra. And even more importantly, you would have, y'know, a principle that criminal legislation has to have a sufficiently precise meaning that people know exactly what it is that they are not supposed to do. Due process, if you will. These ideas used to be considered important in England. It's hard to say exactly what happened.

</rant>

303. Free Speech

Comment #182521 by hungarianelephant on May 20, 2008 at 10:21 am

Er, I thought the clue was in this bit:

Click on the image above to play video.
quicktime Video requires QuickTime Player 7. Download the free player here.
11.8 MB : 20:52

304. Richard Dawkins Responds to Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

Comment #182517 by hungarianelephant on May 20, 2008 at 10:15 am

142. Comment #182511 by MaxD on May 20, 2008 at 9:47 am

I thought you were an elephant of Hungarian ancestry.

That would just be ridiculous. Can't you see it's a metaphor, man?

305. Richard Dawkins Responds to Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

Comment #182510 by hungarianelephant on May 20, 2008 at 9:41 am

MaxD - Even a blind pig occasionally finds a truffle.

306. Richard Dawkins Responds to Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

Comment #182507 by hungarianelephant on May 20, 2008 at 9:36 am

I concluded that wooter was Malaysian some months ago. Not on doctrinal grounds, but on the basis that his posts read - and I use the word loosely - a lot like badly written, badly translated IT manuals. If you didn't know how to insert the SD card before you read the instructions, you certainly wouldn't know afterwards.

Admittedly, I've also subsequently concluded that he is an implementation of a random comment generator written by epeeist, the Duracell bunny, the product of several generations of incest, and of course a fuckwit. Consistency hasn't greatly troubled me.

307. Non-religious summer camps develop niche

Comment #182467 by hungarianelephant on May 20, 2008 at 7:42 am

7. Comment #182457 by Cartomancer on May 20, 2008 at 7:22 am

I was so disappointed to find that a "Camp Quest" didn't involve limp-wristedly mincing around the countryside, simpering and lisping at passers by, while trying to find a magic sword, rescue a damsel in distress and uncover buried treasure...

Do you think there's a market for such a thing? Maybe in Oxford after the Pimms runs out ;)

308. God and Science Collide in Nation's Capital

Comment #182449 by hungarianelephant on May 20, 2008 at 6:40 am

Extraordinary, but legitimate, interventions in the physical world permit quantum tunneling through cosmic wormholes or certain symmetries to snap spontaneously. It would be perfectly fair for a science-savvy God to use nonlinear dynamics so that tiny fluctuations quickly build up to earthshaking results â€" the famous 'butterfly effect' of deterministic chaos theory.

However, the best tricks God appears currently able to manage are (a) to write "I am brilliant" in a tomato, and (b) to draw pictures of his mum in a grilled cheese sandwich.

When he gets out of infant school, stops playing with food and starts doing some real work, we can have a proper discussion.

309. Mayor challenges pope during Genoa visit

Comment #182444 by hungarianelephant on May 20, 2008 at 6:18 am

I've read this article several times in the hope that it might say something important that I've missed.

What the blue fuck does "restate principles while at the same time avoiding transforming ethics into a political battlefield" mean? Anyone? Bueller?

310. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #182434 by hungarianelephant on May 20, 2008 at 5:51 am

"Not enough time" is also one of wooter's complaints. It seems to be a creationist thing.

The idea of geological time is one which we humanoids struggle to grasp. It might seem like a long time since Bush was elected, but in geological terms it is nothing. The entirety of human history is nothing. If you stretched out your arms, and the distance between your fingertips represented the planet's history, you could remove the whole of the industrial age with a single stroke of a nail file.

Quine correctly refers to 1% of 1% of 1% per generation, something which we would not even notice. To put it another way, one generation as a proportion of elephant history is roughly equivalent to 30 seconds of a human life.

At the same time, we can see marked physical differences between humans today and, say, during World War I. We know this because we have millions of medical records of army recruits to prove it. To be sure, many of the differences are not genetic, and the basic body plan has remained the same. But if we can see a noticeable difference in just four generations, what might a million look like?

If this is hard for most of us to imagine, it must be doubly hard when your imagination is deliberately suppressed by a dogma which says that life was created 6000 years ago on a Wednesday afternoon.

311. How to reconcile Richard Dawkins?

Comment #182409 by hungarianelephant on May 20, 2008 at 2:21 am

510. Comment #182282 by D'Arcy on May 19, 2008 at 3:12 pm

But we are talking of a particular type of private property society, capitalism where there are essentially 2 classes, one that owns and the other that works.

That's the nub of it, isn't it?

And the problem is that this analysis is essentially false. Sure, there's a small rentier class that owns property and doesn't work. But if it doesn't do it in a smart way, it doesn't last very long. The rich of today are generally not the descendants of the rich of 100 years ago, and you can guarantee that the rich of 100 years hence will not be the descendants of the rich of today. Britain alone generates more than 800,000 new businesses, or rentiers per year, which hardly suggests fixed classes.

The problem is that the division between "capital" and "labour" is illusory. Individuals have a capacity to do work - "human capital" if you like - and they rent that capacity out for a particular return. Most choose to do so on a standardised basis, where they get a guaranteed return for a guaranteed input. We call this "wages". They are free not to do so. They could employ their capacity in a different way with possible higher rewards and higher risks, perhaps with the input of other borrowed capital. We call this "entrepreneurship". Or they could take their capacity to a different "employer", possibly on different terms.

It was not always thus. In the mills where Engels was inspired, the labour provided was mainly that of children. They would typically become indentured apprentices around the age of 9. This meant that they would sign up for the length of the apprenticeship, which was around 10 years, a period which meant that they would probably never see their families again. The work was hard and dangerous. They could not take their labour elsewhere, and if they ran away could be forced to return to the mill by court order. They had little choice in signing in the first place, and even if they did, the only reasonable alternative was starvation or being worked to death in the workhouse.

In short, proper notions of a free society had been set on one side to enable this "labour" to be provided on exploitative terms. An appropriate solution might have been the one which was actually employed in the West - regulations on working conditions, abolition of child labour, abolition of the indenture etc. Marx and Engels took a different view. It did not end well.

The false division between labour and capital leads you to conclusions like this:

The idea of socialism is that the resources of the world should be used for the benefit of the whole population and not to support a privileged elite and an under privileged majority. (emphasis added)

This only makes sense if you treat (a) non-human resources and (b) individuals' capacity to work as "resources of the world". Quite apart from the questionable moral assumption, you are inevitably led, as al-rawandi points out, to a situation in which people are told how they must employ their capacity to work.

312. Brown says embryo research is key to life

Comment #182176 by hungarianelephant on May 19, 2008 at 10:36 am

109. Comment #182168 by Mitchell Gilks on May 19, 2008 at 10:21 am

My point was not that species have no decernable difference. It was there there is no difference that justifies moral considerations for some species on not others, if your moral considerations are based on what I explained mine are based on.

I understood that, and apologise for paraphrasing in a way which could be misconstrued.

The point stands, though. The lack of a discernible difference between A and B, or between Y and Z, does not mean that there is no discernible difference between A and Z, even if admitting that means you have difficulty deciding how to treat intermediates.

313. Mayor challenges pope during Genoa visit

Comment #182166 by hungarianelephant on May 19, 2008 at 10:14 am

13. Comment #182142 by Auraboy on May 19, 2008 at 9:14 am

Well the increasingly fundamental position is to push for the complete repeal of abortion access EVEN in the case of rape, incest or possible death for the mother. I've seen this argument pressed for in various places and I imagine there must be some U.S states with such intention.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attorney_General_v._X

Footnote: Successive Irish governments have made three attempts to hold a constitutional referendum to ... wait for it ... reverse this decision. It's lost the lot, and since most of the abortion hypocrites (who think abortion is OK as long as you have to go to England to get it) are literally dying out, they will probably give up now. That hasn't stopped people talking the Lisbon Treaty into another abortion referendum. Actually I wonder what referendum wouldn't be regarded as having anything to do with abortion.

314. Brown says embryo research is key to life

Comment #182160 by hungarianelephant on May 19, 2008 at 10:04 am

Mitchell, you seem to have walked yourself up a blind alley.

my entire point and argument as been to demonstrate the arbitrary nature of cutting off ones moral considerations at the line of species, with zero cause that would universally justify equal rights for the human species but no other. As there is no equal quality of all human beings that other animals do not possess in some form as well.

On that basis, you're apparently not prepared to make any distinction between species.

This doesn't seem any different from insisting that as there is no clear distinction between foetuses at any given stage of development which ought to give rise to greater or lesser rights, that therefore the only clear line is conception, therefore all abortion is immoral.

It doesn't really work. We can all see that an eight celled embryo is not the same as a 39 week foetus, and we can all see that a human is not the same as a cow, and we can all respond appropriately. It's very unsatisfactory that we can't find a good, clear, bright line of distinction, but it doesn't follow that we should make no distinction.

Tell me why I'm wrong.

EDIT - On further consideration, it's actually apparent that most people can't, or at least don't, really consider the issue much further. The cow is not human, therefore we're not going to bother thinking about whether it has any "rights" (whatever they are - another discussion entirely).

This, and our total detachment from the process by which we get our food, leads us towards overuse of nitrates, veal pens and battery chickens. Which, I would be the first to add, I can't condone. It's possible to buy your meat from a butcher who can assure you that the animals have lived reasonable lives, roamed around and exhibited their natural behaviour before they are painlessly slaughtered and eaten. It's possible to show this concern without even committing yourself to a vegetarian position, let alone arguing against all exploitation of animals.

Whether there is a strict logical rationale is, for practical purposes, beside the point. What matters is that, if people bothered to think this through, the battery chicken industry would probably disappear before the end of the year. They don't, and it won't.

315. Brown says embryo research is key to life

Comment #182115 by hungarianelephant on May 19, 2008 at 8:37 am

65. Comment #182080 by ThoughtsonCommonToad on May 19, 2008 at 7:45 am

Thanks for your summary. I'm struggling with some of this.

We'd all agree that there's a difference between killing an ant and killing a chimpanzee. But I don't quite see what suffering has to do with it. Obviously it's not the actual suffering which is (solely) relevant, because we would still regard it as "wrong" to anaesthetise a chimp and kill it painlessly. If actual suffering is taken out of the equation, what's the relevance of capacity for suffering? Why would we regard that as axiomatic?

I also don't see why we wouldn't regard ourselves as "exploiting" cows. Is this just a linguistic exercise? We breed them selectively, feed them what we want, keep them how we want, then kill them how we want. By any reasonable interpretation, this sounds like "exploitation", just like anything else we treat as a resource. It doesn't necessarily import that we treat them callously or arbitrarily, or that the farmer doesn't have a genuine and heartfelt concern for his cattle, irrespective of his economic interests. It certainly doesn't imply that exploiting them is wrong.

Am I missing something important here?

316. Surviving an unholy school war

Comment #181987 by hungarianelephant on May 19, 2008 at 3:48 am

I think we're in danger of missing one of the key points here, which is the collaboration of the parents.

If you were on the receiving end of corporal punishment, you didn't tell your parents, because that would make it worse. The treatment was being administered by priests and nuns, the upstanding representatives of the church. Ergo, they must be right, you must have done something wrong and you were deserving of further punishment.

This is one of the most malign aspects of religion. The priests were given too much trust, especially with children and the vulnerable. There's no doubt that this very factor led to a great deal of the sexual abuse perpetrated by priests. Paedophiles signed up for the preisthood precisely because it would give them trusted access to children: see Ferns report on clerical sexual abuse in Co. Wexford.

Left to their own devices, the congregation are much more reasonable, pragmatic and "Christian" people than their leaders. There might have been a general prejudice against homosexuals, but the fact that Uncle Tom and "Uncle" Sean shared a house and were obviously rather close would be ignored until the priest started fulminating against them. Even Bishop Casey, who had a child in America and raided church funds to look after him, has been accepted back by his former congregation, who would have every right to brand him a hypocrite and a sinner.

Btw, I'd recommend the film "Song For A Raggy Boy", which is about institutional abuse in an industrial school (the last of which was only closed in the 1990s). Not sure how widely available it is outside Ireland.

317. These dim-wits believe in anything but God

Comment #181985 by hungarianelephant on May 19, 2008 at 3:22 am

On the Chesterton thing:

This is treated as axiomatic, but looking around a semi-religious country, such as Ireland, you might come to a rather different conclusion.

It's rare to find a fundie pious believer who also believes in non-religious crap like tarot and water-divining. It's also rare to find anyone prepared to describe themself as "atheist" who subscribes to it.

In between, you have the Sunday Mass-goers, who manage a veritable buffet of God, fairy trees, holy water, astrology, rosary beads, the banshee, purgatory (whether or not doctrinally abolished), UFOs and a few side orders of their choice. Yes, indeed: the majority of Irish people resemble Cherie Blair in their belief systems.

Suggested fix:

People who stop stop believing in everything the Church says about God don't believe in nothing until they've applied some critical thought to it, in the interim they believe in anything.

318. These dim-wits believe in anything but God

Comment #181984 by hungarianelephant on May 19, 2008 at 3:06 am

Are they seriously suggesting that the only pupils for whom religious education should be compulsory, against their will, are the immature, thick and ignorant?

No: immature, thick or ignorant. Bad sub-editor, bad.

319. Brown says embryo research is key to life

Comment #181973 by hungarianelephant on May 19, 2008 at 1:37 am

13. Comment #181872 by D'Arcy on May 18, 2008 at 2:17 pm

Ruth Kelly

mud wrestling

That put me right off my breakfast.

320. Americans pray at the pump for cheaper petrol

Comment #180104 by hungarianelephant on May 14, 2008 at 8:16 am

al-rawandi - Have you been reading Cormac McCarthy again?

EDIT - Ah, you have. Note to everyone else - not recommended while you are in hospital awaiting the birth of your first child. For lots of reasons.

321. Vatican: It's OK to believe in aliens

Comment #179959 by hungarianelephant on May 14, 2008 at 3:16 am

Theological pedantry alert

Funes is emphatically not saying that aliens are equivalent to humans. Rather, if you read what he is saying, he is comparing them to other "earthly creatures".

If they're not human, they don't have a soul, and the question of sin doesn't arise. Any more than it does with a snail.

I felt it was important to get that cleared up.

I wonder what fides has to say about all this?

322. Americans pray at the pump for cheaper petrol

Comment #179413 by hungarianelephant on May 13, 2008 at 8:16 am

112. Comment #179407 by al-rawandi on May 13, 2008 at 8:06 am

But to be honest, most of the upper strata of Saudi society is western educated, and not particularly radical. Hopefully those people inherit the kingdom.

I wonder about that, though.

I went to college with the Crown Princess of Jordan, who was possibly the most deeply irritating person I have ever met. She didn't like me much either, but this is not relevant for present purposes. What is clear is that she and her family were quite western, not just in their education but in their general outlook. You'd almost think that the Enlightenment is about to descend on the Middle East.

Back home, the picture isn't so rosy. Given the choice, you'd probably take sensible leadership and nutjob population over nutjob leadership and sensible population, and both beat the crap out of nutjobs leading nutjobs. But you have to wonder whether they'll be able to hang onto power if they insist on being sensible. It's also possible that we could end up with another Iran or two.

And of course, the killer of Daniel Pearl was also western-educated, at the London School of Economics. It doesn't seem to immunise you against insanity.

323. Americans pray at the pump for cheaper petrol

Comment #179397 by hungarianelephant on May 13, 2008 at 7:56 am

al-rawandi - Hard to disagree.

Of course, the Venezuelans don't riot if you put their flag on a football, so it's not nearly as much fun.

EDIT - Oil nearly always seems to be in the control of unpleasant regimes. I'm increasingly convinced that this isn't a coincidence. With resources at its disposal, oil-owning regimes can behave pretty much how they want without responding to the concerns of the citizenry. If they had to tax them, they might just provoke a revolution.

324. Americans pray at the pump for cheaper petrol

Comment #179387 by hungarianelephant on May 13, 2008 at 7:34 am

104. Comment #179380 by al-rawandi on May 13, 2008 at 7:28 am

However, the oil market is global. If the US were not so dependent on oil, global demand would be low, and the price would fall dramatically.

Economically, there's negligible difference between buying your oil from Canada, pushing up the price that the Saudis sell their oil for, and buying it for that price from the Saudis while Canada sells to China.

Where is Teratornis?

325. Americans pray at the pump for cheaper petrol

Comment #179381 by hungarianelephant on May 13, 2008 at 7:29 am

78. Comment #179304 by irate_atheist on May 13, 2008 at 5:04 am

People may be expecting me to comment here on this risible activity, but I won't.

Ah, you will.
Go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go ON.

(This comment will make no sense if you ever change your avatar.)

326. Americans pray at the pump for cheaper petrol

Comment #179267 by hungarianelephant on May 13, 2008 at 2:10 am

"Someone's making a lot of money and it's really, really wrong," added Twyman, who founded the Prayer at the Pump movement to seek help from a higher power to bring down fuel prices, because the powers in Washington haven't.

Seriously, if this is the religious right, we're all screwed.

327. Evolution: What is 'Natural'?

Comment #179265 by hungarianelephant on May 13, 2008 at 2:02 am

222. Comment #178985 by MPhil on May 12, 2008 at 10:50 am

And it's not based on consent of the majority, the general structure, the constitutional structure if you will is determined not by consent of the actual majority, but consent of hypothetical, perfectly capable but entirely equal persons.

And what does that mean?

The problem is firstly in determining what hypothetical, capable, equal persons might decide. And secondly in resolving disputes between competing interpretations. As I mentioned in the previous post, it's perfectly possible to imagine more or less unequal societies on which there would be differing opinions as to fairness, even from behind the veil of ignorance.

If you want a working demonstration of different preferences, consider recruitment into the US Army. Most of the front line infantry are from poor backgrounds. They may join for a number of different reason, but the basic economics of the situation are quite clear. You have a small chance of being killed. If you survive, you get your college fees paid for, which gives you a chance of a less poor life. You have no idea when you sign up what your personal outcome will be - a true veil of ignorance. There are plenty of people willing to take that chance, and plenty who are not - a difference of opinion.

Once it's recognised that there are possible differences of view, there are two obvious ways of resolving them. One is simple coercion based on the views of a "correct" group, which I doubt Rawls would have endorsed. The other is majority rule. Granted, I don't recall him specifically endorsing that, but it seems to be the logical conclusion.

That's not to toss out the entire body of work. It's useful to try to imagine society might look without the current vested interests. It's also useful to ask whether a given society is one which could possibly be said to be Rawlsian. The treatment of the mentally ill springs to mind - a disgrace in this country (Ireland) at least, and one couldn't reasonably be chosen in ignorance of whether of not you will suffer.

In any event, I'd be interested to read your paper on Rawls and religion. Is it published yet?

Interesting how far this discussion has come from the original topic. Jurisprudence is usually discussed in a vacuum. You lose marks in the exam by trying to link it back to the natural world.

328. The Stupidity of Dignity

Comment #179257 by hungarianelephant on May 13, 2008 at 1:25 am

15. Comment #179006 by Robert Maynard on May 12, 2008 at 11:29 am

Right, but who said life-prolonging medicine should only start when you're old? What if we developed technology that allowed people to literally stop physically aging at, say, 30? Now think of the money we might save. :P

That's a good point, provided of course that we all agree that we can't all expect to retire at 65 and live at the expense of the under-65s.

In the early days of the NHS, its proponents used to argue that it would save money in the long run. It would create a healthier population, therefore reducing dependency on healthcare.

This wasn't quite as much bollocks as it sounds, since much of the service at the time was geared towards dealing with infections which caused premature deaths. Some would say it still is geared that way. Still, the law of unintended consequences has a nasty habit of biting you in the arse.

However, I'm digressing. The issue is whether we should regard death as (a) something to be put off at any cost and/or (b) an affront to human dignity. I say no. It seems to put me in a minority.

329. Evolution: What is 'Natural'?

Comment #178980 by hungarianelephant on May 12, 2008 at 10:37 am

215. Comment #178961 by scooternyc on May 12, 2008 at 10:11 am

To reduce any particular potential law down to the simplest objective statement is best as it then embraces all human liberty.

The difficulty is in determining what is "simple".

The European Convention on Human Rights tried to lay down objective statements. But in an effort to keep it simple, it had to introduce "simple" qualifiers. The result, by any reasonable legal standard, is a mess, as a cursory googling of "UK Human Rights Act" will disclose. Some would go further and argue that the HRA is actually responsible for a reduction in the total amount of liberty in Britain. And seeing the way in which the cases on house arrest were argued, I'd have to have some sympathy.

217. Comment #178969 by MPhil on May 12, 2008 at 10:25 am

What I'm saying is that the issues of political philosophy and jurisprudence (philosophy of law) are closely related to the issues of morality. "Justice" and "Fairness" for example. These need to be grounded in rationality itself. John Rawls has shown how to do this.

In principle, yes.

What Rawls never properly demonstrated was why his thinking should lead to his particular model. For example, if you had a good chance of a very high standard of living, but a small chance of a short, miserable life, you might actually prefer this to an "everyone is only ok" model.

As a practical matter, it seems to me that all Rawls achieved was a shifting of the debate into particular terms. Furthermore, the Rawlsian model cares nothing for notions such as a priori individual liberty: it assumes a general social right to determine the general social order, based presumably on the consent of the majority.

It's a pretty hard sell.

330. The Stupidity of Dignity

Comment #178968 by hungarianelephant on May 12, 2008 at 10:24 am

How did the United States, the world's scientific powerhouse, reach a point at which it grapples with the ethical challenges of twenty-first-century biomedicine using Bible stories, Catholic doctrine, and woolly rabbinical allegory?

(1) Science delivers technological progress.
(2) Most people don't understand the technology, let alone really know what to do with it.
(3) Science disclaims ownership of the moral questions as to how technology should be deployed.
(4) Vacuum.
(5) The loudest of those who have anything to say fill it.

Philosophy is held in even lower regard by the general public than science. It's all very well saying that religion doesn't provide good answers, but it provides certain ones. If you want to counteract its malign influence, you have to bring philosophy to the masses.

Generally the article made some good points, but it was disappointing to end with

Worst of all, theocon bioethics flaunts a callousness toward the billions of non-geriatric people, born and unborn, whose lives or health could be saved by biomedical advances. Even if progress were delayed a mere decade by moratoria, red tape, and funding taboos (to say nothing of the threat of criminal prosecution), millions of people with degenerative diseases and failing organs would needlessly suffer and die. And that would be the biggest affront to human dignity of all.

Why? Why should death be regarded as an affront to human dignity? Death is the fate of every human and every other organism. But there seems to be an almost uncontested assumption that the indefinite prolongation of life is, or would be, a Good Thing.

This is not only impossible, it is also ruinous. Health economists reckon that 90% of health spending goes on the last 10% of lives. In the days when it could still count, the NHS reckoned that two thirds of its budget was spent on people in the last two years of their lives. To put that into perspective, it is 5% of GDP, or about the same as spending on education.

Is it not time we grew up a bit?

331. Evolution: What is 'Natural'?

Comment #178955 by hungarianelephant on May 12, 2008 at 9:54 am

irate, I should have thought that the Daily Mail would be ideal for the aforementioned problem with your cat (205).

332. Church of Scotland mediators to quell disputes

Comment #178953 by hungarianelephant on May 12, 2008 at 9:50 am

7. Comment #178240 by Paula Kirby on May 11, 2008 at 2:00 am

One of the things we rarely discuss when debating people's reasons for continuing to believe in God and go to church is the sheer, soothing familiarity of the routine - and yet I think it's actually a very important factor. Anything that is predictable and has a particular, dependable pattern can be rather hypnotic, comforting, reassuring. No surprises. No jolts. Nice and safe. And let's not forget that, in the UK, at least, congregations consist overwhelmingly of older people, who have a tendency to be even more resistant to change than the rest of us. So a new minister; or an old minister who's read a new book; or a new style of service; a new hymn book; a new style of music; chairs arranged in a new formation; coffee served before rather than after the service - almost anything can trigger huge resentment.

This is absolutely correct. And the experience of churches up and down Britain is that whenever they try to breathe new life into the musty church, it works for a while and then they end up with fewer people than before, having alienated many of those who went for the tradition. It usually ends with an uneasy compromise. Or in tears.

One other point is that for all the public image of pomp and ceremony, there's very little in Britain that provides a clear link to previous generations. We're not family-oriented. Our cuisine was largely forgotten during the industrial revolution, and "British cooking" means modern stuff that you didn't learn from your mother. We have no ancient equivalent of Germany's Christmas markets, which go back hundreds of years, and few long-standing traditions.

What we did have was a church which didn't seem to have changed in centuries. This was bollocks, of course. The standard prayer book is from 1662, and thus wasn't used for the first three quarters of Christianity in these islands. The hymns are mostly 19th century, with a smattering of Wesely (who wasn't even part of the established church) and his contemporaries in the 18th. But still, the sense was there that little had changed for a very long time. The oldies at the back were arriving on a warm summer's evening just the same as when they were children. Bowls being played on a pristine lawn, the click of leather on willow, and cucumber sandwiches with the crusts removed.

Take away the comfort of the (perceived) tradition, the familiar cadences, the beautiful but archaic Jacobean sentences, and for many, there's not a lot of point in the whole thing. I certainly felt that way in my churchgoing days.

That said, my objection to the introduction of modern hymns was that they were, almost without exception, crap. The words were cringeworthy. The tunes would not make the top dozen in the Eurovision, not even if you sang La La La La La La La instead. Cliff Richard would consider them trite and pointless. There's nothing inherently bad about guitars or tambourines. Or even young men with beards playing them. But did the devil take all the best tunes again?

Next time someone tells you about Christian art, just remember that if they want to claim Bach, they also have to take U2's early, forgotten and unlamented shite.

333. Church of Scotland mediators to quell disputes

Comment #178938 by hungarianelephant on May 12, 2008 at 9:12 am

Bald men. Comb.

Life. Get.

334. Evolution: What is 'Natural'?

Comment #178936 by hungarianelephant on May 12, 2008 at 9:10 am

MPhil, do you go along with the notion of "innate grammar"?

Or do you not want to get into a Chomsky discussion after what happened to the last one? And the 87 before that.

335. Evolution: What is 'Natural'?

Comment #178927 by hungarianelephant on May 12, 2008 at 8:33 am

I agree with MPhil that Artful hasn't established that "meaning" is non-physical.

Even if he does, however, that just proves the existence of at least one abstract concept, which we can add to "truth", "justice" and "zinginess".

And that didn't prove the existence of God in the thirteenth century, and it still doesn't today.

336. Churchgoing on its knees as Christianity falls out of favour

Comment #177404 by hungarianelephant on May 9, 2008 at 3:32 am

I'm not sure how I missed this, but why exactly does the C of E need a "head of research"? Can't they just ask the sky-bloke? I mean, he's supposed to be omniscient, right?

337. Churchgoing on its knees as Christianity falls out of favour

Comment #177403 by hungarianelephant on May 9, 2008 at 3:30 am

Thanks Logicel, but ... I'm an eggplant? Think I'd better change my avatar to something in aubergine.

338. Churchgoing on its knees as Christianity falls out of favour

Comment #177361 by hungarianelephant on May 9, 2008 at 1:21 am

I enjoyed this bit:

The Church of England disputed the forecasts last night. Lynda Barley, its head of research, said: "These statistics represent a partial picture of religious trends today. In recent years church life has significantly diversified so these traditional statistics are less and less meaningful in isolation.

Huh? What kind of management consultant gobledegook is that? Don't look at the figures, folks. It doesn't matter that people aren't coming to church, because they do ... er ... lots of other religious stuff. What do you mean, "what exactly"? It's diversified, I tell you. Now please leave me alone. I'm busy trying to leverage our customer focussed employees to deliver shareholder value.

"There are more than 1.7 million people worshipping in a Church of England church or cathedral each month, a figure that is 30 per cent higher [than the Sunday attendance figure used by Christian Research] and has remained stable since 2000. We have no reason to believe that this will drop significantly."

And I'm absolutely not going to tell you how we come to those figures. Well alright, we do a headcount. No, we don't know that those are 1.7 million different people. Yes, I suppose it's possible that we're counting people who come every week 4 times. Well, 8 times if they come twice. Look, it's the same way that airports count passenger numbers, alright? Please shut up.

339. How to reconcile Richard Dawkins?

Comment #177356 by hungarianelephant on May 9, 2008 at 1:06 am

465. Comment #176988 by D'Arcy on May 8, 2008 at 12:31 pm

Al asks about the incentive driving people without a profit motive. Let's just say that homo sapiens managed without wages and profits for most of its ?100,000 year existence.

Are you sure? How would you characterise barter, for example?

340. Faith in Britain today

Comment #177350 by hungarianelephant on May 9, 2008 at 1:00 am

94. Comment #177145 by Ed-words on May 8, 2008 at 4:45 pm

I am half Irish myself so I can say this. Have you noticed how many arrogant fools in the public eye are Irish?

Here, let me fix that for you.

I am half Irish myself so I can say this. Have you noticed how many arrogant fools in the public eye are pretend to be Irish because of some distant ancestor for reasons of political expediency?

Done.

(3/16 Irish and living in Ireland for 7 years, if it matters.)

341. How to reconcile Richard Dawkins?

Comment #176877 by hungarianelephant on May 8, 2008 at 8:11 am

If your strike rate is as good as Dirk Kuyt's, I'll take my chances ;)

Off topic, moi?

342. How to reconcile Richard Dawkins?

Comment #176870 by hungarianelephant on May 8, 2008 at 7:57 am

Good point.

Janet, a memo please to George Gillett, c/o Liverpool Football Club, Anfield, Liverpool ...

343. How to reconcile Richard Dawkins?

Comment #176857 by hungarianelephant on May 8, 2008 at 7:22 am

There's a strategy? Has anyone told the owners?

344. How to reconcile Richard Dawkins?

Comment #176853 by hungarianelephant on May 8, 2008 at 7:15 am

Well on the bright side, at least there's one actual deity supporting Liverpool. Most just think they are.

Cheer up, Quetz. I'm sure you'll win the league again in the next 18 years or so.

345. How to reconcile Richard Dawkins?

Comment #176850 by hungarianelephant on May 8, 2008 at 7:01 am

450. Comment #176847 by al-rawandi on May 8, 2008 at 6:54 am

Liverpool fans are some cross between Kamikazes, Hells Angels, and al-Qaeda

SSSSHHHH! They can't take criticism or inconvenient facts. Remind you of anything?

Didn't Forest just get promoted to the Championship, or whatever it's called this year?

346. How to reconcile Richard Dawkins?

Comment #176842 by hungarianelephant on May 8, 2008 at 6:48 am

444. Comment #176821 by Bonzai on May 8, 2008 at 5:55 am

I don't see your points really. So because government agencies are not always wise in giving grants therefore private industries are better decision makers because .. ? Maybe as far as profit making is concerned but why must profit making coincide with public interest and the logic of scientific discovery and technological innovations?

Yes, private industries make stupid decisions too. But if they are stupid enough, or big enough, or there are enough of them, they go bust. Governments are limited only by what they can extract from the citizenry without inciting a revolution. This can, and does, mean that they spend foolishly on foolish projects with impunity.

You are correct, of course, to say that $$$ does not necessarily equal public interest. It doesn't follow that therefore the government should either undertake the work that it deems the private sector will not do, nor that it should be the sole arbiter of what R&D gets done.

I think any one who wants to make the point that somehow private greed somehow serves society best overall would have a lot of work to make their case.

I also cannot see what the grant giving process have anything to do with the qeustion of what motivates inventors.

Unless I have misunderstood you, you were arguing that innovation could be adequately cultivated under a government funded system. What I am suggesting is that this is unlikely, or at best is likely to be staggeringly inefficient in the development phase. That doesn't address the question of what motivates inventors. My original point was that whatever the motivation of inventors, profit has been a fairly successful driver of development, as distinct from research. That does not justify the capitalist system, per se, but it does set a standard by which other systems must be judged.

448. Comment #176838 by al-rawandi on May 8, 2008 at 6:32 am

I was in Manchester last week (hence the Arkwright and Lowry references), and managed to get in a visit to one of the old cotton mills.

Seeing how things used to work there is a sobering experience. I can begin to understand what Marx and Engels were on about. Until now they seemed far detached from a modern reality. Are any of their points still valid? I'd like to reserve judgment until I've also reread the Communist Manifesto.

Years later, the City of Manchester tried to erect a statue of Engels on the site of his father's mill. (It's still waiting for the statue of Rutherford, which would of course be politically incorrect in a self-styled "Nuclear Free City". WTF does that mean? Is it entirely composed of electrons?) It found that it couldn't do so, because a motorway has been built through it. Having chosen an entirely different site, it ran into a different problem. It couldn't find any representation of Engels, because Stalin had his contribution expunged.

Read into that what you will.

Likewise, read what you will into the fact that two of the great cults of the 20th century, communism and Manchester United, were born within 400 yards of each other.

347. How to reconcile Richard Dawkins?

Comment #176823 by hungarianelephant on May 8, 2008 at 5:57 am

442. Comment #176810 by Bonzai on May 8, 2008 at 5:21 am

However, I do have a lot of problems with the unsubstantiated claim that the profit motive and the drive of getting ever more,--pure greed,--is intrinsically tied to innovations and that without it, society would become stagnant. This is a myth propagated by economics textbooks, and it is stated as an axiom without any supporting evidence.

It's a long time since I read Adam Smith, but I do wonder if the proponents of this argument actually mean something quite different from Smith.

The famous example given by Smith is of the division of labour in the production of pins. The point being that no one suddenly invented the WonderPin pin-maker, or some other creation with misPlacEd capiTalS. It was a long process of incremental innovations to the method of producing it.

When you're competing with other pin manufacturers, you try to find some way to get ahead - or someone else will. It is a method of self-preservation. Can it also be creative? Possibly - many business people take a lot of pride in the creation of their business and what they consider their unique business culture. But I digress.

His point is that this sort of innovation drives along the process of making pins more efficiently. The same might be applied to many other fields of business.

Is this the only kind of "innovation"? I don't think even Adam Smith would have thought that it was. You might paint the Sistine Chapel for money, but as you observe, that is presumably not why Michaelangelo became an artist. Likewise you might invent the jet engine or the clockwork radio, or spend years trying to prove Fermat's Last Theorem, for the sheer love of it, even at the expense of more lucrative pursuits.

This doesn't undermine Smith's basic hypothesis. It just cautions us against interpreting it too liberally.

Just seen your last post - I will also plead the tenth.

348. How to reconcile Richard Dawkins?

Comment #176816 by hungarianelephant on May 8, 2008 at 5:45 am

Bonzai - How do you decide who gets the grants enabling them to "think and tinker"?

349. How to reconcile Richard Dawkins?

Comment #176808 by hungarianelephant on May 8, 2008 at 5:19 am

438. Comment #176799 by Bonzai on May 8, 2008 at 3:40 am

So you are basically saying that the inducement of profit is necessary for innovations because that provides the incentives for folks that own a lot shit to deploy their resources in such a way to get more shit.

No. There are other ways. A lot of innovation comes out of the military, especially during war time. Other big government projects have also been successful in innovation, but as far as I can remember they all had some war connection. But it takes an enthusiastic Nietzschian to argue in favour of war on that ground.

There's also coercion, which hasn't worked terribly well.

Profit is a method of inducing innovation, which I would argue is the least unpalatable and most efficient method created so far.

That is true, but only because some private, unaccountable horders are allowed to own a large portion of a country's resources and production capacity and to do as they please with these assets to begin with.

That's a telling way of putting it. In what sense are the owners of property "private", "unaccountable" or "horders"; in what sense do "resources" and "production capacity" belong to a country? You could argue in entirely the other direction - that property accumulated by rightful means belongs absolutely to the holder, and coerced attempts to relieve him of it (viz. government) are inherently immoral. We never hear this, of course, because our academics are more familiar with Marx than Nozick.

Your argument, while correct, is not much different from the hypothetical argument I came up with in my previous post that the Church (and the lords) was necessary for the arts because no one else would spend so lavishly on paintings, sculptures and fine music. Well, true technically but it was historically contingent.

I agree, to a point. Of course this is entirely different from the argument that the Church is therefore a Good Thing. The leap that has to be made is that "fine art outweighs the bad points of the Church". Or here, "innovation outweighs the bad points of capitalism". The general assumption is that increasing general wealth is a Good Thing, and the evidence of the alternative systems tried is that they don't achieve it as well as capitalism, whatever its faults. That's open to challenge on the basis that (a) the assumption is incorrect, or (b) there is a better system which will demonstrably work. But until that challenge is taken up, it's just a lot of strident people shouting about "injustice", as defined by them.

If development has to rely solely on market force and the profit motive then we are likely screwed because R&D is a high risk undertaking and it may take a while before new discoveries become marketable.

That's very possibly true. In fact if you look at the pharma industry closely, you realise that overall it actually loses money. Most biotech companies run out of cash before they get a product out. Most of the rest are taken over, or their technology inlicensed by big pharma. Very few join the top table.

Investment behaviour in the sector (and generally) appears irrational. The ability to generate cash over time is heavily discounted in favour of immediate returns. Meanwhile, there is never a shortage of people prepared to put their money into small biotech stocks which, overall, will lose money, but picking the right one will strike gold. The behaviour of investors as individuals is much more rational - given the typical investment cycle, it doesn't make sense to take the long view: the company will go bust before then.

I don't know how we can address this. What I do know is that in its 40 year history, the eastern bloc produced not a single new drug.

most innovations could have taken place in university labs if they are not so underfunded and have to rely on deep pockets

By what standard are universities "underfunded"?

Also, pharmacology has to be built on basic research in biology, physiology and chemistry, all of these are done in university labs mostly funded by the government (hence tax payers). The pharmaceutical industry benefits directly from these research and pays not a red cent for them except for its normal share of taxes (which is quite minimal comparing to the money it has to cough up in order to do all the necessary R&D itself)

There's a kernel of truth in this, but again it brings us back to the original point about distinguishing invention from development. For example, the latest and greatest thing in pharma, monoclonal antibodies, are something that the US govt are now trying to take credit for. And it's technically true that some of the early research was funded by the taxpayers. Since then, in excess of $10bn of private money has been spent on researching specific biologics and developing them into usuable treatments, dwarfing the original taxpayer contribution.

This was once characterised by a poster on another thread as "putting it in a blister, selling it and calling yourself an innovator". Plenty of people want to buy into this demonisation of the industry, for various reasons. But as I think your post recognises, the reality is a little more complex than that, or indeed what some overpaid CEO writes in the annual report.

350. How to reconcile Richard Dawkins?

Comment #176764 by hungarianelephant on May 8, 2008 at 1:21 am

430. Comment #176585 by Bonzai on May 7, 2008 at 4:20 pm

I think we need to draw a distinction here between invention and development.

If you want to paint a picture in a particular novel way, the main thing you need is an inventive brain. The other stuff you need - canvas, brushes, paints, maybe a couple of knives, are easily and cheaply obtained. Some of Lowry's best work was pencil on bits of card.

Some scientific discoveries are like that. What they required was some brilliant insight, basic equipment, time and the right kind of obsessiveness. It's reasonable to assume that this sort of activity might also go on in a non-profit environment, so long as the authorities desist from sending people to the gulags or depriving them of the time they need to do this (and it's noticeable how many of the great 19th century scientists were gentlemen of means).

But others need a staggering amount of money to develop them. Arkwright might have come up with the idea of the Spinning Jenny in a different society, but it took him years and lots of resources to develop it to a usable level. He's probably not going to invest in such a concept unless he thinks he can make some money at the end of it. Same goes for most of the inventions that created the industrial revolution.

The biggest share of non-military R&D spending goes into the pharma industry. There are a few brilliant individuals who are able to invent (or "discover") a new molecule, and demonstrably don't do so purely for profit - as you say, they are on fixed salaries and sign over the rights to their invention to the company. That alone won't get you anywhere. The aim is to turn it into a product which will help people's health, and for that you need resources, and for that you need profit incentive. Or some other alternative which we have yet to see.