Yesterday I came across an article on the Farnham Street blog which talks about, and reproduces, Richard Feynman’s 1974 commencement address at Caltech entitled “Cargo Cult Science”.
As always with Feynman it contains good stuff, explained simply. Let me pick out a couple of quotes:
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After you’ve not fooled yourself, it’s easy not to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that.
I would like to add something that’s not essential to the science, but something I kind of believe, which is that you should not fool the layman when you’re talking as a scientist … I’m talking about a specific, extra type of integrity that is not lying, but bending over backwards to show how you’re maybe wrong, that you ought to do when acting as a scientist. And this is our responsibility as scientists, certainly to other scientists, and I think to laymen …
One example of the principle is this: If you’ve made up your mind to test a theory, or you want to explain some idea, you should always decide to publish it whichever way it comes out.
This is about how to do good science — indeed any good investigation. What Feynman is saying in the article is that in doing an investigation one has to publish the full scenarios. Whatever the outcome, why could it be wrong. If the experiment didn’t work, why might this be. And importantly, show that you understand, have accounted for, and can reproduce any prior work and assumptions on which your work depends.
Being Feynman this is all explained quite simply with lots of examples, often drawn from his own experience.
But it is wider than this. It is something Feynman touches on but doesn’t highlight. It is essentially about being open and honest; being ethical. Feynman is applying it to scientific enquiry but, as you can see from the quotes above, it should apply equally to any enquiry, aka. life.
Feynman’s address is an interesting 10 minute read even for non-scientists.
No I’m not going to start delving into all the recent mess; there’s too much uninformed and idle garbage being talked already. But I must just highlight what Brad Warner has said — he’s American, a Zen monk and talks much sense; unlike so very many Americans. Brad has written a ferociously forthright, and also in parts highly amusing, analysis on his blog.
His final sentences are:
The lunatics who think they can overturn all of [civilisation] are using technologies that could not possibly even exist at all if the rest of the world wanted to go back to life as it was in the seventh century. They will fail.
Greed, hatred and stupidity are universal human traits. But so are cooperation, love and intelligence.
And more people support cooperation, love and intelligence than will ever support greed, hatred and stupidity.
But what is brilliant, because even Brad admits it is funny, is what he quotes from a guy called John Oliver:
… it is important to remember, nothing about what these assholes are trying to do is going to work. France is going to endure and I’ll tell you why. If you are in a war of culture and lifestyle with France, good fucking luck. Go ahead, bring your bankrupt ideology. They’ll bring Jean-Paul Sartre, Edith Piaf, fine wine, Gauloise cigarettes, Camus, Camembert, madeleines, macarons, and the fucking croquembouche. You just brought a philosophy of rigorous self-abnegation to a pastry fight, my friend. You are fucked.
As Brad says: “It’s a funny rant, but it’s also deeply true”.
Go read the whole of Brad’s post here, it’s not very long.
When will the Western world understand that, by their actions, they are responsible for the terrorist attacks which are happening around the world? I’m thinking specifically of Paris last Friday but there are many many others.
By interfering — usually with military force — in the Arab nations all they are succeeding in doing is further radicalising those countries’ (potentially) disaffected youth and other (misguided) religious zealots.
And why are they surprised at this? If some set of foreigners, with a different culture and religion, were launching air strikes on us, wouldn’t we be sending anyone who would into their countries as insurgents? Especially if we had poorly organised and equipped military ourselves.
Of course we would — and we have. For starters, see the WWII French Resistance and other clandestine organisations like SOE. And we have officially sanctioned and organised terrorists called the SAS.
The more we meddle, and the more we retaliate, the worse we are going to make the problem. And it is a problem which is of our making! We started meddling in the Middle East way back at the time of the Crusades and it has escalated (on and off) ever since. In After the Victorians AN Wilson makes the point that one of the underlying causes of WWI was Britain trying to prevent Germany getting access to Arab oil which we had claimed. We’ve been interfering ever since. And it goes on.
None of these countries — in fact overall very few countries in the world — have a tradition of democracy. They are nearly all used to autocratic rule in one form or another. Just as we were, once upon a time. It has taken us 800 years, starting with Magna Carta in 1215, to get our democracy to its current (fragile) state. Some of the countries of our erstwhile empire have taken the English model on board. Other European countries have got there too by their own, often bloody, routes — see, for example, the French Revolution.
So how is it we expect to be able to walk into any country, tell them to embrace democracy and expect them to jump for joy and do so overnight? Why would they? How can they when it’s taken us 800 years? To them democracy is a revolution and a totally different culture. People don’t like change and they are mostly OK with what they have because at least they understand it. Nearly everywhere we’ve done this in the last 200 years we have ended up with, at best, a bloody nose.
The Arab countries are large enough and well enough orchestrated that they can bring their resistance to us. They have a religion which, by and large, transcends their tribal divisions and they aren’t confined to their own little enclaves like many African nations. Contrary to Christianity, when push comes to shove, the Arab religious beliefs will overcome any tribal animosities.
Why is it that politicians cannot learn from history? It isn’t that hard. If I, a mere scientist, can do so then so can anyone with more than six brain cells. (Oh, hang on, do politicians even have six brain cells?)
No I am not saying we should be soft on terrorists. Yes we have to deal with them on our territory according to our laws — just as they would if the tables were turned.
What I am saying is twofold: (a) stop meddling in other countries, except perhaps through diplomatic channels, and (b) stop bombing the shit out of them at any excuse. Unless, of course, your objective is to radicalise them.
Let me leave you with two final thoughts.
(1) Never lose sight of the fact that your enemy is a human being too. He (or she) has a mother, a sister, a child, a spouse who loves them. They eat, pee and lust the same as you. They were once that carefree child playing in the street. To lose sight of your enemy’s humanity is to lose all respect for others and yourself.
(2) And in the words of Abraham Lincoln:
This is a very lightly edited version of something I posted earlier today on Facebook, but I’m repeating it here as I feel it needs to be filed for posterity.
There’s an interesting perspective from Martin Kettle in today’s Guardian under the banner
… if we are capable of thinking about Agincourt without wrapping ourselves in the flag, why not other later conflicts too? In three weeks’ time we will reach the climax of the annual military remembrance rituals. A century after the great war, these rituals have become more culturally hegemonic than ever before. Yet it is surely possible to respect the importance of history and to support events that bring peoples together while still feeling that … these particular rituals have now become unnecessarily oppressive.
At some point in the future … we will begin to let go of these rituals. One day, the head of state will no longer lay a wreath at the Cenotaph in November for the long-distant dead. One day, MPs and TV newsreaders will not feel the press of obligation to wear poppies on all public appearances …
For the present, people in public roles have little scope but to conform on such matters … we will be right to stop doing these things … and there is nothing inappropriate or disrespectful about suggesting that we would benefit from that time coming sooner rather than later.
We need to be looking and going forward, working for peace; not looking mournfully backward.
I was reading the latest on Brad Warner’s Hardcore Zen blog last evening — always worthwhile as Brad is eminently sensible and a Zen master.
He was writing about greed, especially greed for good.
And he nailed why it is that so many of us get frustrated that, while we can make a difference, we can’t make the huge difference that we know is needed. We are being greedy for the goodness we are striving after, and in Zen greed (any greed) is one of the “three poisons”.
Here’s the key extract of what Brad had to say. [My explanations in brackets.]
Greed … does not differentiate between good and bad. We’re used to the term greed being applied to things that are either bad for us or to things that are good or neutral except when over-indulged in … greed doesn’t just get directed towards bad things. You can also be just as greedy for good stuff, for things no one would ever say you shouldn’t want …
Back when I was an employee of Tsuburaya Productions [Japanese company who made the Godzilla films], I found myself getting really frustrated with how things were going. I was very dedicated to the company and I knew we could be doing much better than we were. I saw great opportunities for us internationally that we were just passing by because our management refused to see them or take steps to realize them.
During this time I went and saw Nishijima Roshi [his Zen teacher] and complained bitterly about the situation. Nishijima had been a businessperson most of his working life. He understood that side of things very well. I recall once telling him that Tsuburaya Productions was wasting its opportunities because it had no goals. I caught myself and said that I knew Zen was supposed to be goalless. He said, “Yes. But in business you must have a goal”.
So he got what I was saying that day about my frustrations with the company. But he said I needed to be satisfied with making small changes. Those small changes were important and eventually could lead to greater things. He didn’t exactly tell me not to be greedy, but that’s what he was saying.
The same attitude can be applied to the kinds of noble and important work a lot of people I meet are involved in. A lot of these people are terribly frustrated because they can’t seem to make the sweeping changes they know need to be made in order to fix the problems they’re working on. But many of these problems are global in scale …
It’s unrealistic to expect great changes to happen quickly. Getting greedy for good things only makes matters worse. We start getting angry and depressed, leading us to be unable to be effective in our important efforts to do what needs to be done.
This is something which hadn’t struck me before but on reflection is both correct and important. And it is something I (and probably many others) need to take on board.
Don’t be greedy for change. Yes, have a goal, but be prepared to progress towards it one small step at a time. “Softly, softly, catchee monkey.”
They just do not get it, do they!
According to today’s news feeds (for example here from the BBC) Rebekah Brooks is to return as chief executive of Rupert Murdoch’s UK newspaper operations.
This is the woman who was acquitted (yes, OK, she was found not guilty) of phone hacking last year, having not known, or forgotten, large chucks of what was happening in her empire over a period of something like 10 years. Others were allowed to take the fall.
OK, I accept it is Murdoch’s right to appoint anyone he likes to his organisation (providing they fulfil the legal niceties). As Evan Harris of Hacked Off has observed (quoted in the Guardian a few days ago)
Mrs Brooks’s successful defence at trial was that she was such an incompetent executive that she was unaware of industrial-scale criminal wrongdoing in intercepting voicemails and bribing public officials, and unaware of the vast conspiracy to cover it up, despite her admitting to destroying millions of emails and putting the company’s reputation before cooperation with the police.
This doesn’t seem to be a very encouraging sign in one expected to lead an organisation — any organisation.
Moreover to me this also says much about the Murdoch empire’s total disregard for ethics and morality. As the shadow Culture Secretary and others have said (also in the Guardian) it sends a massive two fingers to the British public and, I suggest, a high-five to the wealthy and influential who seem to be able to can get away with almost anything they like.
However legal it is, they basically just do not seem to get how cynical this is.
The Bank of England is introducing plastic money. Specifically polymer banknotes. They start in the autumn of next year with a new £5 note, followed by a new £10 note in 2017. And, it has been announced today, a new £20 in 2020. Which will leave only the £50 note made from paper.
… it is important to remember, nothing about what these assholes are trying to do is going to work. France is going to endure and I’ll tell you why. If you are in a war of culture and lifestyle with France, good fucking luck. Go ahead, bring your bankrupt ideology. They’ll bring Jean-Paul Sartre, Edith Piaf, fine wine, Gauloise cigarettes, Camus, Camembert, madeleines, macarons, and the fucking croquembouche. You just brought a philosophy of rigorous self-abnegation to a pastry fight, my friend. You are fucked.