Category Archives: thoughts

beliefs, personal, thoughts

Five Questions, Series 8 #3

And so question three of the latest round of Five Questions.

★★★☆☆

Question 3: Is masturbation a homosexual act?
There’s a body of very right wing, conservative Christianity (maybe other theisms too) which maintains that solo male masturbation (after all women would never do such a thing) is a homosexual act (the man is touching a penis) and therefore must indeed lead to the horrors of homosexuality.
I see the logic, in as far as it goes, but I don’t agree. For me homosexuality is defined as involving two (or more) persons of the same gender; one just doesn’t hack it. Whatever one might think about Onanism (and I view it as beneficial) homosexual it isn’t.
Thus I reject the idea. Not just because it is wrong, but also because it is believed by some set of wacky nut-jobs, who I neither like nor trust.
And anyway so what if masturbation is a homosexual act? Do all of us (male and female) not have at least a tiny percentage of homosexual leanings? And why does it matter anyway?
Get a life, guys!

current affairs, ramblings, thoughts

Despair, or not?

I’m beginning to get despondent — no, let’s have this right, I’m now getting ever more deeply despondent — about the EU Referendum on 23 June.
I’m worried that the great British public will vote to LEAVE the EU. They certainly will if the current opinion polls are anything to go by as most seem to be showing LEAVE several points ahead with relatively few undecided voters. Typically the polls I’ve seen in the last week seem to be showing roughly REMAIN on 42% and LEAVE on 44%.
What deepened my worries is the state of mind of the “unthinking masses”. There’s a group on Facebook for the town where I grew up — a town now predominantly populated by people I can only best describe as “Essex chavs” (although that does do an injustice to many). Someone bravely put a poll on the Facebook group asking what people would vote. When I looked a few minutes ago the figures were REMAIN 28, LEAVE 158.
WHAT! Yes, that’s right, almost 6:1 in favour of LEAVE. I find that really scary because it implies that the LEAVE campaign’s fear-mongering, mostly on immigration, has got through to the minds of the less critical masses.
I fear that Joe Public is going to vote according to his tribal and xenophobic, Daily Mail, mindset — just as in many other things he (and she) will always vote with their wallet. Even many immigrants, and children of immigrants, are saying they’ll vote LEAVE because of immigration.
Now don’t get me wrong. I’m OK with a LEAVE vote as long as it is based on some concrete foundations. However I know that Joe Public doesn’t work that way; he votes according to his fears and predilections, not because of good logic. Remember the old research which says that 5% of people can think and do; 5% of people cannot think; the other 90% can thing but just can’t be bothered — and that is partly because they have never been properly taught to do so.
It is going to take an awful lot of thinking citizens to overcome odds like that.
Part of the problem is that people cannot grasp that this whole thing is a big gamble; but a gamble where no-one knows what any of the odds are! This was summed up a couple of days ago by Martin Lewis of moneysavingexpert.com under the title How to vote in the EU referendum. His article is quite nicely balanced; Lewis points out the good and the bad with the EU. Here are a few key snippets:

It’s the biggest consumer decision any of us will ever make. It affects our economy, foreign policy, immigration policy, security and sovereignty. Our vote on whether the UK should leave the EU will reverberate through our lifetimes, and those of our children and grandchildren.
… … …
My mailbag’s been drowning with questions and concerns. The biggest being: “Please just tell us the facts, what’ll happen if we leave?” I’m sorry, but the most important thing to understand is: there are no facts about what happens next.
Anyone who tells you they KNOW what’ll happen if we leave the EU is a liar. Predicting exact numbers for economic, immigration or house price change is nonsense. What’s proposed is unprecedented. All the studies, models and hypotheses are based on assumptions — that’s guesstimate and hope.

Oh, and that applies equally to both sides of the debate! There are no facts; just guesses.
Lewis goes on to recommend that we “do some reading on useful independent sites that run through the issues” and suggests we start with The UK in a Changing Europe which is run by King’s College, London and pools balanced articles from all sides.
He then, quite rightly, points out …

… for most people this comes down to a risk assessment.
A vote for Brexit is unquestionably economically riskier than a vote to remain. Yet don’t automatically read risk as a bad thing. It simply means there’s more uncertainty …
Leaving the EU risks us being left on the sidelines …
Or we could in the long run become a nimble low-tax, low-regulation, tiger economy …
The likely truth is of course somewhere between the two. But most independent analysis suggests Brexit will be detrimental to the economy.
… … …
The volume of uncertainty means the only way to make the right decision is based on your political attitude to the EU, your gut instinct, and how risk-averse you are on each area that matters to you.

All I would say is please do this consciously, after carefully weighing the options, and don’t necessarily go just with your gut feelings (important though they are). In the words of Frank Zappa “a mind is like a parachute — it doesn’t work if it is not open“.
I happen to think that on balance leaving the EU would be the worse option — and heaven knows there’s so much about the EU I don’t like. But I could be wrong. We all could be wrong. As with all things there is no “RIGHT” answer.
And remember, again as Lewis comments, “the future is always a journey” but the path is crazy paving and you lay it yourself as you go along.
Good luck! We’re all going to need it whichever path we take.

beliefs, personal, thoughts

Five Questions, Series 8 #2

And so we come to answering question two of my latest round of Five Questions.

★★☆☆☆

Question 2: Give me an unpopular opinion you have
Oh, my word! There are so many of these. Here have a selection …

  1. Sex work of all kinds should be decriminalised – indeed encouraged.
  2. Every leisure centre and swimming pool (whether publicly or privately run) should be required to hold at least three one-hour mixed-sex nude sessions each week between 8am and 8pm with one of them on a weekday between 9am and 5pm and one at a weekend.
  3. All toilets should be omnisex. And all changing rooms should also be omnisex and without cubicles.
  4. All sports teams should be mixed-sex. (If the armed forces can do mixed sex frontline troops, why can’t sports teams?)
  5. The private motor car should be banned.

Well, no-one said you had to like them or that they had to be practical.

beliefs, personal, thoughts

Five Questions, Series 8 #1

OK, let’s go. Here’s the answer to the first of my latest round of Five Questions.

★☆☆☆☆

Question 1: Can we understand everything?
No. Not a hope in hell. At least I bloody hope we don’t.
One of the defining features of our species is our ability to make connections. From birth, we can’t help but recognise patterns — and hence we begin to understand how the world works. What goes for us individually applies to our species as well. The history of science is the history of seeing ever deeper connections between apparently unrelated phenomena. And there is no reason to suppose that this won’t continue ad infinitum.
However chimps, smart as they are compared with, say, tortoises, will (we assume) never grasp quantum theory, or even recognise the need for such a theory. And although we are smarter than chimps (at least for some measures of “smarter”), why shouldn’t there be concepts that are too big or too complex for our brains to handle? Even too big/complex for us to be aware of?
So isn’t it just arrogance to think that we will, one day, understand everything? And anyway, isn’t being able to understand everything a frightening prospect? Because then we would know what everyone else was thinking; all the time; about everything from apples to zoophilia. That way madness surely lies.

beliefs, personal, thoughts

Five Questions, Series 8

2 Comments

OMG it is over a year since I started the last round of Five Questions. So at long last I bring you another series.
Here in Series 8 we have a slightly more serious group of questions — although I don’t guarantee entirely serious answers. So without more ado …

★★★★★

The five questions for Series 8 are:

  1. Can we understand everything?
  2. Give me an unpopular opinion you have
  3. Is masturbation a homosexual act?
  4. Would you ever admit to being racist?
  5. If you could write a note to your younger self, what would you say in only two words?


Unlike the last series, I will post answers on a regular basis, because I’ve decided to write the answers up front, probably before this post even goes live! Yes, I know it’s cheating. But so what?
As always you’re all invited to sing along — I’d like it if you all joined in! You can either answer the questions, as I answer them, by posting in the comments or by posting your answers on your own blog (in which case just leave a comment here so we can find your words of wisdom).
The answer to Question 1 should appear in a couple of days time and then they’ll be at roughly weekly intervals.
Enjoy!

current affairs, medical, thoughts

Alcoholic Puritans

As Simon Barnes (former Chief Sports Writer of the Times) pointed out long ago, alcohol is the West’s drug of choice. But we live in a puritan country, and one where the government is getting ever more puritan and attempting to curtail anything of which it doesn’t approve.
Hence this week we have seen new government guidelines on the consumption of alcohol which are hyperbolic and puritan [Telegraph, 08/01/2016]. Or in the words of Simon Jenkins in the Guardian [08/01/2016]: These absurd new guidelines on how much alcohol we should drink are patronising and will have negligible effect on people’s health … These limits are about a vague national self-image of puritanism, not health.
At a swoop the alcohol limit for men has been halved to 14 units a week. Yes, halved. They say the previous limit was 21 units, but it wasn’t; the guidelines said 3-4 units a day; that’s up to 28 units a week. Similarly the limit for women has been reduced from 21 units (2-3 units a day) to 14. That, my friends, is the first piece of statistical obfuscation in the announcements — and it is one none of the media seem to have noticed.
As the Telegraph points out, one simple rule in life is that if A tries to tell B not to do something, B will probably want to do it all the more. Especially if A works for the government and is therefore ipso facto not trusted and seen as hectoring.
According to the Chief Medical Officer there is no safe level of alcohol consumption. While technically this may be true, it is disingenuous. The report’s figures show that there is a small but significant increased risk of breast cancer for women who drink; and similarly an increase in some of the rarer cancers (eg. oesophageal cancer) in men.
So what is the data behind this? Well the figures being quoted in the media are:

Cancer 0 Units 1-14 Units >14 units
Breast, female 11% 12.5% 15.5%
Bowel, male 6.5% 6.5% 8.5%
Bowel, female 5% 5% 6.5%
Oesophagal, male 0.5% 1.5% 2.5%

[Note: these numbers have been rounded to the nearest 0.5%; allowing for error bars the statistics cannot possibly be any more accurate than this.]
So if I drink more than 14 units a week I am 2% more likely to get bowel cancer (for which I am already being regularly monitored) or oesophageal cancer (which is pretty rare). And note this is over my lifetime (three-quarters or more of which has already passed), not per year.
Let’s give this some perspective … For comparison, in the UK we have a less than 0.5% lifetime chance of dying in some form of transportation accident (the vast majority of which is down to road travel). [In the USA this risk is over 1%.] Moreover in the UK the risk of dying from coronary heart disease alone is around 14% for men and 10% for women.
To quote the Telegraph again, the hyperbolic claim that there is no safe limit at all — that someone is taking their life into their own hands when they enjoy a glass of sherry — defies common sense. The report even admits the health risks of drinking within its recommended limits are comparable to those from “regular or routine activities, such as driving”. And that is something we all accept for both convenience and enjoyment.
As Christopher Snowdon, Head of Lifestyle Economics at the Institute of Economic Affairs observed [Telegraph, again]: Alcohol consumption has been falling for a decade. The change to the guidelines will turn hundreds of thousands of people into ‘hazardous drinkers’ overnight thereby reviving the moral panic about drinking in Britain and opening the door to yet more nanny state interventions. People deserve to get honest and accurate health advice from the Chief Medical Officer, not scaremongering.
And this from Prof Sir David Spiegelhalter, Winton Professor of the Public Understanding of Risk, University of Cambridge: These guidelines define ‘low-risk’ drinking as giving you less than a 1 per cent chance of dying from an alcohol-related condition … An hour of TV watching a day, or a bacon sandwich a couple of times a week, is more dangerous to your long-term health.
Or Simon Jenkins again: Everything we do in life is risky … We would be furious if Whitehall laid down risk and safety limits for riding horses, climbing mountains, eating foreign food and playing rugby. All involve far greater danger than marginal changes in consuming alcohol.
No wonder the government and the Chief Medical Officer have been accused of nanny state scaremongering.
But let’s be clear what the government are doing here. This is puritanism and prohibition by the back-door. Tobacco has already been made socially unacceptable. This is the campaign to do the same for alcohol. And note that they have already started on sugar.
And we all know that prohibition doesn’t work; it drives the problem underground and deprives the government of tax revenue.
As citizens it is our right — indeed our duty — to stand out against such ill-conceived nanny-state control. It is high time that people were empowered to take responsibility for their own lives, the risks they take and their quality of life (something which is all too often overlooked) without hectoring “advice” from on high. Unless we do so we are rapidly sliding down the slippery slope to Orwell’s 1984 and Huxley’s Brave New World.
I, for one, will be treating this new guidance with the contempt it deserves.

beliefs, ramblings, science, thoughts

Cargo Cult Ethics

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.

beliefs, freedom of speech, personal, thoughts

Lessons for Life

Spread all across the intertubes there are hundreds of sites which suggest a vast number of supposed “lessons for life”. Many, of course, are nothing of the sort but merely personal predilection or religious proselytising. However there are some which seem to me to be much more universally useful and which would serve us well if included in our modus operandi. Here then are my top ten tips for surviving life on an even keel.
My Top Ten Lessons for Life

  1. Life isn’t fair — deal with it.
  2. If it harm no-one, do as you will.
  3. Treat others as you would wish them to treat you.
  4. Be open and honest in all that you do.
  5. You can never have all the information you want to make a decision; every decision is the best you can make at the time with the information available.
  6. Don’t be afraid to admit you were wrong or you don’t know; be prepared to change your mind.
  7. No one is responsible for your happiness, your emotions, your opinions or your orgasms except you.
  8. No regrets — just things you now know weren’t the best.
  9. If you’re faced with a problem, don’t delay trying to resolve it; problems ignored only multiply.
  10. There is no point worrying about things outside your control or which you cannot change.

Of all the rest I’ve seen over the years I have collected some more of what I consider to be the most generally useful on my website at Lessons for Life.

ramblings, thoughts

Five Questions, Series 7 #4

2 Comments

At last we come to finding an answer to Question 4 of my Five Questions. I have delayed a little, well procrastinated really, because I am a bit at a loss as to how to answer the question. It’s difficult!

★★★★☆

Question 4: Does thought require language?
This is my, fairly unrefined, thinking on the question. I have no idea if scientists and philosophers agree with me or not; that isn’t the point.
Let us assume first that we humans have language and are capable of thought, by which I mean contemplating something which is outside out immediate senses — say a sunny beach while we’re commuting on the London Underground — or something abstract — say a question like “Does thought require language?”
Now it is certainly true that we do think in language. So the main question is, can we think without the use of language?
It is also true that how we think and perceive the world depends on our language and vice versa. For instance many hunter-gatherer languages have no concept of numbers greater than two — their counting system, if they even have one, goes “One, Two, Many” — they have just never needed to count as they don’t engage in commerce.
So our world view, our language system, and hence one would think our thought processes are intimately entwined. But again the question is can (could) we think without using language?

Next we need to ask “What is language?”. Does language include visual representation (pictures in the mind’s eye)? Or juxtapositions of coloured shapes which have word meanings, as a synesthete might have? Does language include the chirrups my cat uses to (try to) communicate with me? Or even musical ideas heard in the brain, as I suspect many composers have?
Do composers think in sound sequences? Do artists think is colour swatches? Can chefs think in tastes? And if so, do these constitute language? Perhaps they do. Maybe language isn’t just words.
And how do babies think, before they have learnt to speak; before they have acqured language? They aren’t just dumb automata, as any parent will tell you!
All pet owners will know that cats and dogs also give the impression of thinking, of working things out. As do squirrels when presented by a challenge to get at some nutritious nuts. Do they do this contemplation in meows, barks and squeaks? Or maybe in images? Or smell? Or maybe they too have some sort of synaesthesia to help them?
It seems to me unlikely that a squirrel can plot a path to its nuts without some form of “visualisation”, even if that is looking at the tree branches and considering whether it can jump a particular gap. It may not do this consciously, but in some way it would appear to be using some, at least rudimentary, method of mental discovery and abstract conceptualisation. And this could, very loosely, be called language. But of course we may never be able to understand exactly what the squirrel’s processes are. Or those of our cats and dogs. Or indeed those of our pre-linguistic babies.
To me it seems intuitive that thought cannot happen unless there is some “medium” to convey it. Whether that is words, pictures, musical sequences, dog barks or dolphin squeaks doesn’t really matter. In a sense they are all language. And while many animals will react instinctively to some stimuli (male moths blindly following the pheromones to a female which turns out to be an insect trap) it would appear logical that animals are incapable of abstract, constructive, thought without their particular language.
So ultimately I think, yes, thought does require language of some form.

sexuality, thoughts

Swedish Model

*** Warning — long read ***
So the EU and many governments want to embrace the Swedish model for the regulation of prostitution do they?
Buying and selling sex is not currently illegal in the UK but soliciting, pimping, brothel-keeping and kerb-crawling are all criminal activities. By contrast the Swedish model says that it is legal to sell sexual services but it is illegal to buy them.
The Swedish model is a complete nonsense, for a number of reasons …
1. It is totally illogical. Making the selling of sex legal, but the buying of it illegal just does not make sense. It is like saying that Tesco may sell me a Mars Bar but it is illegal for me to buy one. If we applied this logic to any commodity other than sex the proposal would be laughed out of court as being totally ridiculous.
Moreover, I suggest, It may also be a restraint of trade: I’m legitimately allowed to trade in a commodity but no-one is permitted to engage with me to buy it so I am restrained from carrying on my legitimate business.
2. By criminalising the buying and selling of sex government is attempting to legislate morality and exercise control over private sexual behaviour — which I submit are basically none of their business. Sex workers are human beings and selling sex is their trade. As such sex workers must surely be entitled to the same labour rights as other workers and the same human rights as other people. It is vulnerability, not sex work, which creates victims. (And let us not forget that not all sex workers are prostitutes and not all are female, although the majority probably are.)
No wonder the English Collective of Prostitutes (the nearest UK sex workers have to a trade union) has said:

We are appalled that at a time when benefit cuts and sanctions, lowering wages, increased homelessness and debt are forcing more women, particularly mothers, into prostitution, the best that MPs can come up with is to increase criminalisation. These proposals will further divert police time and resources from investigating rape, trafficking and other violent crimes to policing consenting sex.

3. It doesn’t work. All the criminalisation of either sex workers or clients is going to do is to push sex work further underground, where it becomes prey to abuse and criminal activity.
The argument for the Swedish model is that by attacking the demand to buy sex the sex industry in general, and trafficking in particular, are reduced. However there is no credible research to support the idea that the Swedish Model reduces selling, buying or trafficking. However there is significant research to show that conflating sex work and trafficking is a conscious attempt to prevent people from voluntarily migrating to do sex work. The argument about the reduction in trafficking doesn’t hold water. Evidence shows that the vast majority of the UK’s sex workers are there voluntarily, have not been trafficked, and are not being controlled.
Instead of improving things, a Swedish National Police Board report shows that the policy has driven sex work underground and made sex workers even more vulnerable. It has also lead to an expansion of indoor sex work (OK taking girls off the streets is arguably a good thing): for example, apparently Thai massage parlours offering sexual services in Stockholm increased almost three-fold between 2009 and 2012.
Yes, of course UK law needs to be changed to improve safety for sex workers. In the UK sex workers are forced to work alone because working with anyone else constitutes running a brothel. Working alone dramatically increases the risk of them being subjected to rape, violence, robbery and even murder. Given that 80% of the UK’s female sex workers work indoors, decriminalisation would enable these women to work from premises in teams of two or more which would be safer for them. And the same has to be true for male sex workers as well.
Moreover decriminalising the sale of sex empowers sex workers to use the justice system to seek redress for abuse, violence and discrimination. Removing the threat of criminal penalties would also enable sex workers to work with police to facilitate the enforcement of anti-trafficking laws.
Decriminalisation would also encourage sex workers to have more open access to health, legal and social services. Indeed following the Dutch model licensing of sex workers could go even further by making regular medical check-ups a condition of the licence. And healthier sex workers has to be good for them as well as good for the punters.
4. You can’t regulate an intangible commodity like sex. Basically it is bad law because it is unenforceable.
You can licence the sex workers, but without doing that you cannot regulate sex. People will have sex, even if they aren’t supposed to. And where they’re having sex as a commodity there will be a trade in it. Any two people can go off and have sex and who can tell if money (or other tangible payment) changes hands? The deal doesn’t have to be done in the open; it will happen in a private room somewhere well out of sight of law enforcement’s prying eyes and the tax man. Basically the buying and selling goes underground.
This is no different from the way in which any (black) market works: A is willing to sell commodity Z to B who will pay for it; if this is illegal then it just gets done “under the counter”. This happens in every country; you cannot stop it. The UK currently has a thriving trade in illegally imported (cheap) alcohol and tobacco as well as drugs; during WWII rationing coupons were illegally traded; during the beef crisis, meat was still sold on the bone, but out of sight. They are tangible commodities and the trade can be restricted by confiscating the commodity when discovered. But how do you confiscate sex? It’s like saying that consultancy is illegal — it cannot be enforced. Anyone can talk to (have sex with) anyone and who can tell if money changes hands along the way?
So unless you are prepared to licence sex workers, basically it is a free for all and open to exploitation by any petty (and not so petty) criminal. And ultimately that is bad for everyone. The girls are exploited (or worse) by pimps and open to abuse from the punters; and they can’t do anything about it as they can’t report the abuse. The punters are vulnerable too; they can be fleeced of their money and they have no clue about the health status of the girls. Everyone loses.
5. But it is even wider than this. Sex work challenges our current social and cultural norms — just as homosexuality, illegitimacy, anal sex and even masturbation have done in the not so distant past. As a result we changed the way we thought about those issues. Isn’t it about time that we changed the way we think about sex work too?


So what should we do? We agree that the UK’s sex work laws need to be rationalised and updated.
The ECP and other sex worker rights groups continue to campaign for the introduction of laws similar to those in New Zealand, where sex work is decriminalised and women are allowed to work together in small owner-operated brothels. To me this seems a sensible option; it takes girls off the streets, gives them safety in numbers and permits them the security of being able to have abuse and criminal activity against them investigated by the police. If we were to go further and follow the Dutch model of licensing sex workers then regular medical check-ups can be made a condition of the licence — which has to be good for everyone’s health. Let us not forget too that once permitted and legal, earnings from sex work can be taxed; and what government wouldn’t like more money in its coffers?
How hard is this? Why is the logic so impossible for politicians and law enforcement persons to grasp? Why is this too much to ask?
Wake up guys. Smell the coffee. Stop jerking your knees and start thinking.
——————————
Sources:
Suzi Godson; 10 Things You Need to Know Before You Support the Swedish Model of Sex Work. This is a short, well researched article which cites its references.
Alexandra Topping; Selling sex should be decriminalised but buying it should be illegal, say MPs.