Tufta

Tufta refers to the falsification of statistics to meet the diktats of unaccountable power.

• If the power is unaccountable then why bother with statistics at all?
• Who does the falsification? The statisticians or the politicians?
• Why bother speaking truth to power if it is going to be rejected and you are likely to lose your job as a statistician?
• The diktats of unaccountable power eg these days = neo-liberalism and freemarket fundamentalism as propounded by trans national corporations. Also climate change deniers (especially the oil and gas corporations) and the anti-evolution intelligent designers.
• Think of a number, any number. Repeat it often and people will believe it.

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Ref: Darrel Huff (1954) How to lie with statistics https://archive.org/details/HowToLieWithStatistics

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Lie_with_Statistics
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"Lies, damned lies, and statistics" is a phrase describing the persuasive power of numbers, particularly the use of statistics to bolster weak arguments. It is also sometimes colloquially used to doubt statistics used to prove an opponent's point.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies,_damned_lies,_and_statistics

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Making education happen.

Educare means to lead out. Without it you will be parochial and possibly xenophobic. With it you will be transformed into a neo-liberal free marketeer. There is the possibility of being transformed into a mixed economy social democrat but this is less common. Whatever the preference might be - education cannot make it happen alone.

The photo shows an African primary school. It is in a clearing that must be swept regularly – do the kids do the sweeping or do parents do it for free or does the school employ gardeners?

There are two blocks of three classrooms. The walls are wattle and daub. The older building on the left has a thatched roof while the newer one on the right has a tin roof. This is low level technology and the community might have erected the buildings themselves. The older building needs repair. There are hopefully enough pit latrines for all the kids - and a safe water supply - associated with a kitchen. Depending on locations there may also be teacher houses used as an incentive to attract better quality teachers.

There are about 50 kids in the circle - both sexes. There does not appear to be a wide age range suggesting that they represent only one class. They do not have school uniforms and they all appear to be barefooted. In a free market system what level of school fees might be set? What are the effective measures for parents to judge comparative advantage between schools?

In my time and in several different countries I have been involved with curriculum development, initial and in-service teacher training, materials production, examinations, school inspection, and support services dealing with leadership, management and administration (LMA) at school and central and local government level.

There are no easy answers. There is need for joined up thinking. Formal education alone cannot swing the national culture from neo-liberal to social democratic.

Who to believe 2?

When Europeans first went to the Americas the indigenous people were quick to notice that the white man speaks with forked tongue. They were silver tongued devils who would promise everything but deliver nothing.

Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527) wrote about the reality of ruling. He notes, amongst many other things, that, for political leaders, “The promise given was a necessity of the past: the word broken is a necessity of the present.”

A quite astonishing modern example is the vow made by three leading UK unionist politicians shortly before voting in the Scottish referendum. They publically vowed to deliver a set of wonderful things if there was a no vote. There was a no vote. Within hours they were reneging on their promises which they obviously did not intend to keep. Machiavelli would have been proud of them.

Ordinary human mindbrains take easily to cheating and deceit. Those trained in hospitality management are quick to flash their ‘have a nice day’ smiles; and second hand car salesmen are well able to look you directly in the eye and to give a firm handshake while passing you off with a dud.

Human beings are also sensitive to gossip – ‘What will people think?’ Much attention is given to status symbols eg the supermarket you shop in, the newspaper you read, the TV programmes that you watch. These and many other cultural features signal your place in the hierarchy, eg whether you are working, middle or upper class. By having clear cut signs and signals everyone knows their place and there is no need for fighting.

These days there are professional mind changers in education, entertainment, and advertising. And there are politicians, economists and corporations punting propaganda. How might we decide who to believe?

The social neurology of party politics

The title of this article appeared spontaneously while subjectively speculating that many modern nation states slip into two party political systems. When there are more than two parties the others are small and special interest. The two parties can be viewed as being somewhere on a continuum reaching from left (socialist/ communist) to right (conservative/ fascist).

Given that the duality is common we might hypothesise that it is hard wired into our brains and that it therefore serves some social evolutionary purpose. This might link to the notions that ‘man is a social animal’, ‘no man is an island unto himself’ and that ‘it takes a village to grow a child’. There would be neurologically bounded belonging:

Me, my extended family, my community, my tribe

The social neurology would have first evolved during the days of hunting and gathering when there was very little division of labour and very limited hierarchy. The roots of our social being were therefore, presumably communitarian and egalitarian. The primeval ‘us’.

Note that (a) we were hunters and gatherers in bands of about 50 people for 4.5 million years, (b) we developed the beginnings of language 200,000 years ago, and (c) we did not develop sophisticated division of labour till settled agriculture began a mere 6000 years ago.

Settled agriculture produced so much food that some members of the collectivity were excused from working in the fields and division of labour took off.

But, amongst other things, these changes begged the existential question, “Why are we here?” Part of the social neurology involves story telling so as to answer the question and induce a state of cognitive consonance when the loose ends are tidied up. There is then peace of mind and a general feeling to support the status quo.

When we tell stories we reach out from the known to the unknown via metaphor. So the known ‘family patriarchy’ becomes the model for the ‘state patriarchy’ and by extension for the ‘cosmic hierarchy’. Myth and magic were, and still are, on overdrive. For example in the Christian tradition a self appointed elite set itself up as the good and great who are the collectivity’s elders and betters with the power to excommunicate the unbelievers and mount murderous crusades against the infidels.

Heavenly father; infallible pope; divine right of kings

It does not matter if the story is not true – all that matters is that it is convincing and securely lodged in the minds of the collectivity. This is relatively easily done using the elegant power tool that is hegemony.

Hegemony is the process whereby a few mould the minds of the many. Related words are training, education, socialisation, enculturation, indoctrination, brainwashing. The idea is that there is total acceptance of the established story. Excessive behaviour can result, for example:

• Human sacrifice to placate the Gods
• Youths acting as suicide bombers
• The burning of witches
• Death by crucifixion and decapitation
• Ritual regicide
• The Spanish inquisition

A hegemoner hegemonises hegemonees.

The hegemoner class forms an elite whose members believe in and adhere to the myth and magic which makes up the orthodox world view. For example neoliberalism and free market fundamentalism.

Hegemonising involves changing minds. The process is as much an art as a science. Evidence is not the main thing. If you speak a big lie loud enough and often enough people come to believe it. Think of war propaganda and the demonization of the ‘enemy’. It is not all that long ago that the Germans and the Japanese were the spawn of Satan. Nowadays they are friends and trading partners.

The main hegemonees are the popular masses who are in the thrall of the hegemoners. The main hegemonees are the people, the citizens, the salt of the earth, the voters, the consumers, the workers, and the cannon fodder that are fed scary stories and suffer austerities when there is an economic downturn when the right wing politicians are in power.

Note that there is a place for cynics, sceptics and spin doctors. They are a class of people who see through the orthodox myth and magic. They are sometimes kept out in the metaphorical or Siberian cold, “That man thinks too much, such men are dangerous”. But they form a phalanx of freelance philosophers that can be relied upon to generate heterodox variations in world views and thus to feed the mimetic process of natural selection and cultural evolution.

Here endeth a spontaneous subjective speculation. It came through my unconscious that has been hegemonised by recent interactions with cutting edge ideas from the fields of neurology, evolutionary psychology, politics and economics, and mindfulness meditation.

Note that I remain unclear about why I bother to write stories and put them on a blog. I could hypothesise - but that can be another topic for another day!

Cool discussion

This mindbrain has recently been exposed to a sprinkling of cutting edge thoughts and thinkers. Some one on one, some by text, and some by video.

The latter included heated debates – notably one where Sam Harris was up against Deepak Chopra on ‘The Future of God’. There is an option of having cool discussion rather than fiery debate. The key is to have a low level of emotional attachment to your world view and to have a high level of communication skills.

Mindbrains tend towards cognitive consonance but seldom in totally rational ways. There are hard wired and acquired intuitions, and oftentimes negative biases. Training in mindfulness might help catalyse the calming process as might the development of communication skills

It is possible to make a list of verbal and non-verbal communication actions and to observe how many of them are used by which participants in a discussion. For example - some talk loud and often and often wag their finger; some talk soft and seldom and smile most of the time; some don’t talk and sit with their arms crossed.

The activity is called social interaction analysis. When used formally there are two groups – (a) those in white coats with checklists (the researchers) and (b) those engaged in the social interaction (the subjects). ( Note: nowadays subjects can be wired up to generate info about changes in their bodies and in various parts of the mindbrain.)

It seems reasonable to suppose that people who take instruction in communication skills and in mindfulness might be more effective, calm and civilised while working in groups. More like smooth Sam and less like desperate Deepak.

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▶ The Future of God Debate Sam Harris and Michael Shermer vs Deepak Chopra and Jean Houston - YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udezV0wP5Zs

Biased experts

I think of experts as being aware of the history and schools of thought in their given fields. They are also open to synergy from interacting with experts from different fields.

The World Bank and the IMF can afford to buy the best available brains so why do these in-house experts not see the shortcomings in the neo-liberal, free trade policies they are recommending? For example, as part of Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) and Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSP) they recommended:

• privatization of state-owned industrial and financial firms,
• deregulation of finance and industry,
• liberalization of international trade and investment, and
• reduction in income taxes and welfare payments.

   
These policies have been applied for the last thirty years and very little progress has been made in promoting democracy - but the same policies are still being promoted. (eg the Cameron/Osborne Tory agenda in the UK.) It appears from the outside as a case of zealotic blinkers. What else might it be?

The bosses, middle managers and field workers genuinely believe in the free market approach and their biased beliefs made them ignore the emerging evidence of shortcomings.
Problem = narrow tracking and groupthink!

The managers and field workers are aware of the emerging evidence of problems with the free market approach but they keep quiet about them so as to please the bosses and keep their jobs
Problem = toeing the line, and not collapsing the canoe.

This story line seems to recognise another continuum. This time from zealot to sage

Zealot – a small minded person who takes an enthusiastic stand at an extreme end of a continuum of possibilities.

Sage – an open minded person who can see beyond the continuum of possibilities and who calmly steers the stakeholders to a consensual policy aimed at achieving the greatest good of the greatest number.

The intellectual trickle up effect

Drole academic humour suggests that B.Sc. = bullshit; M.Sc. = more of the same; and PhD = piled higher and deeper. The PhD is also reckoned to involve getting to know more and more about less and less.

But a heady haze of holism now surrounds the cutting edges of the erstwhile isolated disciplines; and E O Wilson has written a book about consilience.

Holism: the idea that natural systems (physical, biological, chemical, social, economic, mental, linguistic, etc.) and their properties should be viewed as wholes, not as collections of parts.

Consilience: in science and history, consilience (also convergence of evidence or concordance of evidence) refers to the principle that evidence from independent, unrelated sources can "converge" to strong conclusions.

The idea is that research teams, whether academic or business oriented, should be multidisciplinary. So far this is working well for the pure and applied hard sciences and for the biological sciences when viewed through the lens of evolution. Links to the social sciences and the humanities are still meager.

Another idea is that the findings from the holistic cutting edges should be communicated clearly and in plain language so that large numbers of citizens can think things through and thus participate meaningfully in the political process.

Sound bites and catch phrases can capture people’s attention but ICT assisted ways of helping citizens to dig deeper should also be available. This would include (a) glossaries of specialist terms, (b) one-pagers explaining the nature of, and issues related to, the main concepts and (c) a wide range of speaking and listening events both live and on audio and video.

A new political system would rely heavily on those freelance philosophers for whom the cream rises in terms of numbers of visitors to their social networks, websites and public meetings. They would be funded mainly by broad based crowd sourcing and would not thus be ‘bought’ by major sponsors and donors. There are good examples of this phenomenon associated with the Scottish referendum

In this new system the intellectual trickle down effect would be kept alive and relevant by a corresponding trickle up effect. Representative democracy would be replaced by participatory democracy. There would be a new way of speaking the people’s truth to privileged power.

I wrote about this for the UN in 2003 but the booklet was deemed ‘contentious’ and was not used. The title was “No more broken promises? A plain language guide to the Millennium Development Goals”. It is available online from here - http://www.srds.co.uk/mdg/. The short notes about the democratic process were:

Representative democracy is where we vote for politicians and political parties to make decisions on our behalf. This will always be necessary. But, in our complicated modern world, the system needs to be supported. Ordinary people have to form pressure groups to make sure that their particular needs and concerns are dealt with. We can think of this 'direct action' as participatory democracy.

Participatory democracy means that all the people who will be affected (ie all stakeholders) should be involved when policies and plans are made, put into action, monitored and evaluated. But different stakeholders will have different ways of understanding what is happening in the world. We therefore have to organise meetings where all points of view get a fair hearing. This means that a complete set of claims, concerns and issues can be drawn up as a basis for negotiation and decision making.

Yoh - speaking the people’s truth to privileged power.

I wrote about this in 2004. The three page article (The changing face of policy making) is available here: http://www.caledonia.org.uk/papers/Policy-making.pdf

Fire and reality

The weather is cold, grey and wet. I am pottering. There is a mild yearning to be consumed by a non-egoic meta-thought.

There is the image of a small spark from the unconscious igniting a roaring fire before it goes down and out. Where does a fire go to when the logs have turned to ash? Where do thoughts and feelings go to when they leave the attention centre?

Fire is created in a wood burning stove. Reality is created in an attention centre. Fire is built from kindling and logs that are delivered by a fireman. Reality is built from the passing thoughts and feelings that are delivered from the unconscious. Both fire and reality hang around for a while and then are gone. The agent for fire is the fireman. The agent for reality is the unconscious.

There have been threats of anxiety, panic and depression several times today. But they were noticed before applying match to firelighter so they slunk away without causing a fuss and allowed consumption by a non-egoic meta-thought on a cold, grey day.

Blogpost stats

There is too much stuff in cyberspace. Even when it watches me and serves up stuff that I am likely to be interested in - there is still too much.

For me the main sources are email, Facebook and Twitter. But I also log into a select set of ‘news’ sites: especially some of the alternative ones that came into being during the lead up to the referendum, and are now gearing up to support the new politics.

Twitter posts are very short and most Facebook entries are fairly brief. But many of them point to extended offerings that are in textual, audio or video format. The subject matter varies. On the one hand I know more about what goes on in my real life community than I ever did before, while, on the other hand, I find out what is happening at the cutting edge of a range of political and academic topics in the wider national and global spheres.

Writing about my ICT involvement helps me to understand it better. I spend most of my waking hours absorbing ideas from the cutting edges and then letting the unconscious generate blog posts based loosely upon them. Other than that there are domestic chores to attend to and there is time for chair-dosing and bed-sleeping.

The blog posts are my product and reason for existing. They are not hugely popular but they have some mildly encouraging statistics. 

The site at www.naesaebad.blogspot.com was established in Jan 2013. As of today it contains 306 posts (one every two days) and has had 12,138 pageviews. At present it receives about 50 pageviews per day. The audience is mainly in the US and the UK but there is a good following in Russia, Germany and Turkey.

The archive site at www.dodclark.blogspot.com was established in May 2006. As of today it contains 507 posts and has had 33,582 pageviews. It presently receives about 24 pageviews per day. The audience is mainly in the US and the UK but there is a good following in India, Russia, and Canada.

Today’s blogposts get added to those that already exist. A back catalogue is therefore building up. Several compilations have been prepared and are freely available but they have only rarely been downloaded.

So why do I put more stuff into cyberspace?  Cream rises? If an idea catches on it will spread. Survival of the fittest. Cultural evolution. Mimetics.

"Let a hundred flowers bloom; let a hundred schools of thought contend" Mao Tse-Tung (1950s) - Don't interfere with promising developments in their early stages.

The demons are not us

As human beings we are social and political animals. We are hard wired to think in terms of them and us. And we can easily be made to demonise ‘them’.

During WW2 the Nazis ate babies for breakfast and it was thus our duty to kill them. Since the war the propaganda machine has changed focus and we now get along fine with the Germans. The new foreign scurge is Islamic fundamentalists who crucify and decapitate their prisoners and have built up huge stocks of WMD.

The main home grown scurges at the moment are, amongst others, David Cameron and George Osborne. They are portrayed as the rich brat progeny of super wealthy parents who sent them to very selective private school and then to Oxford and Cambridge where they bonded by forming anti social clubs. They have no experience of the real world, they are not very bright, but they can be bought by corporations for huge sums of money and for other less tangible goodies.

The media would have us believe that those two leaders of the country have silver tongues with which they deliver unrealistic promises to the punters and very real profits to their pals. Austerity to the undeserving poor and feather bedding to the independently rich.

So what are they:

• innocent buffoons who are controlled by special advisors with close links to big business
• cynical, unscrupulous pillagers of the nation’s wealth and fiddlers of expenses
• smallminded, self centred and vainglorious egos concerned with their place in history
• intelligent and courageous champions of neoliberalism
• intelligent and courageous champions of socialism

They are the present good and great and my cultural conditioning would therefore have me respect and support them. But they are neoliberals and not working class. I cannot escape the feeling that they are committed to restructuring the global economy such that it serves the agendas of the profit maximising super rich even though this involves exploiting the workers whom they view as statistical units in their master plan.

The other day I was chatting with a couple of retired businessmen who were right wing, conservatives to the core. Thatcherites implicitly assuming that greed is good and that the good lord helps those that help themselves. And they were not joking. They seemed to live the media myth. Such people really exist. In comparison I might be labelled as a green social democrat with leanings towards anarchy through judicious subsidiarity. What is not to like about that?

Politics is a messy business. There are no easy answers. At root it is about morality, about right and wrong. But recent, big-data analysis suggests that there are five main value topics. Jonathan Haidt has it figured out. Go see at http://naesaebad.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/haidt-on-morality.html

My head is seriously messed up with bits and pieces of thoughts and feelings popping in and out of consciousness. The good news is that I know about what is going on and I can stay calm and rise above it. Crucially I can remain calm and aloof when propogandists encourage the demonization of ‘them’.

Flow in the passive voice

Now and again there is a passing feeling that these blog posts are puerile crap. But, upon noticing the beginnings of the negativity, it slinks out of the attention centre. All manner of thoughts, moods and feelings are coming and going.

Aha - there is presently an inclination to write in the passive voice as it prevents reification of the word for the first person singular.

The word ‘reification’ might not be the most apt but it points in the right direction ie of kingship, or at least of holding a position more exalted than it deserves.

Michael Shermer, the prominent sceptic, recognises patternicity and agenticity as forces or tendencies that are built into the way that the mindbrain works. Sensations from the sense organs are churned together with similar sensations from memory and patterns are created and recognised. But a created pattern cannot stand alone – it logically requires a particular mindbrain to be the agent of the pattern.

Aha - open the door to myth and magic.

Eg thunder and lightning are channelled through the sense organs and churned with memories of past experiences. (Note: they would have been scary sense impressions on first experiencing them.) Parents and tribal chiefs are too insignificant to have the power to control such potent forces of nature. Maybe the shaman/priest/god-king has the power. Or, failing that, the ancestors might be able to influence God who inscrutably works in mysterious ways. Note: s/he comes in different shapes and sizes in different cultures. And these days there are secular meteorologists with maps and detailed short, medium and long term forecasts.

People who have been trained to be scientists are well used to the passive voice. However, although it helps to remove individualised subjective bias from spoken and written reports, it can also serve to throw a fog over personal responsibility. Eg “War was declared, bombs were dropped and collateral damage fell within acceptable limits.”

Note: scientists are not immune to patternicity and agenticity. But, by being aware of the hard wired tendencies, allowances can be made for them. Such at least is the opinion of the author of this blogpost.

Machiavelli’s internet

Niccolo Machiavelli

Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527) was an Italian historian, politician, diplomat, philosopher, humanist, and writer during the Renaissance. He was an official with responsibilities in diplomatic and military affairs. He was a founder of modern political science, and more specifically political ethics. He pre-dated the internet.

His writings have been interpreted in many different ways in the five hundred years since he was active. But he is generally thought of as the first author to describe the reality of what must be done by those who seek to establish and maintain political power.

My copy of his book The Prince is well thumbed and replete with margin marks highlighting the more challenging ideas. I have returned to it often when, as an education advisor, I found myself dealing with politicians seeking to justify and promote particular policy options.

Machiavelli’s key message is that there are two types of morality – one for ordinary people and one for a prince-like politician. Ordinary people keep their promises and do not murder those who disagree with them. Politicians may need to be otherwise. Think of what is happening to the recent ‘Vow’ made to the Scottish people by the Westminster elite. Think of the collateral damage by bombing in the Middle East. Who profits?

I was brought up to believe that the people running the country (the economy) were the good and great and my elders and betters. Noble, trustworthy, scrupulous, ethical, honest and with the greatest good of the greatest number firmly in mind. But it sometimes seems to be otherwise.

Because of my upbringing I feel guilty when I conclude that the supposed pillars of society are in fact small minded, selfish, greedy, right wing, free market, Westminster Tories who have their purses packed for promoting the business interests of the military industrial complex, the banking sector, and Big Pharma etc.

But I intellectually appreciate that my guilt is a product of hegemony and elegant power. By taking thought I can rise above the cowdung and remove the illusory ball and chain. But this exposes me to the existential vacuum. What’s it all about Alfie?

If the surrogate father figures are dethroned from the status quo – who will be in command? The people? The lumpenprolitariate? The petty bourgeoisie? The middle classes? The upper classes? – God forbid. God?

But anyway – I am inclined to say a few words in support of political science and ethics in the 21st century.

The facts may speak for themselves in the physical sciences and bridge building but not in the social sciences and nation building. In the latter case decisions have to be made in the absence of incontestable facts; in the absence of robust evidence; in the absence of widespread consensus. Nettles and thistles have to be grasped so that policies, programmes and projects can be served to citizens on silver platters by silver tongued devils supported by media savvy special advisors, spin doctors and speech writers.

It is dirty work but someone has to do it. But surely we can clean it up a bit? Might it not be different in an independent, computer-age Scotland?

The three unionist political parties could be voted out of existence making room for a more participatory and engaged approach to the political process. MSPs would solicit and act upon the views of their constituents rather than being bribed or whipped into following a remote, elitist national party line masterminded from Wastemonster.

And alternative media could provide user friendly, trustworthy and unbiased news and views. Several media units that cut their meritocratic teeth on the run up to the referendum are quickly institutionalising themselves to harness crowd sourced facts, feelings and funding.

I cannot help but feel that the Scottish enlightenment which began in the 18th century remains an unfinished business. We can be hard nosed, rational, just and green and move away from polarising win/lose debate towards inclusive win/win discussion.

And I also like to feel that, while Machiavelli may have been right about the realities of politics in 16th century Italy, he was not describing innate human nature. What might he have said about political science and ethics if, in his day, there had been the internet and crowd sourcing?