Angry Atheists

Shula moderated the Wednesday SFU philosophy cafe about the new wave of militant atheists.  Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Danial Dennet have done much to bring atheism to the main stage so that atheists can feel comfortable coming out of the closet.

While most in the group are non religious,  there were a few who spoke for the religious side.

It is always quite personal when it comes down to religion.

However,  the points I got out of the discussion was

1.  For the average person not involved in academic scientific research,  it is just as much an act of faith to trust scientist as it is to trust religion.  It comes down to who they choose to trust because they do not know enough about science to see the scientific inquiry process in action.

2.  Science itself is affected by human weakness like herd mentality and lack of independent thinking.  There is definite favoritism involved in the publishing of papers and choice of research area as well as "accepted opinion".

3.  Some attribute religion for the great art and culture in human history but Hitchens and Dawkins, the atheists would attribute it to the great wealth of the church over the ages and artists have a choice of working for the church or the monarch but not too many other people until the Venetian bankers came along.  Michealangelo better walk the churches' line to paint what is appropriate for the church.

4.  The religious side also attribute our morality from the bible and other religious teachings.  This is where Hitchens and Dawkins point out all the other horrible episodes of slavery, unequal treatment of women, killing of the enemies etc to show that we have been just picking parts of the bible that fits our morals.  Besides, the Greeks, Egyptians, Chinese, and other cultures have their moral code either before the new testament or independent of it.

5.  While the religious texts do treat matters of morality, codes of behavior, and meaning of life which science does not,  the objection is that it is a prescription without discussion or explanation.  So it addresses the subject but do not shed any more light on it.

I think the biggest difference is that religion approach life from a know it all position because the supreme being know it all and we are suppose to listen and follow.

Therefore, the important thing in religion is finding the right authority to listen to. Which supreme being, if there is one, is the one we should listen to?

The scientific inquiry method and philosophical discussions starts from a position of ignorance and build knowledge from observations, logic, and repeat experiments. The path of discovery is filled with disagreements, setbacks, and new discoveries that contradicts previous findings.

And we never know how much more there is to discover.

We don't have to trust Newton or Socrates, we only have to repeat their experiments, or examine the logic of their arguments.  Even if they both turned out to be fakes and they stole their ideas from someone else,  it is their ideas that matter, not the person.

With religion, the choice of god is everything. Whether it is the Greek gods, the Christian, Jewish, or Islamic god, or the Hindu god,  it is the deity that promise to provide the answers.

Whether there is a god or not,  the religious approach certainly discourage independent thought and promote following without question.

Dawkins thinks we should not bring up children in only the religion of their parents but that children should be encouraged to think independently as well as be told about other religions as well as atheist perspectives so that they can make an independent choice when they grow up.

I would agree.

Why do we gossip?

We had an interesting discussion Wednesday evening about gossip and this continued on in our first time North Vancouver Ideas Cafe on Thursday. 

There seem to be several variations of what is gossip. 

While I always thought of gossip as involving some sharing of secrets and often of a negative nature,  a lot of people think gossip can be positive and also that it can be just conversation and small talk.

One of the definitions in my dictionary is that gossip is a conversation exchange without passing too much information......Then what is the point?

It is a typical male response as we males tend to be goal oriented.  Now I see that gossip and conversation is not just about exchanging information but often more about socializing.  It is about making people feel comfortable with each other,  exploring whether they should talk about something more personal to get into a closer circle with the other person.

As to the sharing of secrets side of gossip,  the secrets invoke drama, excitment, and a proposal of trust to the receiver of this shared secret.  There is no greater social experience than sharing a common endeaver with another person and sharing a secret is a close second to that.

Bruce mentioned that 160 students is an optimal size for a school and that schools with more students need to take special efforts to improve coesion to stop the school from breaking up into factions. 

This triggered my thinking that gossip is part of how a social group forms and grows and how smaller subgroups start forming within a bigger group that is loosing its grip on its members.

The sharing of confidences builds bonds among individuals sharing the secret and start making them feel that they have kinship with each other.

Ricki and Colleen said that they would not feel any closer to people who propose sharing other secrets with them as these gossipers are obviously not to be trusted. 

Just like a lier that said he no longer lies,  how do we know that a gossiper will not spread gossip about us as well?

That is very logical but the appeal of gossip is to the emotions, not logic.

Then, there is the gossip column in the newspapers.  It is characterised by the reporting of social news that do not seem to have any real consequence to the welfare of the general citizen.  Joseph said that this is an effort to make readers have a feeling of community, that they read about people they may know, making them feel they belong to the community.

It is what makes people feel a small town is friendlier than a city, where people know each other - where people gossip about someone you actually know.

Of course there is the preoccupation with the detail lives of the celebrities.  Some thinks that this is a form of open gossip.  The general public have a relationship with the celebrities through TV, film, music, and media.  Gossip about celebrities' private lives make the public that much closer to the celebrities.

RJ commented that gossip in which the gossiper puts down their target is a classic indication of lack of self esteem of the gossiper and the gossiper is trying to elevate his/her own position by "social downward comparison" (a new term I learn from Joseph).  Any psychology person out there who may care to comment?

I have gained a new respect for small talk.

Fear in decision making

Last night, at the Ideas Cafe, we discussed how fear played in our decision making.

As usual, I learned some interesting ideas while the discussion moved in various directions.

I had thought of the topic as it seems to me a lot of times we decide on the basis of least harm done out of the options we have rather than the most good achieved.  The attack ads in an election is a good example of this and buying something on the basis that it is least likely to break or cause maintenance issues is another.

Mano thinks it is just being practical to buy things based on it not breaking or being able to return it.  But if that is the reason for not buying something that is newer, better, or different, then is being practical just an excuse for fearful of take a chance?

Mano also mentioned the Barry Goldwater election back in the 60s when the other side used an advertisement of a child pulling out petals from a flower that then turned into the mushroom cloud of an atomic bomb.  This is the other side's way of saying we cannot trust Barry Goldwater with the power of a president and the responsibility of to use or not to use nuclear weapons.  The advertisement was only used briefly but the image stuck.

Fear works more with older, conservative decision makers and can be used to confuse the situation so that the decision is not based on the overall picture but concentrated on avoiding a particular fear.

Shula thinks that fear is an emotional response to trigger fight or flight and therefore tends to be a fast reacting but not always resulting in a logical decision outcome.  With training, soldiers, fire fighters and other workers facing fearful situations can be trained to make better decisions rather than follow the emotional reaction.

Rafi made the point that we need to be imaginative to be fearful.  A less imaginative person cannot see what bad situations one can get into.  It may be the reason why younger people are less fearful because they have experienced less negative experiences in life and do not imagine the various negative scenarios.

Mark said courage is required to conquer or suppress our fears. We had a discussion on what constitute a courageous act.  Is it measured by exceeding normal modes of risk taking or would personal attempts to get over the fear of heights, flying, or crossing the road also be considered courageous.  Maybe it needs to achieve a useful end for taking that risk.

Fear and worry in decision making are similar but perhaps differ in degree.  The language is mixed here and sometimes confusing "I am afraid that..."expresses a worry.

Of course there were discussion of the political manipulation by using fear and that perhaps we should not trust groups that use fear to convince decision making as it unfairly concentrate on a narrow aspect of the choice selection.

Rafi also mentioned that fear is more prominent when we decide on issues we are not familiar with. We do not know or understand the whole situation and therefore we decide on the safest option.  Shula pointed out that doctors are fearful of medical scenarios that their patients do not know of.  Is that really fear or is it just language being use to say they know of negative outcomes that the patients do not know?

Christiana said that fear of heights is an innate response as babies have been measured to have a higher heart beat when placed on an elevated clear platform versus an opaque one.

Good fear is the response that concentrates our attention and get us out of a dangerous situation quickly.

Bad fear is irrational response of something that is not immediately harmful and also divert our attention from the overall picture at hand, concentrating only on one aspect.

Therefore, when we feel fear and we don't instinctively save ourselves, our rational side should ask if we really need to make a quick decision and if not, should we bring in other factors beyond what is right in front of us  into consideration.

Don't bring your rational side in when you are about to fall down the stairs, grab the handrail instead.

Don't be afraid of what can go wrong in choosing careers, one does not know what good as well as bad things can happen until actually in it.

Privacy

We had an interesting discussion about surveillance cameras and privacy yesterday.  The question I posed to the group was "what privacy is violated by surveillance cameras that are covering streets, shopping malls, parking lots etc which are all public spaces."

The obvious objection is that these camera can be aimed to look through someone's window but there seem little ground for objection to coverage of the public space.

Conrad mentioned that the objection from the civil liberties group is that we in general placed too much belief in the usefulness of the camera when in fact it is very expensive for someone to be watching these cameras and there are less expensive crime control methods available.

It surprised me that the civil liberties group are objecting on cost and practical grounds rather than ethical grounds.  It would mean to me that there are no ethical reason for objection but there is a general unease with surveillance cameras which we are having difficulty with.

The more interesting part of the discussion was on why privacy is important.

Shula thinks that there is a connection between privacy and the individual's identity.  In socialist collective societies where the individual's identity is diminished for the sake of valuing the social group identity, individuals have little or no privacy.  Whereas privacy is most valued in individualistic societies in western culture.

She also felt that privacy is required to preserve one's sense of dignity.

I remember when I started work in the 70's, I was working in a manufacturer where the plant manager had an executive washroom.  This is common in those days and maintained some distance between the top management and the workers.

Is this the same as Shula's reference to privacy being required to preserve the executive's sense of dignity over the workers he command or is this just a class barrier between management and worker?

Joseph said that it is common in the military for commissioned officers to have different washroom and social facilities from the non commissioned officers.  The purpose here is to keep the separation and distance as the commissioned officers may have to send the soldiers to their death in times of war and it is not desirable for them to be too close socially.

Bruce mentioned a similar separation in schools of the staff washroom and lunchrooms different from the students and that the students are not comfortable when there are times when these facilities are to be shared.

Maybe we have different parts of our identities we take on in different circumstances.  The teacher, executive, leader, takes on a certain role when dealing with the student, worker, and follower and these roles are blurred or distorted when mixed with other parts of identities that we are all human with bodily functions, and that we are imperfect with faults when not assuming the leading roles.

The cynical may say that privacy is just an excuse to explain that we are putting a front (playing a role) and not being ourselves.

However, there are expectations from students, workers, and follower of their teacher, executive, and leader.    In an imperfect world, can we modify these expectations to real life or is it easier to just go with the flow of these expectations and play the part, making things simpler and easier?

The often said argument against privacy is why do we need it if we have nothing to hide?

I would say that in an imperfect world, we have to deal with preconceived expectations of others that we do not always get a chance or have the ability to correct.

Privacy, dignity, identity, social roles, expectations;  I feel like I am scratching the surface,  there has to be more to come but not for now.

Why teach the humanities?

Last Wednesday at the New Westminster's philosopher's cafe, the discussion was about the teaching of the humanities in today's universities.

Many lament that universities are becoming more and more like training centers for business, engineering, medicine, pharmacy, and commerce graduates and giving less and less emphasis on the humanities.  That there is too much specialization and not enough training on the general way of how to think that humanities such as philosophy, history, and other humanities teaches.

After all, democracy depends on an intelligent and independent thinking electorate to make good choices in their leaders and progressive thinking to change with the times.

Shula said that the humanities encourage independent thinking, and even subversion against the status quo where change is desirable.  With logical thinkers, revolutions should be logical ones, not emotional ones.

There was discussion that the fast developing economies like China tends to emphasize technical graduates which fulfills the needs of developing technology for a growing economy.  However, this is at the cost of ignoring the bigger picture of social change and the flexible thinking that is required to handle this social sea change.

Mano not only supports the importance of the humanities but also think that the traditional university model of teaching the humanities may be becoming somewhat dated and that there should be other avenues such as web based discussions that make the humanities more available without the dedicated cost and time required of the traditional undergraduate BA program.

More education, whether the humanities or technical education is always a good thing.  I think the humanities suffers from being general.  Most high school graduates and their parents, when faced with a choice of undergraduate studies and the time and cost required, will find it difficult to choose a general course of studies that do not lead to definitely better choice of careers versus career possibilities from a professional degree.

The humanities also suffers from being general in that it is abused by students who only want to pass and do the minimum required. While the dedicated can indeed get a lot out of a BA, others can breeze through it compared to the technical degrees.  Employers no longer see a BA as and indication of an independent thinker and the value of a BA for starting a career is much diminished than decades ago.

To me, the university undergraduate program is the transition from the information gathering stage at high school to the independent research in graduate school.  It is the stage when black and white is filled with shades of grey, and not every situation has a definite "right" answer.  Self learning gradually replaces force fed information.

While it is true that the humanities focuses on the bigger broader issues, the technical and business schools also encourage independent thinking.  It is the mechanical engineer that creates the car that the mechanic services and the electrical engineer that dreams up the new circuit for the latest gadget.  The business graduate that is encourage to apply business principles to all kinds of different business.

It is true that technical graduate can benefit from more humanities training than their current minimum of one per semester. It will further lift their minds from the narrow focus at hand to look more at philosophy, political systems, and history.

The same can be said about the humanities student.  They should take compulsory courses in science and mathematics so that they have the basic knowledge to make decent judgment about technology like nuclear power, analytical tools like statistics, and life sciences like biology to be a more rounded knowledgeable person.

Here, we have some hard choices to make - should we have doctors and engineers take more humanities which means that they have to drop some of their other technical courses in their already heavy academic schedule?  Would we rather have a more socially minded but less medically trained doctor looking after our health?

Or should we lengthen the already long medical, engineering and other professional training by another year to incorporate the humanities and further increase the cost of training our professionals and thereby increase the cost of their services?

Compare this with making basic science and mathematics compulsory training for humanities students that end up being our politicians and social leaders,  I think making basic science and math mandatory for BA graduates is long overdue.

Aesthetics, determining eye sore versus eye appeal

We had an interesting discussion on judging aesthetics last night.

The question I posed was how do we settle disputes on questions of what is ugly versus what is good looking.

This often shows up in neighborhood building development with the individual home owner exerting his property rights versus the neighbors wanting to protect their real estate value against some house among them that may not be good looking (different size, shape, color, or state of maintenance).

Should these judgments be made by the home owner, rule of majority in the neighborhood, experts, or some arbitration process?

Mano said that so long as there is a legitimate process with hearings and appeals, the home owner entered the neighborhood with the tacit agreement to live with these legitimate processes of the neighborhood. That there is no better way.  This addresses the process but to me does not deal with the subjective nature of aesthetics.

Shula said that we should approach this from the "do no harm" principle as well as the tolerance principle.  The eye sore is not doing any physical harm to the neighbors but these days we also have to consider psychological distress which again becomes subjective and difficult to determine.  The tolerance angle brings in the tension of how hard it is for the perceiver of the eye sore to live with the situation versus how much pleasure the building owner gets.

Shula also brought in the parallel case of the lady who pushed for equal rights to go topless in public when she wanted to. Clearly she is not doing harm to others other than hurting their sensibilities or sense of decency.  How to balance her individual freedom versus other people's tolerance?

The example of using local decency standards to judge whether something is pornographic and the usual subjective "you know it is porn when you see it"  versus art comes to mind.

Because we cannot do a case by case evaluation of whether a particular topless woman is an eye sore or a beautiful sight, logic dictates that we either let all women have their equal right with men to go topless or else forbid men to go topless either.

Is this the right conclusion or are we avoiding the issue?  A case of logic not always providing the best answer?

Rafi said for subjective evaluations such as aesthetics, we can have a committee approach with the committee consisting of experts as well as regular citizens.  We should have experts as they have more exposure and background knowledge on the subject than the common person.  At the same time, the normal citizen should have input to offset the bias of experts on something so subjective.

This is not any easier by the fact that our taste and sense of aesthetics also change with time and cultural background.  Therefore, different committees can come up with different conclusions.

Of course, the make up of the committee will also change the conclusion.

We are again at the point where we can have a procedure to legitimize the settlement of a disagreement.  The procedure is not as good as we would like but it is the best that we can do on subjective matters.

The discussion also moved to the influence of developers imposing big commercial or dense residential development on an existing neighborhood through powerful lobbying at city hall.  The local resident may feel powerless to act against such powerful interests.

While this is the typical reaction from the standpoint of the existing residents in the neighborhood,  is it not true that the developers represent the interest of future residents for the area?  These developers are only powerful and influential because they anticipate lots of buyers for the property they develop and is representing the interests of these buyers.  The developer that makes the wrong judgment results in properties that are not sold or leased profitably and do not stay being a successful developer.

In other words, the developers are fighting the "not in my backyard" syndrome where existing neighborhoods prevent future residents from increase the density of the area.  How do we balance the interest of these two groups?

Another interesting discussion that shows the complexity of the society we live in.  How we have to question our firm believe in beauty and disgust when others are involved and that the "big" developer may be speaking for a whole lot of other "little" guys with no say. No answers but a bit more perspective.

What may we regret when we die?

On Wednesday, we had a lively discussion about regrets, bucket lists, and dying.

The discussion started with a continuation of the Aesop fable characters of the grasshopper and the ant, self indulgence for the now versus the diligent saving for the future.

The fable is from the view point of the saver, pointing out the frivolousness of enjoying the moment. Therefore it is bias from that perspective.

However, Mano pointed out that life is about "self regarding" as well as regard for others. After living a life of self regarding, it is possible for one at the later years in life to realize that one should also have regard for others and therefore feel regret about not living life well before.

In other words, one possible source of regret in later life is to have a change in how one values one's life resulting in regret for one's prvius actions and choices up to then.

I wonder why we cannot see this new change in value as an improvement, while late in life, it is still something to be celebrated rather than to regret what has past and cannot be changed. Better late than never, the prodigy son is still better than the continuing sinner. In fact, according to the Jesus, it is even better than the son that have been virtuous all along!

Shula had a good distinction between regret and remorse in that remorse involve lapses in moral character while regret includes choosing a wrong turn and other non moral decisions as well.

Bruce mentioned that of the recent death events that he know, the persons involved did not feel regret about their lives but were grateful for their life experiences and were more into celebrating their lives, saying goodbyes to their friends and relatives.

This is reassuring. Perhaps we just worry too much and that life has a way of changing our perspective in our later years, preparing us for the inevitable ending.

There was also discussion about the bucket list. This is made famous by the movie about two people who were told that that they have limited time to live and they then make a list of things to do before they "kick the bucket".

Mano thinks this reflects the current consumer commodity aspect of society and is just another incentive to consume, this time, before we die.

The concept of the bucket list seems sensible from the standpoint of the efficiency expert and organizational champion. If we want to achieve something, we should make a list, prioritize it, and systematically go down the list, checking off the accomplishments as we go.

What a sense of achievement we will have checking it off, knowing that we are maximizing the time we have and effectively conquering the impssible unknown of how much time we will have to do it. We would have done the best that we can. How can we do any better?

Yet, I see three possible outcomes.

One, we don't manage to finish the list before we die. While this is almost expected, we will not be able to fend off feeling that if we only have a little more time, we can do that much more. This may not be regret, it is wishing for more which is not much better.

Two, we finish the list before we die. We ought to be happy that we live long enough to do it all. But we will likely think that we were not ambitious enough when compiling the list? That we should amend the list until we run out of time with an unfinished, amended, list?

Three, organizing something has a way of taking over. Checking the list off can take us away from savoring the experience itself. The satisfaction of accomplishing and maximizing is good but comes at the price of diverting one's experience of life. Do we not all know someone who is more concerned about winning than enjoying the game?

What to do?

At this point, I would still go with seeing life as a journey rather than a destination. Enjoy what we have, be content, let new events bring joy and learning experiences to us.

Of course, we can always change our mind!