Saturday 29 January 2011

Mass Inadvertent Eavesdroping

TV/Radio people will sometimes, unintentionally, leave their mikes on. When this happens, the general public may well hear comments that are thought by the speaker to be off-the-cuff, frivolous and simply for the amusement of  themselves and their immediate companion. The general public will then, albeit inadvertently, be eavesdropping. Most of us say silly, off-the-cuff, frivolous stuff when we believe that our remarks are not for general consumption. We don't weigh our words that carefully in these circumstances and most of us would be embarrassed to find our 'private' banter out there for all to hear.

The comments may well tell us something about the speaker but we have the common sense to nuance this with the knowledge that he/she did not know they were broadcasting to the world. On balance, this would deserve a dressing-down, a warning, some tips on how to remember to turn the mike off and a lecture on the stupidity of prejudice. But sacking? 'Ave a word wiv y'self.

Friday 28 January 2011

Information: who do we trust to provide it?

Our world is full of vitally important issues that are beyond our personal experience and expertise. For example: Is global-warming man-made? Is cannabis a poison or a medicine? Will GM food harm us or will it help us to 'feed the world'? These are important questions for all of us and our descendants. Some such questions may affect whether or not we even have descendants. So who can you turn to for reasoned, objective guidance on such issues?

Where do most of us get such information now? The newspapers? TV programmes? The Internet? Politicians? The pub? We all know that the media and politicians are primarily interested in selling papers, raking in advertising revenue and getting elected. Everyone seems to have an angle. So: where to turn?

Firstly, you've got to accept that there is no such thing as a 100% objective opinion. Opinions come from human-beings and, even when we aren't motivated by greed and status, all of us want to be considered clever, wise, fair, correct, tough or some combination of these epithets. Some distortion is inevitable and, in the final analysis, there will always be a need for personal evaluation. However, all things considered, I suggest that we look to science and scientists for guidance. Why? Because, to date, science has been the most successful and reliable discipline in explaining the universe and our place in it. Because scientists leave no stone unturned in testing the theories of their peers. And because most academic scientists are motivated mainly by a desire to establish truths.

So what do the majority of scientists say about the issues I have raised above? Easily stated. Global warming is happening and we are making a significant contribution ourselves. Cannabis is a very useful medicine but can be harmful if used to excess. There is nothing to fear from GM food and, once it is accepted, it will indeed help us to feed the world.

Stop believing the sensational scare stories pedalled by the mass media and the self-serving opinions of the politicians. Look to the evidence and the scientists and, always, finkabowdit!

Monday 24 January 2011

The General Theory of Genetic Priming

I suggest that:-


All living things, both animals and plants, are genetically primed to manifest behaviour that has been adaptive for their species.


Some adaptive behaviour, and this applies to animal neonates in particular, may be directly coded into the genome and may be manifested without an environmental trigger. These are usually called instincts. An example would be the rooting behaviour of mammalian neonates. An alternative interpretation of this rooting behaviour would be that it is genetically primed and triggered by the neonate sensing the breast. Most adaptive behaviours are indeed primed and need to be environmentally triggered. An example would be language in humans.

Since there are invariably multiple genetically primed behaviours, involving overlapping sets of genes, the gene variants primed for any particular adaptive behaviour will tend to be suboptimal for that behaviour but optimal for the complete set of adaptive behaviours and any other genetically mediated faculties that involve that set of gene variants.

Genetic priming can be proved deductively as follows. Any new adaptive behaviour in generation n will be positively associated with particular sets of gene variants. Those variants will be relatively over-represented in the following generation (n+1) due to the positive association. This will mean that the adaptive behaviour will increase in frequency in the same generation. This will lead to those same sets of gene variants increasing in frequency in generation (n+2). This process will continue over evolutionary time until all members of the species have the set of gene variants that are positively associated with the adaptive behaviour which will leave them primed to manifest that behaviour.

A few additional examples of genetic priming: birds are genetically primed to build nests, plants are genetically primed to grow toward sunlight and humans are primed for religiosity.

Monday 17 January 2011

Age Discrimination at Work

Miriam was Moses's sister. Miriam O'Reilly sounds like an appropriate name for the unexpected daughter when Patrick O'Reilly got Becky Cohen into trouble. However, it is also the name of the freelance presenter that was 'let-go' by the BBC when 'Countryfile' was moved to a prime-time slot. Miriam accused the BBC of ageism and won her case at a recent employment tribunal. I will assume that the existing law on age discrimination was justly applied in this instance but did she have a case according to the law of common-sense?

Employers sometimes judge that particular jobs are best filled by people of a particular gender, in a particular age-range. Sometimes older, sometimes younger. Older males are often selected by B&Q to give advice to customers attempting a bit of DIY. Younger, attractive females are usually selected to advise on the perfume counters of Department Stores. Seems reasonable to me. Horses for courses. If the BBC considered that a younger woman should front-up 'Countryfile', why need the Law interfere? Remember that Miriam works as a self-employed, freelance presenter. Come on - ave a word wiv y'self - shouldn't our discrimination laws obey the overriding law of common-sense?

Friday 14 January 2011

'Genetic Priming' in a Nut-Shell

In 1920, John B Watson of Johns Hopkins University, showed that we are born with the ability to feel fear. These days his experiments with infants would be considered unethical and could not be conducted. Anyway, he found that although a baby will show fear of a loud noise, it will not show fear of a close naked flame until it is brought close enough to be uncomfortably hot. A baby is able to feel the 'fear emotion' but fear will only be manifested once the danger source is physically experienced. Anticipation of danger will only manifest fear once the danger has been associated with an unpleasant physical outcome. I suspect that a similar pattern applies to all the emotions. The capacity to have them is innate; the manifestation is associated with experience. Initially pleasant/unpleasant physical experience and, later, anticipated physical experience. The role of emotion is to guide behaviour. It also signals our feelings to others. It evolved simply because it was 'adaptive' ie, it was conducive to survival and eventual procreation.

I believe that a pattern similar to the one I describe above applies to adaptive behavioural characteristics such as; language, ethics, intelligence, religious belief, morality and conscientiousness. I have suggested that the human genome has been 'primed' into gene-variants that support/ encourage these adaptive behaviours but that their precise nature and particular manifestation is dependent on the 'triggers' that are experienced by  developing children. They are born with the pre-dispositions but life-experience determines the detail.

This is my 'Genetic Priming' theory in a nut-shell. In a more technical paper available on the Internet at http://tinyurl.com/l6bure I explain how this priming has occurred over evolutionary time.

Thursday 13 January 2011

How to Discuss a Serious Subject 'Nicely'

Following the issue raised in my last post re. discussing serious subjects, here are my suggestions:-

1. Don't pontificate; put your view forward but make it clear that you are always open-minded. You only seek the truth. You are not claiming that you are completely correct.

2. Listen carefully to your companion; avoid interrupting; let her/him finish; think about her/his point.

3. Stay pleasant.

4. Pick out any aspect of your companion's position with which you agree and say so.

5. If your companion's point appears to be ambiguous or unclear, calmly seek clarification.

6. Present the evidence for your position as objectively as you can.

7. If you can think of evidence or an argument that supports your companion's position, state it.

8. If you can think of evidence or an argument that challenges your companion's position, state it neutrally and without triumph.

9. Only address the issue. Never, never refer to the any perceived negative characteristics of your companion. This would be called an ad hominem and is strictly a 'no, no'.

10. Remember that any particular point of view is rarely universally true without qualification.

11. If appropriate, build on your companion's position or use her/his points to build on or modify your own position.

12. At the end of the conversation try to state a position on which you are both agreed. As part of this, you may well need to agree to disagree on particular points

I think that children should be taught to follow these philosophical principles - or something similar - as soon as they are old enough to understand them. I regard them as an essential part of a well-rounded education. They are an excellent foundation for an understanding of the 'Scientific Method' that is foundational to all the progress we have made in science and technology. I would also claim that these principles are a useful personal methodology for thinking about many received opinions; social, political, medical, scientific, religious or existential.

Serious issues -- Do we avoid 'em?

What do people talk about? You have coffee with a friend; what do you discuss? Do we tend to steer clear of serious, potentially controversial, issues? Talk about family/ friends, holidays, health, tv, celebs. -- OK; politics, social issues, religion -- no way!?

Are we able to discuss serious issues without risking falling-out? Do we have the ability to debate an issue without the risk that the discussion will become somewhat acrimonious? I believe that the general answer to these questions is "no". Most people don't have this ability and even if you believe that you do have it, you will often doubt whether your companion also has it and you don't want to take the risk.

Therefore we rarely get to test our, unspoken, views on such subjects against alternatives. Since we aren't used to expressing and defending our views, our ability to do so decays; thus making us even more reluctant to discuss these issues. Lack of this skill results in our frustration when we do try to express a view; thus making it more likely that any exchange with our friend will become fraught and ad hominem.  Our opinions get stuck in the mire of our own prejudices and we selectively chose only evidence that supports our moribund views. Sometimes these issues get pushed to the back of our consciousness and we aren't even sure  what our opinion is!

Isn't that a pity? All because we haven't been taught how to debate an issue without getting too attached to our own preconceptions. What can we do about it? I'll try to address this in my next post. Try to control your excitement folks.

Wednesday 12 January 2011

Punishment and Community Service

Should our courts be imprisoning those that have been found guilty of non-violent offences? Should we not make more use of the 'community service' option in such cases? For example, is it just and sensible to be sending (former) MPs to prison for fiddling their expenses? Remember that the experience will have already ruined their political career and brought them considerable shame.

I think not. I believe that prison should only be used for violent offences. A long spell of hard-work serving the community would serve society better that a costly, probably unproductive, sojourn in clink. Of course, you may well disagree if you believe that we need to inflict retribution on all offenders; to hurt them, make them pay, for the wrong they have done. But it seems to me that it is more important that justice operates exclusively in the best interests of society. In the case of the MPs, a long spell of community service would be potentially valuable to society and provide an opportunity for the people concerned to re-earn the respect of their fellow citizens. Remember also that prison inflicts retribution on the offender's family who may well be wholly innocent.

Tuesday 11 January 2011

A Personal Legacy?

Quite recently I used Internet-based information to trace my paternal ancestors. I found this very rewarding and was able to go back as far as my great-great-great-great grandfather Lewis Lyons born in East-London in1747. I also discovered that my great-great-grandfather and Lewis's grandson, John Lyons, was killed in a street accident just off the Mile-End Road. He was run over by a horse-drawn van carrying ginger-beer. Fascinating. Tragic.

How I wish I knew more about them; how they lived, how they looked and what they thought. It occurs to me that if I keep up this blog and, assuming it continues to be supported by Google or its successors, then it will provide a reasonable picture of how John Jacob Lyons (b.1938) thought about the world around him. I can only hope that this may be of interest to someone; possibly someone interested in their own genealogy and reading these, my words, at some future time.

Sexual Tension in Multi-Cultural Cities

There have apparently been recent instances of groups of young Asian men targeting young, predominantly white, girls for sexual grooming. Jack Straw has suggested that some Asian men regard some young white girls as " -- easy meat". The emotive language is unsubstantiated, unnecessary and tends to distort rational discussion Jack. However, it has got our attention and I suspect that this was the intention. If this kind of thing is indeed happening in our cities, are we surprised?

Young men, whatever their cultural background, are highly sexually motivated. Particularly in the Islamic faith, fertile females are strongly encouraged to dress to hide their sexual allure and to stay virginal prior to marriage. In many parts of the UK this cultural behaviour exists side-by-side with a non-Islamic culture that tends to allow/encourage considerable freedom of dress and sexual behaviour for young girls. Also, there is a tendency for young girls to underestimate the sexual drive experienced by young men. Now finkabowdit; what do you expect to happen?

What can we do on the non-Islamic side of this situation in order to reduce the tension? This is a suitable subject for a PhD thesis rather than a blog-entry. However, I would suggest that we might encourage our young females to modify their sexual display. It is all too commonly blatant, vulgar, cheap and, often unbeknown to the girls themselves, provocative to the baser instincts produced by the testosterone rush of young male-hood.

Thursday 6 January 2011

Votes for "Thugs"?

After pressure from 'Europe', the vote is to be restored for some UK prisoners incarcerated for violent crimes. The AOL headline says "Anger as Jailed Thugs given Vote". The shadow Justice Secretary, Sadiq Khan, says that " ---- this is a slap in the face for victims". Let's finkabowdit.

What is the societal purpose of incarceration in relation to crimes of violence? Well, the punishment of 'deprivation of spacial freedom' deters others from committing similar offences doesn't it? While in prison the offender certainly can't re-offend and we may be able to positively influence his/her future behaviour. Anything else? Does it also have the desirable effect that the perpetrator's victim(s) feel vindicated and that society recognises that they were wronged? Yes, I think that's right too. But none of these 'good' effects necessitate that we make the offender a 'non-person' as well as depriving them of their spacial freedom. As an adult UK citizen they should still have a democratic right to participate in the election of their representatives. If we ask them to obey the law it would be wrong to deprive them of their only means of influencing the laws that will still apply after they have served their sentence.

This isn't a 'slap in the face for victims' it is a welcome improvement to our unwritten 'social contract'.