Mulan's NCEA results

The NCEA school exam results came through a few days ago.  We looked eagerly at Mulan's numbers.

And well done her!

As always, as with any on-the-day performance, be it athletics, music, dance or academics, there were some bits where Mulan performed smoothly, while other bits were a little under what we know she can sometimes do.  It's a snapshot in time, not an overall judgement.  Important, interesting and useful, but only in its context.

Having said that, overall it was a very satisfying result and something to be proud of.  I think it appropriately reflects what Mulan put into it -- her time, effort, seriousness, diligence, and, most importantly, investment-balance with the various other life areas in which Mulan is involved.  She put time and effort into her academic studies, but it didn't take over from also equally putting time and effort into her dance, music and athletics, to also achieve well in those.

So, Mulan passed NCEA 1 with excellence endorsement.

She got excellence endorsements in Maths, Science and Music, while she got merit endorsements in English, Accounting and PE.

She passed all 121 credits she sat, with 79 at excellence level and 42 at merit level.

Along with doing NCEA level 1, in her extension English class she sat a level 2 unit.  We were delighted that she passed this with merit, as in some of her earlier practices she hadn't done quite so well.

On the other hand, she didn't do quite so well in one of her Accounting units, getting merit rather than excellence.  Even though the rest of her Accounting was all excellence, with the bad luck of the points calculation system this dropped her down to merit endorsement overall in Accounting.  A little sad after she did so well in her school Accounting results, but that's the idiosyncratic nature of on-the-day performances.

Well done Mulan.  Super proud of her!

Book review: Two excellent books

I've just finished reading two excellent books.  Both are highly recommended.

The first one happened because at the moment Mulan is writing an essay for school.  She has to choose four works that are connected by a single theme, so I was enlisted to give her reading suggestions.

With works and theme completely open, Mulan had a hard time narrowing her choices.  First up, she chose Dune as her first book (she simply likes the book).  She then needed a theme, and eventually settled on fictional works in which the author has a political intent.

Over the school holidays, while we were Covid-isolating, I scanned our home bookshelves and gave Mulan:

• Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card
• Animal Farm, by George Orwell
• The Plague, by Albert Camus
• Erewhon, by Samuel Butler
• Looking Backward, by Edward Bellamy
• and a little later, Sophie's World, by Jostein Gaarder

(She had already read a couple of these, and she read the others during our family lockdown.)

Why did I give Sophie's World later?  Because I wanted to read it first!  While I'd heard great things about it, I'd never got around to reading it.

What stands out for me is that it's a very cleverly written book.

First up, Gaarder attempts to explain the history of Western thought, from the pre-Socratics through to the existentialists, to teenagers!

Yeah, how many teens are going to want to read a textbook on Parmenides, Aquinas, Hegel, Sartre and so on?!

So, the first clever bit is that we meet soon-to-be-15-year-old Sophie, who starts getting mysterious letters from an unknown person.

The letter-writer turns out to be a philosophy teacher, who posts mini-lectures to Sophie, and we get interested in the dryer details of Plato, Aristotle and so on because Sophie gets interested in them.  We also have the mystery of who this teacher really is and how/why he is writing to Sophie.

But just as we're getting comfortable in Sophie's world, and getting to know the teacher, Alberto, we are introduced to another almost-15-year-old, Hilde, and her father who works for the UN in Lebanon.  But there's definitely weird, spooky stuff happening in Sophie's world.

By halfway through the book our philosophy lessons have moved through the ages and we're dealing with issues such as how-much-can-we-really-know and what-is-ultimate-reality-really-like in Descartes, Kant, Berkeley, and so on.

And then we get to the first of the two main twists in the story.  Without giving too much away, what we have in places is a book within a book, with the author teaching his readers via another author teaching his reader via another author teaching his reader.

What I especially like is how Gaarder is able to clearly explain the challenging ideas of these brilliant historical people in ways that can connect with normal life.  A big part of the story is the connection between the mini-lectures and Sophie's experiences in her world.  The ideas are made real to the reader (while at the same time challenging the reader to think about what is really real!).

If I was to be picky I might occasionally critique Gaarder's understanding of some of the ideas, what the historical writers were really saying, and which historical writers should be covered.

But at heart, this is an introductory book for complete beginners.  Of necessity it's sometimes going to be cartoon versions of the complex ideas.  But the historical names are the standard ones that all undergraduate philosophy students should be comfortably familiar with.  For any teens who like this kind of stuff the book will give them a head start before they enter university.

Most importantly though, this book is essential reading for all teens, to help them enter, and become participants in, that long conversation of human thinking.

---

The second book I've just finished reading is Jerry Coyne's Why Evolution is True, which I borrowed from the local library.

Reminiscing alert: I distinctly remember, back when I was 12, a conversation I had with a school friend.

I'd grown up in a moderately conservative Christian family, and it was simply part of my unquestioned worldview that God created the world from nothing.  I'd never even considered any other possibility than that he'd formed the plants and animals and us at some unspecified time in the past.

But somehow, and in some way, by the time I was 12 I'd heard about evolution, that humans had evolved from other animals rather than being created.  To me at the time it was a weird and curious new idea, so I mentioned it to my friend one day.  He just looked at me like "yeah, of course."

His reaction made a lasting impression, because his apparent "of course evolution" made me reflect on my earlier "of course creation."  How is it that we can have opposite reactions when we both live in the same world and see the same things?

A sizable chunk of the next 15 years of thought for me was reconciling this and reorienting my worldview to match the best evidence.  It was about spending time listening to experts.

Coyne, as a biologist, is one of those experts.  His 2009 book is an excellent summary of the evidence.

In multiple ways, with innumerable examples, Coyne explains how the physical evidence around us perfectly fits the theory of evolution by natural selection.  In fact it fits so perfectly that for practical purposes we can call it true, and we can treat it as true to the same extent that we can treat atoms, gravity and germs as true.  Its predictive and explanatory power has been extremely successful.

He also explains why the physical evidence does not fit creationism.  A big part of this is showing how biological structures are often imperfect and non-ideal make-do add-ons and adaptations of existing structures.  In multiple ways they are not what we would expect to see if biological creatures were made fresh from nothing.  Instead, they're exactly what we'd expect to see if creatures evolved.

Coyne plausibly replies to creationist objections against evolution, showing how the objections fail to disprove evolution.

All of this is written in a very readable way for non-experts like myself.  It was an enjoyable read, with plenty of examples well-picked to fit the clear and explicitly labeled argumentative structure.

I'd picked this book to read, in part because I occasionally browse Coyne's blog, but also because P Z Myers, who is also a biologist, recently again recommended Coyne's book.  (Here's Myers' review back in 2008.)

What Coyne's book reinforced for me is that the world around us shows abundantly that the only way creationism could be true is if God was a malicious trickster-god.  Firstly, if God exists he must have intentionally set things up to try to fool us with all the evolutionary evidence, and secondly he must have intentionally set things up to cause lots of unnecessary pain and suffering in his creation.  In the very unlikely event that a personal creator-God exists, his creation shows us that he's in no way worthy of worship.

Again, I'd recommend this book for all teens and up, and especially those who are interested in science and religion but prefer to get their facts right.

Today's lunchtime YouTube viewing

As usual, I watched YouTube while eating lunch today.

It was a good one.  I highly recommend Abigail Thorn's new Vaccines and Freedom video:

There's a little bit of overlap with what I said in my Covid and Freedom post back in November (that's to be expected with anyone who has studied the topic from a philosophical perspective).  Again, trust, freedom and harms are central issues.  But Abigail gives more detail, and much more style.

As she says in reply to one of the comments, she deliberately tries to make the learning non-competitive.  In my opinion, that's philosophy at its best, and what we should all be aiming for.

HASCA and Covid

HASCA is the local homeschooling organisation that organises and provides a centre for sport and cultural activities for homeschoolers on the North Shore (Auckland).

In some cases, it's the only place that local homeschoolers can access activities (as otherwise it's via the schools).

Today, as HASCA members, we received an email from HASCA leadership:

Re: Temporary Hibernation

14/12/21

Dear HASCA members and friends,

We have been silent throughout lockdown and the subsequent change from the Alert Level System to the Covid Protection Framework (CPF) as, 1) we have basically been unable to operate, and 2) we have wanted to watch and wait and make a considered decision on how HASCA will move forward under the new mandates.

As well as the government’s directives, our decisions have been influenced by the organisations we partner with - the sports organisations, programme providers, and the venues we hire and utilise to bring our classes and programmes to our home-schooling community. Unfortunately, many are either under government mandate themselves, or have their own in-house mandates which will impact on HASCA’s operations and our ability to provide any sort of non-discriminatory programme for the immediate future.

HASCA strives to be an inclusive organisation that brings people together, connects and supports, and “creates community” for all home educating families. Therefore, segregating or excluding participation based on vaccine status is not something we feel comfortable adopting, and is not where our hearts are placed. Our goal has always been to bring people together, not to divide. We do not want to operate any of what we previously offered if participation and inclusion is based on a vaccine status or the presence of a vaccine-pass. It is for this reason that the HASCA committee has decided that HASCA and all activities operating under our umbrella will hibernate for the foreseeable future. This has been a difficult decision for us, but we simply cannot run programmes knowing we must exclude select families.

[...]

We think they've got this badly wrong.  They make it sound like vaccinations are mostly meaningless, having no significant impact on the health and safety of others who we might interact with.  We have replied to them as follows:

Hi HASCA leadership,

 

As long-term HASCA members we respectfully disagree with this HASCA decision.  We hope that you will reconsider.

 

It's sad that it's the kids who will be the losers in this HASCA decision.  Something is better than nothing for homeschooled children; for HASCA to remove this option for local families is wrong as in many cases this is the only place where local homeschooling children can participate.

 

There is no unfair discrimination in the vaccine pass mandates; it's about following the science, protecting the vulnerable, giving people free choices, then people accepting the consequences of their free choices.  Requiring vaccine passes when people gather in larger groups protects everyone by slowing down the transmission of a contagious disease that would otherwise overwhelm the hospitals.  In saying this, we accept the overwhelming majority opinion of the experts.  As homeschoolers, we aim to model good reasoning to our children.

 

We feel that as a vaccinated family we have done the right thing for the community, and it is not right that vaccinated families are now being penalised by HASCA, just because of the free choices of non-vaccinated families.

 

We assume this means that HASCA won't be organising the Athletics Day and Swimming Day in 2022.  But please do let us know if anything changes.

 

Glenn, Xiaoying, Mulan and Miya

Likely, next year our family would have done the HASCA Athletics and Swimming Days in term 1 (which we help organise), and Miya would have signed up for the HASCA netball team (terms 2 and 3).

UPDATE (17/12/2021): HASCA also posted a similar announcement to their Facebook page, to which I commented that we (our family) respectfully disagreed with their decision and linked to this blog for details.

To date there have been four responses.  Three other members commented on the Facebook announcement, thanking the HASCA committee for their work.  And HASCA leadership emailed me privately, letting me know that the HASCA committee unanimously agreed with the decision.  At no time so far has anyone responded to the substantive points.

I want to emphasise that everyone has been extremely polite and nice about it.  Everyone thanks each other and wishes each other all the best.  Once again, I have no doubt that everyone sees themselves as the good guys -- they believe they are doing the decent and right thing.  And for the most part they are.  Homeschoolers really are nice people, and we enjoy spending time with them.

But I also want to acknowledge that old saying -- the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

In this situation, HASCA leadership has made the decision to block access to education for local homeschooled children.  They can coat it with nice words, but the fact remains that they have made things worse for local homeschooled children.

The only reason they have given for this so far is that they think that the vaccine pass requirement for large group gatherings is unfairly discriminatory, and they don't want to exclude anyone.  So they'd rather exclude everyone.

It is fair enough if, individually, their families (committee members and the three Facebook commentators) choose to not participate until all families can participate -- that is their free right to freely choose for themselves.  (I understand that some families see HASCA as more about social gatherings.)

But it is wrong for HASCA leadership to deny other families the opportunity to make this free choice for themselves.  And it is wrong for HASCA leadership to reduce educational opportunities for children without providing alternatives.  As I see it, HASCA leadership has overstepped their duties by dictating (mistaken) morals to their members, while at the same time failing to uphold their more fundamental duty of providing educational opportunities to children that are otherwise only available to schooled children.

In my opinion, the correct thing for HASCA committee to do is to keep HASCA operating (for now), but acknowledge and accept the right for any HASCA families to not participate until they feel comfortable doing so.  This may mean a reduced leadership group, and committee members would be more than free to step aside for now.  It may also mean that HASCA would need to ask members to join the committee to continue to keep things running (I would consider it, if necessary); if they were unable to get the committee numbers then hibernating would be the right choice.

Given the (limited) feedback to date, there is a distinct possibility that a significant number of HASCA members are either (a) unable to participate because they have chosen to not vaccinate, or (b) unwilling to participate as they (mistakenly) see vaccine pass mandates as unfairly discriminatory.  If this is the case, then there is a distinct possibility that activity sign-up numbers would be too low to proceed anyway.  And so there is a distinct possibility that most (or all) HASCA activities would have to practically stop anyway due to insufficient numbers.   If this is the case, then so be it.

But HASCA leadership should have kept things going long enough to find this out first, one way or the other.  They should have opened it up to the members first, for the members to freely decide.  They should not have denied freedoms to their members.  And they should have thought more about the children who are missing out because of their decision to stop offering activities.

Covid and freedom

I've been unsure about whether to write this post.

I write this blog for two main reasons.  (a) To record our family's homeschool/life journey; we enjoy looking back at what we've done over the years.  And (b) when I come across interesting ideas, writing them down helps me with trying to understand them better.

I'm not sure this topic fits either reason.  To be blunt, I find the topic not especially challenging or interesting.  On the other hand, it is kinda topical.  So here goes.

I'll start by saying I'm a liberal.  By this, I just mean that liberal has to do with liberty which has to do with freedom.  In other words, a liberal thinks that freedom is very important.  (Yeah, I know that USers use words in weird ways, and for them "liberal" is either a term of abuse or praise, depending on their political affiliation.  But I'm going to ignore that stuff.)

So, for me, I take the view that the default is that people should be allowed to do whatever they want, whenever they want.  They should have their freedoms.

However, in the real world people bump up against each other in all sorts of ways.  We're a society, a community, after all.  It's practically impossible for everyone to have complete freedoms, because sometimes what I want and what you want conflict.  Only hermits don't have that problem.

So, in the real world we have to qualify things.  We can't have complete freedoms.  Maybe our slightly more nuanced liberal statement is that people should be allowed to do whatever they want unless it harms others.  When it harms others, then we need to figure out who has the right of way, and which freedoms it's better to restrict.

Speaking of right of ways, road rules are a good example.  We could have complete freedom on the road, with no road rules.  Everyone driving their own way, with no speed limits and no red light stopping requirements.  But we recognise that, while it would be fun to be free to drive at 200km/h, the downsides outweigh the upsides.  Besides the likelihood of dying or being injured, it would also take us longer to get where we want to go.  There'd be plenty of traffic jams slowing us down.

So, we agree to restrict our roading freedoms, because overall it's better for each of us.  Road rules reduce harms to us.

The road rules example introduces us to a curious fact about freedoms -- they come in different types.  Sometimes reducing one sort of freedom simultaneously increases another sort of freedom.  When we reduce our freedom to drive however we want by introducing road rules, we also increase our freedom to get where we want to go faster and with less chance of being killed.

We can call these two types of freedoms negative freedom and positive freedom.

Negative freedom is the absence of control by others (it's called negative because it's the absence of something -- barrier, constraint, interference).  Road rules reduce our negative freedom because they control our driving behaviours.  Positive freedom is the ability to do something (it's called positive because it requires something extra).  Road rules increase our positive freedom because they manage traffic flow to enable us to go where we want to go faster and safer.

Which type of freedom is more valuable?  Is it more important to not be told what to do, or is is more important to be able to do stuff?

It seems to me that in the road rules case, being able to go where we want faster and safer is far more important than being able to drive however I want on the road.  In this case the positive freedoms are more important than the negative freedoms, and if we can't have both then let's have road rules that allow us to get where we want to go.

So, we can argue that road rules actually increase our overall freedom, not reduce it, because some freedoms are more valuable than others.

So, there are two things to remember.  (1) There is no such thing as complete freedom, and in any society we have to have some restrictions on our freedom.  And (2) reducing some freedoms sometimes increases other freedoms, which can be more important.

Which brings us to Covid.

At the moment a small percentage of people are protesting their loss of freedoms.  Are they right?

Quite clearly, Covid lockdowns, mask requirements, vaccine passport mandates, etc reduce our negative freedoms.  They control our behaviours.

So, quite clearly we have lost some valuable freedoms.

If we're a liberal, as I am, then we need to have a good reason for justifying this.  The default is freedom, after all.

As with the road rules example, there are two aspects to think about, which are both linked together.  (a) Is the action from this freedom causing significant harm to others, and so would restricting this freedom reduce these harms?  And (b) are there more valuable positive freedoms associated with the negative freedoms, such that reducing the negative freedoms increases the positive freedoms?

In the same way that road rules manage traffic flow and so make things overall better for us, do Covid rules manage contagious disease flow and so make things overall better for us?  (Of course, we want faster traffic flow and slower disease flow.)

And this is where I say I don't know!

To answer this question we need to know certain empirical facts about the world, and we need to have certain skills and tools to analyse the facts properly.

While I hung out at university for 15 years, I never got around to studying epidemiology.  And while I got an A in my first year undergraduate stats course, and did a decent amount of social science, I'm not a statistical population modeler.  

I don't have the expertise to make an informed decision on this.  My years of study on other subjects don't give me the automatic right to opine on this issue.  If I did I would be arrogant.

(My rough opinion is that I could only respectably start to have a decently informed opinion on it after maybe about five-ish years of fulltime study on the specific subject matter, in a community of others, and under the tutorage of subject-experienced people.  Any less than that, and I wouldn't entirely trust myself.)

But if I don't know, then (assuming I should have an opinion on this; on some matters I really don't need to have an opinion) I've got to trust someone else on this.  To act in the world (protest or not?), I need to trust someone.

Unfortunately, no one is perfect.  So who should I trust?

This is where things get messy and complicated.

To tidy things a little, we could try to make a list of the sorts of qualities we might look for, such as:

• More than one person -- the more the better
• These people should be in communication with each other, explicitly interacting on specific points at issue -- they should be a community
• Each of these people should be working on the specific subject area fulltime, and should have been working on it fulltime for many years (ideally decades)
• These people should be publicly publishing their work, with oversight and constant checks, with replies, to minimise the chance that their publications have errors
• Their writings are being accepted in multiple reliable publications
• They should ideally be from as many places as possible, internationally located, with different ethnicities and genders 
• These people should have minimal conflicts of interest -- perhaps a personal history of working quietly in their field, without apparent political ambitions, before Covid happened and gave world-attention to their field of study

Then we could look at what they're saying, such as:

• Their communications are explicitly interacting with as many participants as possible, responding to points and challenges in fair ways
• They should be clearly changing their views if it is warranted, according to the latest, best evidence
• Given that we are not experts, we are not in a position to deeply judge the content subject-matter of what they say, however (and depending on our own critical thinking skills), we can, to some extent, evaluate the structures of reasoning in what they say

There is something of an iterative process to our evaluation.  The more we read (and read widely), the more experience we gain at evaluating what they are saying.  But it's important not to overstep our abilities.  It's important not to start thinking that we are equally competent to evaluate the subject matter.  To do so would be arrogant.  At best we should be evaluating the people who are evaluating the subject matter.

Someone who does something all day every day for decades is going to know significantly more than someone who has read several dozen articles on it during lockdown.  We can be pretty sure that if I (as a casual lockdown reader) have encountered a possible objection to what they're saying, more than likely they are very aware of it, and know the back and forth on it very well.  We can probably trust their conclusion; we shouldn't assume their conclusion is ignorant of our objection.

I hope it's clear that I don't think it should be an equal democracy.  Voting (on matters like this; not on everything) should be weighted according to how much individuals satisfy the sorts of criteria above.  On Covid matters, my vote should be close to zero.

Finally, once we have got a sense of who we think the expert community might be, we look to see if there is consensus among them.  There should be clear near-100% agreement on the solid, central issues, and some disagreements (with reasons and back-and-forth discussions) on the more cutting-edge issues.

When deciding on particular issues, we look for clear majority views.  While the minority may be right, all things being equal it is more likely that the majority is right.  While we should keep the minority opinions live and not ignored, we should go with the majority opinion if action needs to be taken.

How do we apply this to the Covid situation?

This is where I'm a bit conservative.  After spending 15 years at university (and being married to a university academic who spent 25 years there), I got to know quite a few academics in quite a few different disciplines.  On the whole, I think they satisfy the criteria of being trustworthy experts in their subject fields.  Yes, they have their quirks, and yes they aren't perfect, but on balance I think they're most suited to giving expert advice in their specific fields (though not outside their fields).

I've read some of the contrary views.  To me, they don't live up to the standards I think we should set for evaluating who we should trust.  They are not trustworthy.

I say trust the university academics and other fulltime professionals -- the epidemiologists, the statistical modelers, and so on.  Go with their community majority opinion.  Anything else would be arrogance on my part.

The details of the balance to be had between vaccinations, masks, social distancing, lockdowns, contact tracing, etc, is something that they are best placed to decide on.  Just let them do it, and I will go along with what they advise.  I trust that they are just as keen to get out of lockdown and return to normal life as the rest of us.  I don't buy that they are incompetent or in it for the power, etc.

Sometimes what they say may sound counterintuitive or not immediately obvious to us non-experts.  But that's the nature of complex issues.  Just because us casual readers don't "get it" immediately (or at all) doesn't mean to say that it's wrong.

As best I understand it (as a lockdown reader), the current best evidence from the experts is that unvaccinated and unmasked people really do harm others when they interact in public.  But because these harms are probabilistic and less direct, it may be not so immediately obvious to us non-experts.

The best I can understand is that these experts are saying that if we don't (and didn't) restrict freedoms in certain ways, then there will be greater harms to us all.  Restricting negative freedoms increases positive freedoms -- it allows us to socially participate safely, with fewer deaths, and without our hospitals being overwhelmed.  The restrictions that are advised are specific and targeted, and are there because they are beneficial at this time.  I also don't buy the "slippery slope" objections, that these restrictions are the first steps to more oppressive political control. 

As I see it, the negative freedoms that protestors are fighting about are not as important as the positive freedoms that we gain from the Covid restrictions.  In my opinion, Covid restrictions actually increase (valuable) freedoms.  The protestors have got their reasoning wrong (though I sympathise with their itchiness to go out and do stuff, and can understand their dislike of being told what to do).

And so, as I see it, it shouldn't merely be a personal choice for each person.  Respecting other people's choices may sound like the decent thing to do.  And it is when it comes to many/most choices in life.  But when choices harm others, we should not be respecting those choices or tolerating them.  We should respect the people and be kind to them (of course), but at the same time work to stop the harms that they are unintentionally doing to others.

(And yes, this was fairly uninteresting for me to write.  A lot of words to get to an obvious conclusion.  But, as always, happy to discuss further specific details to do with freedom and trust, and happy to be corrected if I'm wrong.)

What is science?

A few months ago seven University of Auckland professors wrote an open letter which was published in the Listener magazine.  (Reposted here.)

I know two of those professors.  Robert Nola was one of my teachers in the philosophy department.  Amongst other things, I learnt philosophy of science from him, and I'm pretty sure that when I tutored undergraduate courses on theories of human nature he was lecturing them.

I'm also pretty sure Michael Corballis was one of my lecturers when I did my undergraduate psychology major.

But it seems that some people are strongly disagreeing with the letter.  And sadly it seems to have exploded into academic freedom issues that are now being noted overseas.

Sigh.  As far as I can see, (mostly) everyone means well in the disagreement, but those who are disagreeing with the letter are not understanding the conceptual distinctions.  Maybe I have missed the more reasoned responses (happy to be corrected on this), but as far as I can see, responses to the letter have strawpersoned the letter's reasoning.

Having been involved in some of Robert's philosophy of science courses, to me it is ironic that some people are questioning the letter's understanding of what science is.  More than most people, Robert knows theories of the nature of science, and I have yet to see any responses to the letter that even begin to approach the level of discussion I experienced 20 years ago.

Kyle Gibson tries to clarify things here.

Book review: Humankind

Rutger Bregman's latest book, Humankind: A hopeful history, is popular at the Auckland library right now.

I requested it months ago, have only just finished reading it in my allotted time, and I have to return it in a few minutes for the next person in the queue.

It's understandable.  Bregman's book is a great read, and I highly recommend it.

Last year I read Bregman's other well-known book, Utopia for Realists, and I reviewed it here.

Humankind continues in the same style as Utopia, as a super-easy-to-read yet thought-provoking and occasionally challenging evidence-based approach to modern political issues.

If we could sum up Bregman's thesis in two words, it would be "be kind."  He then spends 400 pages explaining why, with reasons from history and science.

But at heart, as I see it, Bregman's book is motivational and inspirational.  It's written in a style that creates an optimistic feel in the reader (or at least in me!), that doing the decent thing is okay.  Despite the occasional toxicity, despite the cynicism from naysayers, and despite the occasional loss, being kind is the most successful approach to life. 

Bregman dives into the human nature debate, coming out on the side of Rousseau et al that human nature is basically good, and that often civilisation corrupts our basic goodness.  He argues against the mainstream "cynical" view that humans are naturally selfish and individualistic, and that we need rules and order to minimise conflict.

But the issue is complicated, because human nature is complicated, and Bregman also discusses that.

Bregman argues that, contrary to the cynics, the real "realist" approach to life is to accept the solid evidence that humans are actually pretty decent and kind, for the most part.

Bregman goes through many of the psychological studies on this, such as the prison experiment, the shock machine, and the boys camp.  He also discusses William Golding's fictional story, Lord of the Flies (I discuss this here).  He points out the flaws in these studies and stories, and why they don't show that human nature is bad.  He gives a bit of evolutionary psychology and early-human anthropology.

Bregman then turns to some practical social and political implications for this positive view of human nature.

To sum it up very quickly, Bregman is a minimalist when it comes to management and political oversight.  He thinks that in many situations we would do better to have fewer controls and less managerial involvement.

He discusses the prison system, examining the evidence that shows that the "tough" approach simply doesn't work.  Stricter policing, harsher penalties, and stricter prisons result in higher economic and social costs for all concerned.

Similarly, he also discusses education, management, healthcare, etc, with plenty of case studies to show that a more hands-off management style works better and more efficiently.

Bregman, as a historian, has done his research on this, and he fills the back section of the book with plenty of references to studies and evidence.

We could quibble about some of the details, but I really don't want to.

This is because I think that the most important thing is creating the right mindset.  Bregman's book is about doing just that.  If we have a pessimistic outlook on life, and if we distrust those around us, then we create a society that reflects that.  But if we have an optimistic outlook on life, and assume the best of people, then we create a society that is better for us all.

(I have to say, one quibble I have is that Bregman assumes that Machiavelli was Machiavellian.  It's a shame that Bregman didn't read Erica Benner on this -- I reviewed Benner's book a few months ago.)

Right, time to dash off to the library and return the book!

Book review: The man who mistook his wife for a hat

Back at university, almost 25 years ago, one of my majors was psychology and in particular I took courses in neuroscience and abnormal psychology.

At some point in a class they must have mentioned Oliver Sacks, and out of interest at the time I read his 1985 book The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat.

Sacks, by the way, was a neurologist, and the book is a collection of chapters discussing some of his patents he got to know over the years.  The title of the book comes from the first chapter, and the man, Dr P, really did attempt to pick up his wife's head thinking that she was his hat.  He had visual agnosia which meant that he was unable to visually recognise faces or familiar objects.

Fast forward a bit, and a few months ago the children and I watched Awakenings, a Robin Williams and Robert De Niro movie based on Sacks' book of the same name.

(I highly recommend the movie, and the girls enjoyed it.)

Anyway, I thought Mulan might also enjoy reading The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat, so I requested it from the library.  I've just finished re-reading it, and have passed it on to Mulan.  (I don't expect Mulan to read all the neurological details, but I thought she might find the stories of the people interesting and thought-provoking.)

The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat is truly a fascinating read.

First and foremost, Sacks has a delightful storytelling style.  Sacks is incredibly good at humanising his patients -- they are decent, real, (mostly) normal people, who just happen to have had something happen to their brain (injury, illness, stroke, epilepsy, migraines, etc) and consequently they perceive or interact in the world differently than most people.

To me, what I find so fascinating is how our perception of the world is tied in so much with our physical brain.  A little bit of damage/change to this part of the brain, and suddenly one has a vastly different perception of the world.  Sometimes these differences are clear defects, but Sacks has a way of also opening our eyes to the ways in which these differences become a true part of who these people are.

And in doing this, as readers we are likewise prompted to re-consider who we are in ourselves.  In everyday life we often like to think of ourselves as whole and united, as individual selves in control of our interactions in the world.  These sorts of neurological case studies deeply question this perception of ourselves, and for that matter our perception of reality.

Sunday outing

Yesterday was Sunday, so we went to church.

I mean, we went to the zoo.

I mentioned earlier that we got a one year zoo pass, so we used that again -- it's our third visit so far.

Laolao came with us, too.  She's visiting us from China for the summer.

We saw the baby zebra,

listened to several zoo talks, and generally had a pleasant, relaxing day.

Auckland Zoo

For Miya's 9th birthday (happy birthday Miya!!) she wanted to go to the zoo.

This was perfect because I had already planned, as a homeschooling focus this year, to get a one-year family zoo pass.

So, yesterday we went to the Auckland Zoo, and we bought ourselves an Annual Pass.  The pass is for two adults and three children, so we signed up cousin Maria as our third child.

We had a very relaxing and enjoyable day.  No more rushing around trying to fit everything in on the one day.  We wandered around just seeing the things we felt like seeing.  We didn't even bother with our camera.

At the moment there is a huge construction project happening at the zoo, where they are adding a new South East Asia section.  Seeing the area take shape will also be fascinating this year.

I expect over the next year to have thousands of new animal photos on our computer.  We'll probably post a small percentage of them here.

Book review: Dune

Mulan is finally old enough to read Frank Herbert's Dune books.

A few weeks ago, over the school holidays, I re-read Dune, the first in the six-book series (Herbert's son, Brian, has also continued his father's story with over a dozen more Dune books).  It was something like the fourth time I'd read it, but this time my aim was to decide whether it would be suitable for Mulan.

I passed it to an initially sceptical Mulan, who at the time was several books into reading Terry Pratchett's huge Discworld series (Mulan had got into Discworld after we watched the Soul Music movie).  But she gave it a go and quickly got addicted.  The Discworld books were mostly abandoned; in Mulan's opinion Dune is much more exciting.

I buried my nose in the second book, Dune Messiah, trying to keep ahead of Mulan (the books do mature as they go along), but she caught up and passed me while I was part-way through the third book, Children of Dune.  Mulan finished the fourth book, God Emperor of Dune, ahead of me and started on the fifth book, Heretics of Dune.  However she said it's not so interesting and slowed down (reading other books instead).  I have now caught up and re-passed Mulan, and have just finished book five.

As I say, the books do mature.  The later books expand the thought-provoking social commentary, and there is increasing sexual content (on re-reading, I realise the fifth book is probably a little too sexually mature for Mulan right now; the fourth book was okay).  Mulan and I have agreed it would be best for her to pause in the series and maybe come back to it in a year or so.  (I first read the fifth book when I was 13.)

In Mulan's opinion, the first and third books were the best in the series so far.  In part this is because of the direct, exciting storytelling in those books, and in part because teens/children were the dominant characters.  Mulan also didn't like the way later books in the series were set in different times and had mostly completely different characters.

We also watched both the David Lynch movie and the more recent TV miniseries versions of Dune.

(The movie is a mess!  It's pretty incoherent.  And they seriously damage the plot by turning the "weirding" fighting style into merely a technological super-weapon.  But, as Mulan rightly pointed out, the TV miniseries is even worse!  They have basically turned a deeply thought-provoking story into a US-style soap opera.  It is Americanly beautiful people transparently telegraphing their every overly-emotional shallow thought.  Both the movie and TV miniseries were fun to watch for fan value only.)

I think there are at least four things that are great about the Dune books:

Firstly, it's an un-put-down-able story.  It's event-filled and exciting, with plenty of action and adventure.  The first book by far does this the best, and in my opinion it gets weaker as it goes on, but the others are also pretty good.

For a teenage reader we get an initially very relatable and likable main character in the form of 15-year-old Paul Atreides.  Paul is a nice guy -- smart, hard-working and well-intentioned.  As the son of a Duke, he's been given a great education by some of the best private tutors around (yep, he homeschools!).  While Paul has had a comfortable, secure, privileged life, he has still worked hard to make the most of his rare and lucky opportunities.

The excitement comes about because from the beginning of the book we learn that Paul's family is required to leave their comfortable, secure ancestral family home and travel to another planet to take charge of the business operations there (yes, Dune is a futuristic science fiction story).  This generates the conflict and excitement, because the previous owners of the new planet are the multi-generational enemies of Paul's family.

This leads into the second aspect of what, in my opinion, makes the Dune books great.  In my opinion, Dune is an especially aspirational and inspirational story for young adults.  It presents role models who strive to do the best they can, and to be the best they can.  Teenage Paul, as our first role model, listens to his teachers and parents, and wants to do well.  He enjoys learning, and gains satisfaction from his achievements.  He questions, challenges and thinks.  He makes mistakes, but he learns from them and incorporates the learning into who he is.

(In the second book things become more Greek-tragedy-like, in the sense that these smart, educated, well-intentioned and seemingly-right-at-the-time choices can still lead to awful outcomes.)

Soon we come to learn that Paul is part of a 100-ish generation breeding programme to create a super-person.  So, it turns out he is a little too perfect and idealised.  But nonetheless I think young Paul still remains an aspirational figure and role model for teenage readers.  Certainly he was that for me when I read Dune as a young teenager.  Dune was part of the package which inculcated my love of learning and willingness to push myself to the best of my ability.  Reading Dune made we want to get up and do challenging stuff, both physically and mentally.

Thirdly, Dune is beautifully written.  I recall reading somewhere that Herbert wrote Dune with Haiku poetry in mind.  That makes sense to me.  Dune is often like poetic prose.  It flows in a style that is unique to Herbert, inviting multiple re-readings with new rewards and discoveries.  It is the sort of style of writing that captures the emotions.  One can let the words flow, creating an overall feel, sometimes without pinning down the exact meaning of every single phrase,  To put it more cynically, Dune is an incredibly clever emotion-manipulator, which creates a certain frame of mind.

And this leads us into the fourth great aspect.  Dune is a deep, opinionated commentary on society, politics, religion and humanity as a whole.  It talks about the big questions of life, the universe and everything.  It challenges one's thinking about what is important in life -- what we are doing and where we are going.  Who are we?  What are our fundamental values?  What is the meaning of life?  The later books especially get into this a lot, with frequent deep conversations between characters or inner monologues contemplating what the right thing to do is.  Moreover, the book presents no easy answers -- characters frequently disagree and compete, but almost all of them are presented in sympathetic ways.

To me, those are the key things which make Dune great.  It is for these reasons that I passed the book to Mulan, and I highly recommend it to any thinking teens.

Nonetheless, Dune is far from perfect.  And re-reading it now as an adult shows more of these flaws.

As I see it, the biggest flaw is related to its seductiveness.

I read Herbert as having strong political views that he often promotes in his books (his other, non-Dune novels typically have similar political themes).  He brings these views into his storytelling, sometimes indirectly but also sometimes directly through authorial explanations or character conversations.  That's great.  Lots of writers are like this and it almost always adds depth to a great novel.  But I think it's important to flag this right at the beginning.  These political views are not merely entertainment that we can discard when we finish reading the books.  Readers do absorb the political views of novelists as they read their novels; it's important that we draw these out explicitly so we are not absorbing these views uncritically.

Moreover,  Herbert was a very clever writer.  Not only is his poetic prose beautiful, but he also knew how to phrase ideas in such a way so as to make these ideas more appealing to his readers.  Again, it's important to pick this out explicitly, so we are not tricked by his rhetorical force.

One common rhetorical approach that Herbert uses in Dune is one that is also used by various popular speakers in the world today (consider certain popular YouTube opinionators!).  The general method they use is to appeal to the reader's strong attraction to logic and reasoning, but without actually being rigorously logical.  To be convincing, Herbert and others rely on the fact that while their readers/listeners like the idea of logic, these readers/listeners generally haven't spent the time necessary to develop their own skills in understanding logic.  This means that Herbert and others can use superficial linguistic structures of logic, or assert that they are being logical, while at the same time use rhetorical misdirection to blur the intermediate steps between initial plausible assertion and desired conclusion.  The reader/listener is wowed and believes the conclusion.

With this in mind, in Dune (especially in the later books) Herbert created several compelling characters who are notably intended to be super smart or super knowledgeable.  This creates a plausible authority as Herbert's mouthpiece.  These characters start out by making clear and seemingly straightforward universal assertions which we might plausibly accept as true.  They also might make a few clear steps in basic reasoning.  This makes the reader feel as though they are smartly thinking alongside the super-smart character.

But intermingled with this, Herbert, through the character, also makes less clear assertions (which may or may not even be real assertions), which often use non-literal language that is multi-interpretable.  Herbert is especially brilliant at this pseudo-reasoning in seemingly-real-but-actually-nonsensical language.  This is done to reduce the reader to follower rather than active logic-analyser.  The reader is then brought along to the desired conclusion by emotion and poetic feel rather than by active reasoning.  The reader doesn't bother to try to figure out the hard bits in the supposed reasoning, assuming that since they understood the first bit, and since the character has been set up as super-smart, then the next bits should also be sound, too.

Occasionally, Herbert has another character doubt the super-smart character.  At this point the super-smart character may verbally abuse the simpleton for missing the "clear reasoning" or not being advanced enough.  The reader is also thus made to feel shamed to question the reasoning.  Sometimes, during this process the super-smart character might even wow himself, as we are told that he (usually it's a he) has reached a new high level of conscious awareness.  This intermediate-stage water-muddying may happen, with great rhetorical flourish, over a few pages, to further wow the reader.

Finally, Herbert presents the reader with his desired political claims, as if it has been reached by objectively rigorous reasoning.  Sometimes the conclusion is presented explicitly, but sometimes it is presented somewhat indirectly so as to make the reader think that they are also super-smart to have deduced the conclusion by themselves.

All this might sound silly and obvious when phrased in this way.  But as I say, Herbert is an excellent writer, and does this extremely well.  I never saw through much of this when I first read it as a young teenager.  Teenage me was Herbert's target reader -- excited by reasoning, but not especially skilled at it.  Sadly, middle-aged me is a bit more cynical, and unfortunately on this latest re-reading I am finding some of Herbert's rhetorical flourishes more amusing than inspiring.

(Mulan tells me that she was bored by parts of the books that did this, and while she read all the main text she sometimes skipped the italicised bits at the beginning of each chapter.)

Ironically, the Dune books are often precisely about these sorts language manipulations posing as reasoning.  There are prolonged discussions in the books about the uses of language manipulation to control others.  As I see it, the Dune books are themselves an object lesson in what they are warning us against.

To summarise, I think it is essential that as readers we explicitly recognise Herbert's rhetoric for what it is.  His writing is beautiful and challenging, and definitely worth reading.  But we need to also think critically as we read, so that we don't fall for Herbert's seductive writing and accept his political views unquestioningly.

Now onto the content of what I think we need to think critically about.

The central themes of Dune are about humanity and what it is to be human.  The Dune characters are human, and they repeatedly emphasise that they are human.  So it can be easy to confuse humans in the story with humans in the real world -- that is, mistakenly think that since we are all humans, what is said about them must also be true about us.  Thus, it can be easy to leap to the conclusion that the values and attitudes promoted in the story should likewise be promoted in our real world.

Consequently, I think that as we read the Dune series we need to evaluate the content of it with two main things in mind.  Firstly, we need to look at to what extent the Dune universe and Dune humans are factually and physically the same as (or different from) us real-world humans.  And second we need to look at the political, social, religious and moral claims that follow from these physical facts.  If we are physically different, then it is quite likely that our social and political values and systems will be different, too.

This, obviously, is a huge task.  There are many issues that stand out for me; I'll mention a few as examples:

One issue has to do with sex.  Not sex as in reproduction, but sex as in biological male and female.  Dune universe humans are very clearly divided into males and females (plus the genetically engineered sterile hermaphrodite Face Dancers).  

In Dune, males and females are distinctly different in far more ways than they are different in our real world.  Moreover, many of these differences in the Dune world are not merely a matter of degree, but a matter of kind.  That is, in Dune, males often have distinctly "male" properties and abilities, and females have distinctly "female" properties and abilities.  There are abilities that females have that males cannot have, and vice versa.

Herbert leaves unexplained how this could possibly be.  Given what we now know about the complexities of sex differences in our real world (chromosomes, sex organs, hormones, etc, etc), Herbert's either-or sex distinctions are not compatible with our current best scientific evidence.  I read Herbert as presenting an essentialist view of sex in the Dune universe, which is simply factually false in the real world.  That's okay in a fictional story world -- writers can imagine whatever they like.  But we shouldn't mix this up with real world evidence.  We need to remember that Dune universe humans are biologically different from our real world humans.

(For a very good quick introduction to real-world biological facts about sex, take a look at this video.)

Besides the potential for scientific confusion between fiction and fact, this may also lead us into thinking wrongly about people's roles in society.  In the Dune universe these huge biological differences between males and females result in huge social difference between the sexes.  In the Dune universe males are better suited to some roles while females are better suited to other roles.  In the Dune universe social role differences may be permissible because Herbert has written in these "factual" differences which explain it.  Herbert's super-smart characters sometimes even directly explain how these fictional Dune-world "facts" logically necessitate distinct sex roles.

In our real world this would be clear sexism and sexual discrimination.  The biological facts in the real world don't lead to these sorts of social role sex differences shown in the Dune universe.

I have no idea if Herbert really believed that these sexist attitudes were also justified in our real world.  But I think it is clear that his in-story "logical explanations" can influence the thinking of readers who are unaware of the real-world facts.  I think there is a genuine danger that Herbert's seductive language can help to normalise these sorts of sexist attitudes in our real world.  As we read Dune, we need to combat this and keep reminding ourselves that real world humans are not like this.

Related to this, homosexuality is mentioned a few times in the Dune books, and mostly in a negative way.  In the Dune universe homosexuality is typically presented either as a perversion or else something to merely tolerate in young adults as they experiment.  This is shown most clearly in the fourth book, where Herbert uses the super-knowledgeable character to lecture us on (Dune) human sexuality.

Again, it is important to remember that while this may be the case in the Dune universe (Herbert, as the writer, is allowed to do whatever he wants with his fictional characters) it is both factually and morally wrong in our real world (not to mention hugely offensive).  Again, let's not be seduced into these awful views when we leave the Dune universe and re-enter our real world.

A second issue has to do with psychology.  As I understand it, Herbert was hugely influenced by Carl Jung, and included many Jungian themes in his writings.

One theme has to do with what Herbert calls "ancestral memories".  A big part of the plot of the Dune books is the ability for humans to "remember" the memories of their ancestors.  It seems that this is (mostly) done via individual cells that are passed on from parents to child (secondly, they also have a Vulcan-like mind-meld which also passes on memories).  In the Dune world, individual human cells contain entire life-history memories, and certain humans are able to consciously unlock these, to be able to "remember" being their parents, grandparents, and so on into the far distant past.

(As a side note, a huge plot hole in the Dune books is that Herbert didn't seem to realise that this would mean that children would only be able gain the memories of their parents from before they were conceived/born.  Children would not have access to the memories of their ancestors' later life -- that is, after childbirth.  Throughout the story Herbert assumes that ancestral memories are super-wise/knowledgeable, but actually they would not be.  They would only be memories of young adults, and while there would be hugely many of them, they would not be memories of older, wiser seniors.)

Ancestral memories is, of course, complete nonsense in our real world.  It is merely fun fiction.  But we do need to remember this when we get to Herbert's discussions of how society should be.  Again, we shouldn't be seduced into preferring some sort of social system without considering how much that society requires Dune-universe "facts" that are nonsense in our real world.

A third issue has to do with what sorts of beings have moral consideration.  In Dune, Herbert always frames these discussions in terms of whether someone is "human" or not.  In the Dune universe they have various "tests for humanity," where one is typically killed if one fails to show one's humanity.  These are not biological tests of DNA or whatever; rather they are psychological tests to make sure that the being acts in what they consider to be a "human way."

In contrast to this, in our real world, conversations on this topic are typically framed in terms of "persons" rather than "humans".  This is because we consider that focusing on humans only is speciesist -- it fails to consider the moral worth of other beings who deserve moral consideration.  Defining personhood turns out to be quite complicated, but we might think it has to do more with the ability to feel, think, future plan, have conscious awareness and so on.  And it is quite clear that some non-humans may do this (it is also quite clear that many Dune-universe non-humans do this).

(Some real-world thinkers even prefer to frame the conversation in terms of "sentience", rather than "person" or "human", which is a wider category that necessitates giving moral consideration to even more beings.)

By framing the Dune conversation in terms of "humans" rather than "persons" (or sentience), Herbert immediately eliminates from moral consideration other types of beings.  So, when in the Dune universe humans come into conflict with non-human beings (artificial intelligence, genetically engineered beings, etc), there is no need for our Dune heroes to see these beings as deserving of life.  If these other non-humans are a threat (or even if they are merely an inconvenience) our Dune heroes coldly eliminate them without reflection.  Herbert repeatedly phrases the issue as a matter of political power and survival -- the opposition has no moral worth, and humans must be powerful to eliminate them.

This speciesist attitude that dominates Dune deserves pointing out.  Again, Herbert's seductive language may make readers assume that this is the right (or even only) approach to dealing with non-humans.  Instead, we need to remind ourselves that this Dune-universe attitude is morally repugnant, and deserves strong criticism.

But this human-focused attitude also fits in with Herbert's grand overall goal in the Dune universe.  For Herbert in Dune, the most important thing is that humanity survives into the far distant future.  This number one value is presented as an absolute, and never questioned (at least that I could see).

Apparently, nothing ever outweighs this future-humanity value.  In the Dune universe, trillions of human deaths is acceptable, as long as humanity continues into the future.  And as I say, in the Dune universe non-humans are considered even less.

This is clearly a hugely controversial claim, and one that deserves challenging.  As readers, we need to keep this in mind.  Are the horrific things that these main Dune characters do for the supposed greater good of humanity's survival really the right thing to do?  Is a humanity surviving into the distant future really worth more than the wellbeing of currently existing people?

(Interestingly, when I have presented this future generations argument to my students in the context of climate change, generally these students have a hard time morally connecting with humans just a few generations into the future.  They often remain unconvinced that we ought to make certain sacrifices for the sake of humans in 100 or 200 years time.  In contrast, in Dune, one of the main characters criticises another for her short-term attitude when her plans did not consider anything more than 50 generations into the future.)

One of the main methods that characters use throughout the Dune series to advance this overall humanity-first goal is to challenge individual humans to reach their full potential.  These challenges are not gentle -- they are life and death challenges that often result in death.  But the important thing in the Dune universe is that at least some humans survive and grow, and that they then breed and pass this survival on to the next generation.  For Herbert, it is about the weak being eliminated and the strong surviving and reproducing, creating a stronger humanity.  In Dune, breeding programmes are developed to encourage optimal human growth.

(My admittedly limited understanding of biology is that this is not the way that evolution works, but I won't try to get into the details here.)

This may make sense if our number one value is the continuation of humanity.  But this value absolutely needs questioning.  I would argue that a better society is precisely one in which our weakest members are protected, not eliminated.

To repeat, the Dune books are an incredibly seductive defence of the above extremely controversial moral views.  I think it's easy for a reader to come away from reading these books having the emotional mindset that deaths and abuses are okay for the sake of some ideal future goal.  Moreover, this emotional mindset will be defended with the equally emotional mindset that this is all completely rational and scientific.

Fourthly, dotted throughout the Dune books (especially the later ones) Herbert, through the mouths of his authoritatively knowledgeable characters, makes claims regarding the ineffectualness of all governments.  The suggestion is that government is necessarily a bad thing because of corruption, excessive red tape and slow bookish record-keepers who get distracted with irrelevancies. Unfortunately, no details are given beyond this caricature (in-book discussions of this topic fit the pattern of rhetoric I described above).  Herbert contrasts this with the superior effectualness of strong individual characters who trust their own instinctive judgement to Get Things Done.

Finally, here's a possible danger of the Dune books as I see it: Young people (particularly young men) who like the idea of logic and reasoning, but haven't (yet) put the hard work in to develop some proficiency in reasoning may get emotionally sucked into certain themes in thinking, justifying these themes to themselves with the thought that it is based on strict science and reasoning (when it really isn't).  These themes may be sexist, homophobic, cold-hearted and unsympathetic.  Moreover, these young men may insulate themselves from criticism by being overly suspicious of social authorities such as governments and universities and instead believing themselves to be among the superior.

To summarise my opinion of Dune in a few lines, read with a decent amount of critical awareness Dune can be an incredibly thought-provoking, inspiring, exciting, beautifully written, positive book series.  But read uncritically, through its clever rhetoric it can emotionally led one to an overly simplistic way of thinking that is dangerously harmful.  Read it with caution.  But have fun.  It's hugely worth it.