TV

When Mulan was born we put our TV away in storage.

TV is great for zombie-ing in the evening after working hard all day.  It's not so great for having quality time with family.

But we didn't stop watching visual entertainment.  We still watch stuff on the computer.  It has just meant that when we watch something it's about intentionally picking a show rather than passively letting show after show happen in front of us.

However this has meant that lately we haven't watched many TV series.  Generally we watch movies  (I wrote about it here and here).

But now, as Mulan (and Miya) get older, it is useful (and fun) for us to watch together some TV (but not too much!).  Last year, when we set up our Covid-safe classroom, we bought a multimedia projector.  We now often watch big-screen-style projected onto our wall.

Over the past several months we've watched a few TV series together.  We generally watch while we eat at lunch and/or dinner.

Early series we watched included Mystic (a teen horse story), AFK (suppose you suddenly appeared in the body of your avatar inside your computer game) and K-Pop Academy (reality TV!).

We also watched almost all of the 90s series Highlander.  It's fairly simple and formulaic, but it was fun and entertaining and a good introduction for Mulan into the structure of TV storytelling.  There are also a few thought-provoking moments with justice, morality, death and the meaning of life (Queen's Who Wants to Live Forever).  As the actors point out, the six seasons was a single story arc examining the tragedy of eternal life, and the process of arriving at never-ending loss and regret.

When we signed up for Netflix last month we started watching two TV series, The Good Place (our lunchtime watch) and Star Trek: The Next Generation (our dinnertime watch).

We've now finished the 53 episodes of The Good Place.  In my opinion, it's amongst the best TV series I have watched.  First up, it was funny and entertaining, with a great story.  Unlike many TV series that reset each week, the story progressed in new ways throughout the four seasons.  Each season was set with a new and different main issue, developed from the previous season.  But as well as good storytelling, the show did an awesome job of introducing moral philosophy (that's something we don't see much in US sitcoms!).  Over the course of the show it explicitly introduced many of the main issues that we would typically encounter in a first-year intro to ethics course.  And it managed to do it in a real-life way without being boring.  Good job writers!  It's interesting to see how both Highlander and Good Place address the question of eternal life in their own ways.

We've also now finished to the end of season two of Star Trek: The Next Generation.  There's seven seasons of this, and then another seven seasons of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, so we've still got some watching to go (we probably won't bother with any of the other incarnations of Star Trek).  While there is the occasional weak/silly episode, on the whole TNG is a good watch.  Most episodes have good storytelling, and many are thought-provoking and/or inspiring.  In my opinion, TNG and DS9 sit well together.  As I see it, TNG sets up the optimistic attitude, then DS9 challenges this with a more Greek tragedy-style storytelling.  Both aspects are equally needed in life.

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.

Ron Keat Virtual Ribbon Day

Our athletics season started on Sunday, with the Ron Keat Virtual Ribbon Day.

Usually Papakura Athletics Club holds the Ron Keat Ribbon Day at their grounds, but this year the Covid lockdown meant it couldn't happen.  Solution: each club held their own Day at their own grounds, socially distanced of course, and Papakura passed over the ribbons to hand out.

I'm on the Committee this year at Takapuna Athletics Club, and together we organised two hour-long sessions for 28 club athletes.  Athletes competed socially distanced in bubbles, doing 60m, 100m, 200m, long jump and shot put.

Mulan and Miya competed, too:

A majority of the committee voted for all five events in the one hour allocated, which made the competition feel very rushed (the family all thought it better to do fewer events).  Consequently, the focus was on just completing the events rather than good results in each event.  As Mulan pointed out, it was more like a group training rep session than a true competition.  By the end Mulan was feeling a bit sick from not enough recovery.

But no big problem, and being able to get out and have a run/jump/throw was the most important thing.

We're planning for Club Nights to start again tomorrow, also socially distanced and in bubbles.

Charles Mills

Charles Mills died, too young, on the 20th of September, of cancer.

I hadn't heard of him until Robert Paul Wolff mentioned him.  But if Professor Wolff praises someone, it's generally worth following up.

So, topping my YouTube search was Mills' 2020 Tanner Lecture on Human Values.  It was well worth watching.  The two hours sped by pretty quickly, and Mills is entertaining, clear and analytically astute.  His sense of humour is a delight.

But most importantly Mills gave me something to think about that I hadn't considered before.

Some background (as always, I may misunderstand things; happy to be corrected):

50 years ago John Rawls wrote A Theory of Justice.  In so doing, Rawls helped draw new attention to Social Contract Theory, and his veil of ignorance thought experiment was dramatically thought provoking.

Fundamentally, what it's about is trying to figure out what sort of society we should have.  But a problem is that people with vested interests keep giving their biased, self-interested views.  How do we know which is the right approach, with all of that bias?

In the real world we can't all suddenly become virtuously selfless.  But it's possible to be pragmatic and work with that self-interested part of our nature.  We can still get to an answer.

The idea is to imagine that we don't know who we are going to be in life.  We don't know our social position, our place of birth, our gender, our race, and so on.  We're positioned behind a veil of ignorance.  (We still know good science, though, including psychology and sociology.)

Given this ignorance, self-interestedly, what sort of society would we most like to be thrown into?

Presumably, we would not want a society that is too uneven or unfair, just in case we happen to end up at the bottom of the heap.  Presumably, we (or most of us) would want a society that is mostly decently fair and just.  Rationally and self-interestedly, we thus jointly agree to a social contract to protect ourselves.

The details, from this point, are what this fairness and justice would amount to.

Seems plausible.

But Mills questions this.  As well-intended as it is, it misses an important point.

Mills argues that this approach only works if our current society we are living in is already not too bad.  It assumes our society is already quite close to the ideal.  In those cases, Rawls' veil of ignorance thought experiment enables us to tweak the details of what we are already doing.  It merely improves on a society that already functions pretty well.

But if our current society is too far away from the ideal, then mere tweaking is not going to be enough.

So, Mills proposes a modification to the veil of ignorance thought experiment.

In it, we're still ignorant of who we are and what place we will have in society.

But instead of asking what sort of society we would ideally like, Mills asks us what modifications we would like to make if we were thrown into our currently existing (far from perfect) society.

This is an important difference.

In Rawls' thought experiment our society doesn't have any past baggage to deal with.  But in Mills' thought experiment we are needing to incorporate the existing real world baggage of past injustices.  For Mills, it is not simply about creating a more ideal society but also potentially about correcting past wrongs, which may result in things needing to be done differently.  The Mills-style improved society is thus a unique response to the specific society in question.  It is not a universal, generalised ideal society.

This means that sometimes, for Mills, we will rationally agree to social rules/policies/practices that might otherwise (when thinking ideally) be seen as illiberal.  Using Mills' thought experiment we would agree to put into action policies to rectify past injustices.  We would agree that some groups should be allowed special treatment not permitted others, because they are starting out at a disadvantage thanks to what has gone on in the past.  In other words, with Mills' version, thinking up ways to correct past problems would be at the forefront when figuring out the details.

In case it's not already obvious, Mills has been mostly talking about racial injustices, and in particular those in the US.  (A lot of his work is on race issues, but I decided to ease into the topic!)

Mills makes an important distinction between societies that have racism versus racist societies.  Approximately, societies that have some racism might be close enough to the ideal so that Rawls' thought experiment works.  But racist societies are too far away, and require Mills' modification.

Mills is not the first to point out, very plausibly, that the US is a racist society.  It was founded on racism, and racist practices were an essential and central component of its development.  Too many people are in the social/economic positions they are today because of that racism, and in many places racism still persists.  (Some, though not all, of this racism is more a secondary effect of economic practices in a capitalist society.)

At 1hr 22min 10sec into the video, Mills puts it directly.  When the veil of ignorance lifts, you are going to find yourself in a white supremacist society.

As Mills puts it, imagine you were born a black woman in a ghetto in South Side Chicago, or a Latina somewhere in the southwestern US, or a Native American on a reservation.

What principles of justice, what structures of public policy, would you want to see put in place so as to make sure that you are not going to be radically handicapped in this social situation?

This modification to the thought experiment makes racial justice centre stage rather than off stage altogether.

To me, as a New Zealander, I can comfortably look at the US in this way and acknowledge the work that should be done there to improve their society.  It's a foreign country with some serious problems that need fixing.

But I shouldn't be too complacent.

When Taika Waititi says that New Zealand is "racist as fuck" (while still being "the best place on the planet"), New Zealanders need to pause and think.  And act.

When some Maori are saying that they won't get the Covid vaccination because of the racism they have experienced throughout their lives from police and government workers, and the consequent (understandable) distrust, there's some serious racial issues going on.

Maybe Mills' thought experiment should apply to New Zealand, just as much as to the US.

(Mama pointed out to me that of all the (non-medical) reasons she has heard for people refusing to get Covid vaccinated, this is the only one she could accept.  I agree.)

Taka Tricks

Takapuna Athletics Club has a Taka Tricks Challenge running.

Today the family spent a couple of hours at the track videoing our contribution.

Here's what we came up with:

Miya snapped a synchronised jump at the end:

Athletics nationals cancelled

We just heard that the athletics national competition that was to be held in mid-December has been cancelled because of Covid.

This was a combined competition put on by the New Zealand Secondary Schools Athletics Association and Athletics New Zealand.

Mulan had registered to compete, in both the long jump and triple jump, in the school junior girls and the club under 16.  We had planned that she and I would drive down to New Plymouth together, with Mama and Miya staying home.

It's disappointing, though expected and the right decision.

Mulan has still got another year in this grade, so here's hoping it goes ahead next year and Mulan can be competitive for a good placing.

Athletics photo shoot

Ten days ago we had a (socially distanced) photo shoot for advertising Takapuna Athletics Club.

The club committee organised about a dozen or so families to each have a five-minute session with Athletics New Zealand Team Photographer Alisha Lovrich.

It was also a great opportunity to get rid of some of the rust, since it's been six months since we did any of this.

If we look good enough, our photos may be spread around advertising Taka Athletics, Auckland Athletics, NZ Athletics or Alisha's business.

In our five minutes, Miya did high jump:

Mulan did hurdles and long jump:

And we all had a run together: