Thursday, 26 August 2010
Facebook Places
We all know Facebook, and most of us use it. However it has hardly been without its controversies. Most of these have been around the collection of data about its users, both overtly and covertly. However the latest one, for US users at least is an application called ‘Facebook Places’. This app lets US users share their location in real time with their friends and any marketers who happen to be interested. Now whilst I can see the whole invasion of privacy thing; my objection to this is not so high minded. My objection is that like 99% of Facebook apps it’s boring. I’m afraid to say that even if you’re my closest friend I’m not that interested in having a record of everywhere you went today. For that matter I’m pretty certain that you don’t want a record of everywhere I went today. If you’ve got an interesting story to tell or somewhere to recommend, or if we’re catching up; then sure lets have a chat about it. But that’s the point. What you did today is for small talk over a pint or dinner in the evening. So my suggestion ignore Facebook Places, because it’s just plain boring.
Tuesday, 17 August 2010
Offence and Freedom
An issue that I have noticed occurring very frequently at the moment is the relationship between freedom and offensive speech. In fact it is not just offensive speech but various other actions that whilst doing no physical harm, are seen as offensive. A far from exhaustive list of related controversies include the ban on religious hate speech, Danish Cartoons and most recently the building Cordoba House near Ground Zero. So this raises two questions, first what makes words or actions offensive and secondly how should we react to offensive speech and actions. The definition of offensiveness is that it causes ‘anger, displeasure or injury’. For the sake of this discussion I’m not concerned with actions which cause physical injury, as we can generally accept that they are wrong, with a few exceptions. What interests me is the causing of anger or displeasure.
I also want to make a distinction between legal and moral, two things that are surprisingly often confused. For this article legal refers to the laws that governments make and moral refers to what individuals should or shouldn’t do. (Of course both these definitions are sketchy, but this blog post is not an academic essay.) What I want to argue is that individuals are morally obliged to try to avoid unnecessary offence, but that this should not be a legal matter. In other words it is wrong for me to call someone a prick but it should not illegal for me to do so. Why? There are three reasons I shall go through.
The first reason is the subjectivity of offence. Say I’ve go two friends, Dave and Mike. One evening, down the pub I greet them by saying ‘how are you two bastards doing?’ (Not the best banter ever I realize, but what can you do?) In this example Dave responds with a witty response, but Mike finds my greeting offensive. (We needn’t go into the reasons why.) The point here is which one, if either is in the right? I didn’t intend to offend either but the fact is I did. Now is this offensive, or is that just the case that Mike cannot take a joke. It seems to me that the answer is both; it offends Mike because he cannot take the joke and that makes it offensive. This illustrates one reason why it offence should not be a matter of legality. We frequently give offence without meaning to, and in ways that offend one person but not another. How therefore is the law, which by nature must deal with a large number of humans, supposed to regulate this?
Related to this is the second and to my mind most important reason. Offence is frequently an unintended consequence of criticism. Willingness to give and recive robust criticism is vital to many endeavours. Who hasn’t been told things that they are doing wrong, or could do better? Similarly if I disagree with your point of view, then the way for me to try and convince you, is to criticize that view whilst offering reasons to follow mine. Of course not all criticism is seen as offensive but it can be hard to predict what will be. There is also the fact that sometime the way to make a point is to do it in a very direct and robust value. If you try to soften a criticism you can obscure the point.
The third reason is that we are not talking about physical injury here. I would also include things like defamation whereby there is an obvious harm and a clear test as things we can legislate. But when it comes to statements, critcisms and actions, where the worst they do is insult and which aren’t lies then it seems that there are two things to be done. The first is to grow a thicker skin and the second is to try to avoid and challenge offence, but to do so individually and with words rather than anything else. An issue that I have noticed occurring very frequently at the moment is the relationship between freedom and offensive speech. In fact it is not just offensive speech but various other actions that whilst doing no physical harm, are seen as offensive. A far from exhaustive list of related controversies include the ban on religious hate speech, Danish Cartoons and most recently the building Cordoba House near Ground Zero. So this raises two questions, first what makes words or actions offensive and secondly how should we react to offensive speech and actions. The definition of offensiveness is that it causes ‘anger, displeasure or injury’. For the sake of this discussion I’m not concerned with actions which cause physical injury, as we can generally accept that they are wrong, with a few exceptions. What interests me is the causing of anger or displeasure.
I also want to make a distinction between legal and moral, two things that are surprisingly often confused. For this article legal refers to the laws that governments make and moral refers to what individuals should or shouldn’t do. (Of course both these definitions are sketchy, but this blog post is not an academic essay.) What I want to argue is that individuals are morally obliged to try to avoid unnecessary offence, but that this should not be a legal matter. In other words it is wrong for me to call someone a prick but it should not illegal for me to do so. Why? There are three reasons I shall go through.
The first reason is the subjectivity of offence. Say I’ve go two friends, Dave and Mike. One evening, down the pub I greet them by saying ‘how are you two bastards doing?’ (Not the best banter ever I realize, but what can you do?) In this example Dave responds with a witty response, but Mike finds my greeting offensive. (We needn’t go into the reasons why.) The point here is which one, if either is in the right? I didn’t intend to offend either but the fact is I did. Now is this offensive, or is that just the case that Mike cannot take a joke. It seems to me that the answer is both; it offends Mike because he cannot take the joke and that makes it offensive. This illustrates one reason why it offence should not be a matter of legality. We frequently give offence without meaning to, and in ways that offend one person but not another. How therefore is the law, which by nature must deal with a large number of humans, supposed to regulate this?
Related to this is the second and to my mind most important reason. Offence is frequently an unintended consequence of criticism. Willingness to give and recive robust criticism is vital to many endeavours. Who hasn’t been told things that they are doing wrong, or could do better? Similarly if I disagree with your point of view, then the way for me to try and convince you, is to criticize that view whilst offering reasons to follow mine. Of course not all criticism is seen as offensive but it can be hard to predict what will be. There is also the fact that sometime the way to make a point is to do it in a very direct and robust value. If you try to soften a criticism you can obscure the point.
The third reason is that we are not talking about physical injury here. I would also include things like defamation whereby there is an obvious harm and a clear test as things we can legislate. But when it comes to statements, critcisms and actions, where the worst they do is insult and which aren’t lies then it seems that there are two things to be done. The first is to grow a thicker skin and the second is to try to avoid and challenge offence, but to do so individually and with words rather than anything else.
I also want to make a distinction between legal and moral, two things that are surprisingly often confused. For this article legal refers to the laws that governments make and moral refers to what individuals should or shouldn’t do. (Of course both these definitions are sketchy, but this blog post is not an academic essay.) What I want to argue is that individuals are morally obliged to try to avoid unnecessary offence, but that this should not be a legal matter. In other words it is wrong for me to call someone a prick but it should not illegal for me to do so. Why? There are three reasons I shall go through.
The first reason is the subjectivity of offence. Say I’ve go two friends, Dave and Mike. One evening, down the pub I greet them by saying ‘how are you two bastards doing?’ (Not the best banter ever I realize, but what can you do?) In this example Dave responds with a witty response, but Mike finds my greeting offensive. (We needn’t go into the reasons why.) The point here is which one, if either is in the right? I didn’t intend to offend either but the fact is I did. Now is this offensive, or is that just the case that Mike cannot take a joke. It seems to me that the answer is both; it offends Mike because he cannot take the joke and that makes it offensive. This illustrates one reason why it offence should not be a matter of legality. We frequently give offence without meaning to, and in ways that offend one person but not another. How therefore is the law, which by nature must deal with a large number of humans, supposed to regulate this?
Related to this is the second and to my mind most important reason. Offence is frequently an unintended consequence of criticism. Willingness to give and recive robust criticism is vital to many endeavours. Who hasn’t been told things that they are doing wrong, or could do better? Similarly if I disagree with your point of view, then the way for me to try and convince you, is to criticize that view whilst offering reasons to follow mine. Of course not all criticism is seen as offensive but it can be hard to predict what will be. There is also the fact that sometime the way to make a point is to do it in a very direct and robust value. If you try to soften a criticism you can obscure the point.
The third reason is that we are not talking about physical injury here. I would also include things like defamation whereby there is an obvious harm and a clear test as things we can legislate. But when it comes to statements, critcisms and actions, where the worst they do is insult and which aren’t lies then it seems that there are two things to be done. The first is to grow a thicker skin and the second is to try to avoid and challenge offence, but to do so individually and with words rather than anything else. An issue that I have noticed occurring very frequently at the moment is the relationship between freedom and offensive speech. In fact it is not just offensive speech but various other actions that whilst doing no physical harm, are seen as offensive. A far from exhaustive list of related controversies include the ban on religious hate speech, Danish Cartoons and most recently the building Cordoba House near Ground Zero. So this raises two questions, first what makes words or actions offensive and secondly how should we react to offensive speech and actions. The definition of offensiveness is that it causes ‘anger, displeasure or injury’. For the sake of this discussion I’m not concerned with actions which cause physical injury, as we can generally accept that they are wrong, with a few exceptions. What interests me is the causing of anger or displeasure.
I also want to make a distinction between legal and moral, two things that are surprisingly often confused. For this article legal refers to the laws that governments make and moral refers to what individuals should or shouldn’t do. (Of course both these definitions are sketchy, but this blog post is not an academic essay.) What I want to argue is that individuals are morally obliged to try to avoid unnecessary offence, but that this should not be a legal matter. In other words it is wrong for me to call someone a prick but it should not illegal for me to do so. Why? There are three reasons I shall go through.
The first reason is the subjectivity of offence. Say I’ve go two friends, Dave and Mike. One evening, down the pub I greet them by saying ‘how are you two bastards doing?’ (Not the best banter ever I realize, but what can you do?) In this example Dave responds with a witty response, but Mike finds my greeting offensive. (We needn’t go into the reasons why.) The point here is which one, if either is in the right? I didn’t intend to offend either but the fact is I did. Now is this offensive, or is that just the case that Mike cannot take a joke. It seems to me that the answer is both; it offends Mike because he cannot take the joke and that makes it offensive. This illustrates one reason why it offence should not be a matter of legality. We frequently give offence without meaning to, and in ways that offend one person but not another. How therefore is the law, which by nature must deal with a large number of humans, supposed to regulate this?
Related to this is the second and to my mind most important reason. Offence is frequently an unintended consequence of criticism. Willingness to give and recive robust criticism is vital to many endeavours. Who hasn’t been told things that they are doing wrong, or could do better? Similarly if I disagree with your point of view, then the way for me to try and convince you, is to criticize that view whilst offering reasons to follow mine. Of course not all criticism is seen as offensive but it can be hard to predict what will be. There is also the fact that sometime the way to make a point is to do it in a very direct and robust value. If you try to soften a criticism you can obscure the point.
The third reason is that we are not talking about physical injury here. I would also include things like defamation whereby there is an obvious harm and a clear test as things we can legislate. But when it comes to statements, critcisms and actions, where the worst they do is insult and which aren’t lies then it seems that there are two things to be done. The first is to grow a thicker skin and the second is to try to avoid and challenge offence, but to do so individually and with words rather than anything else.
Tuesday, 3 August 2010
Affirmative Action and Discrimination against Whites
I know a couple of people who have claimed that because of positive discrimination it is now the case that White men are now face more discrimination than any other group. I think this issue is worth looking at for a couple of reasons. Firstly the most recent statistics I could find at the Office for National Statistics website show that the only group with a higher rate of employment is that of White women by around 1%. That is to say roughly that for a group of 100 White men around 95 would be employed whereas for White women it would be 96. In contrast the unemployment rate for most non-White groups was two or three times that. The sole exception was Indians at around 7% for men and 8% for women. This strongly suggests that discrimination against white men is likely to be marginal at best.
The second statistic I want to look at is the percentage of the population in managerial and professional jobs. Unfortunately these stats are only broken down by ethnicity and not by gender but they are still revealing. The most likely groups to be employed in managerial and professional jobs are in order Chinese, Indian and Whites. The least likely groups where Black Caribbean and Black African. As these jobs tend to be better paid than others this again suggests that there is little if any evidence of discrimination against White Men.
Of course these statistics are six years out of date and come from before the recession. It would be more interesting and illuminating to study statistics from 2008 or 2009 but as those are yet to be published we will have to stick with these. The other point to make is that my statistical analysis is crude at best. (Perhaps someone with a better understanding could crunch the numbers for me?)But given what we’ve got it suggests that White men do not need to fear discrimination. This raises two questions; the first is why do White men feel that they are being discriminated against? The second is whether the employment statistics show a case for affirmative action?
I suspect the answer to the first comes from an atmosphere whereby affirmative action schemes and minority pressure groups have received a lot of media attention. The effect is to create the impression of discrimination despite the lack of actual cases of it. Of there is some discrimination against White men put in proportion to the discrimination experienced by other groups it is small.
The second question I don’t feel able to answer, however it strikes me that there is a simple test for exploring whether there is a problem. If we assume that that there is no difference between ethnicities then we would expect business to have a roughly representative pattern of employment. Of course there are cultural and historical differences between ethnic groups so we should not be surprised when we find a group over represented in profession and under represented in another. However this lack of representation should be taken as a sign that there is something to investigate. Of course sometimes it may be obvious why this is the case. We would not expect to find many Pakistanis working behind a bar because most Pakistanis are Muslim and therefore regard bar work as haram (forbidden) but other times there may be a case of discrimination.
The second statistic I want to look at is the percentage of the population in managerial and professional jobs. Unfortunately these stats are only broken down by ethnicity and not by gender but they are still revealing. The most likely groups to be employed in managerial and professional jobs are in order Chinese, Indian and Whites. The least likely groups where Black Caribbean and Black African. As these jobs tend to be better paid than others this again suggests that there is little if any evidence of discrimination against White Men.
Of course these statistics are six years out of date and come from before the recession. It would be more interesting and illuminating to study statistics from 2008 or 2009 but as those are yet to be published we will have to stick with these. The other point to make is that my statistical analysis is crude at best. (Perhaps someone with a better understanding could crunch the numbers for me?)But given what we’ve got it suggests that White men do not need to fear discrimination. This raises two questions; the first is why do White men feel that they are being discriminated against? The second is whether the employment statistics show a case for affirmative action?
I suspect the answer to the first comes from an atmosphere whereby affirmative action schemes and minority pressure groups have received a lot of media attention. The effect is to create the impression of discrimination despite the lack of actual cases of it. Of there is some discrimination against White men put in proportion to the discrimination experienced by other groups it is small.
The second question I don’t feel able to answer, however it strikes me that there is a simple test for exploring whether there is a problem. If we assume that that there is no difference between ethnicities then we would expect business to have a roughly representative pattern of employment. Of course there are cultural and historical differences between ethnic groups so we should not be surprised when we find a group over represented in profession and under represented in another. However this lack of representation should be taken as a sign that there is something to investigate. Of course sometimes it may be obvious why this is the case. We would not expect to find many Pakistanis working behind a bar because most Pakistanis are Muslim and therefore regard bar work as haram (forbidden) but other times there may be a case of discrimination.
Sunday, 25 July 2010
David Mitchell and the Burqa
In this blog post (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jul/25/david-mitchell-burqa-ban-tattoos) David Mitchell manages to capture rather accurately what I think is wrong with arguments to ban the burqa or tattoos or for that matter anything which does not directly harm another person.
This seems to be a rather important issue as one of the fundamental cornerstones of liberal thought. (Liberal in the traditonal sense rather than the mordern.) Is that the goverment shall not restrict an individuals freedom untill the point when that freedom violates another. So for example I am free to learn boxing, and indeed use it but I can only do so in a specified area against people who consent to fight me. I'm not allowed to go up to someone on the street and beat them up because then my freedom to punch is less important than their freedom not to get beaten up.
This seems to be a rather important issue as one of the fundamental cornerstones of liberal thought. (Liberal in the traditonal sense rather than the mordern.) Is that the goverment shall not restrict an individuals freedom untill the point when that freedom violates another. So for example I am free to learn boxing, and indeed use it but I can only do so in a specified area against people who consent to fight me. I'm not allowed to go up to someone on the street and beat them up because then my freedom to punch is less important than their freedom not to get beaten up.
Thursday, 22 July 2010
Thoughts on Isreal Palestine
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is an issue that seems to generate an unusually high level of controversy compared to many others. I’m not particularly interested in why this is, but I thought a look at the various stances would be interesting. This comes in part from the observation that so many of my friends and family have passionate and vastly differing views about it. For the sake of this article I’m going to make distinction between stances and views. Stances I will take to mean that extent of support that an individual gives towards one side or the other, whilst the view is the side that they support. So for example the first stance that one side is always right and the other always wrong. So this stance can have either a pro Israel view or a pro Palestinian view. For the sake of convenience I will use (I) for Israeli and (P) for Palestinian to refer to these respective views.
I suspect and hope that few people actually hold the first stance. At least in principle it should be obviously wrong to anyone who is capable of rational thought; why? Because both sides are human and will therefore make mistakes, act out of spite rather than a sense of justice and so on. For those who do hold such a stance it seems that a debate is unlikely to be productive because they have already decided the answer. There is a slightly more rational way that this stance may be articulated, which is to say that the respective cause is such that any action is justified in furthering the cause.
The second and more interesting stance would be that one side’s cause is right and the other side’s is wrong. Those who hold this stance acknowledge the possibility that their side might perform actions that are wrong, even if they deny the actuality of it. So for example (I) might think that the Israeli cause is correct but that the Blockade of Gaza is wrong. This stance could be held in a variety of different strengths so for example (P) at its strongest in this stance would say that every action taken so far to advance the Palestinian cause is justified but would accept that there would be some possible actions that shouldn’t be taken. In contrast (P) at its weakest would hold that whilst the cause is justified nearly all the actions so far undertaken have been wrong.
The third stance is the ‘plague on both your houses’ stance it quite simply states that both sides are as bad as each other. I have a strong suspicion that many who adopt this stance do so to avoid actually having to argue about the issue; an understandable motivation given the passion with which it is usually debated. At this point I would need to point out that an error I have deliberately been making. I have talked about the Israeli and Palestinian cause as if each one was a single unified thing. This simply isn’t true. There are a variety of Israeli and Palestinian causes with different objectives and motivations. The reason I have allowed this to slip by is because its a blog post not an academic essay!
But I need to remind you of this for the final stance I shall outline. This stance is that neither side is simply right or wrong but rather that there are several causes and some causes are justified and some aren’t. So for example someone with this stance might hold that Israel is right in aiming to provide a homeland for the Jewish people whilst at the same time Palestinians are right in feeling that their land has been stolen. Now I feel that this is probably the write stance to adopt for a couple of reasons. First I suspect it is the closest to reflecting the actual situation. To dismiss Palestinian grievances or Israeli worries about security would be foolish and fail to appreciate both current issues and historical grievances. The second reason is that it seems like those who hold this stance will have the best chance of reaching agreement and proposing a compromise. So this is rather long but here is a simplified version of my thoughts on a situation that I’m totally unqualified to talk about. Lets see how many people I’ve offended ;-).
I suspect and hope that few people actually hold the first stance. At least in principle it should be obviously wrong to anyone who is capable of rational thought; why? Because both sides are human and will therefore make mistakes, act out of spite rather than a sense of justice and so on. For those who do hold such a stance it seems that a debate is unlikely to be productive because they have already decided the answer. There is a slightly more rational way that this stance may be articulated, which is to say that the respective cause is such that any action is justified in furthering the cause.
The second and more interesting stance would be that one side’s cause is right and the other side’s is wrong. Those who hold this stance acknowledge the possibility that their side might perform actions that are wrong, even if they deny the actuality of it. So for example (I) might think that the Israeli cause is correct but that the Blockade of Gaza is wrong. This stance could be held in a variety of different strengths so for example (P) at its strongest in this stance would say that every action taken so far to advance the Palestinian cause is justified but would accept that there would be some possible actions that shouldn’t be taken. In contrast (P) at its weakest would hold that whilst the cause is justified nearly all the actions so far undertaken have been wrong.
The third stance is the ‘plague on both your houses’ stance it quite simply states that both sides are as bad as each other. I have a strong suspicion that many who adopt this stance do so to avoid actually having to argue about the issue; an understandable motivation given the passion with which it is usually debated. At this point I would need to point out that an error I have deliberately been making. I have talked about the Israeli and Palestinian cause as if each one was a single unified thing. This simply isn’t true. There are a variety of Israeli and Palestinian causes with different objectives and motivations. The reason I have allowed this to slip by is because its a blog post not an academic essay!
But I need to remind you of this for the final stance I shall outline. This stance is that neither side is simply right or wrong but rather that there are several causes and some causes are justified and some aren’t. So for example someone with this stance might hold that Israel is right in aiming to provide a homeland for the Jewish people whilst at the same time Palestinians are right in feeling that their land has been stolen. Now I feel that this is probably the write stance to adopt for a couple of reasons. First I suspect it is the closest to reflecting the actual situation. To dismiss Palestinian grievances or Israeli worries about security would be foolish and fail to appreciate both current issues and historical grievances. The second reason is that it seems like those who hold this stance will have the best chance of reaching agreement and proposing a compromise. So this is rather long but here is a simplified version of my thoughts on a situation that I’m totally unqualified to talk about. Lets see how many people I’ve offended ;-).
Wednesday, 21 July 2010
Up again
I know no one is reading this yet, but I thought I'd restart this blog as a current affairs-philosophy style thing. So hopefully I'll get some readers at some point.
Tuesday, 4 September 2007
Going Home.
Hi all
Well its our last day in the US. We are packed and waiting to go, and can't wait to land in London. The trip has been great fun and well worth it.
And we will see you all tommorow.
Dan.
Well its our last day in the US. We are packed and waiting to go, and can't wait to land in London. The trip has been great fun and well worth it.
And we will see you all tommorow.
Dan.
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