Newsnight, Bryan Appleyard

I have become addicted to the nightly financial doom-fest that is Newsnight. This is eating into important reading and sleeping time and also making me depressed. What, I keep wondering, does 'the abyss' actually look like? Are we going to be just a bit poorer over the next decade or are we going to be eating each other?

Anyway, Bryan Appleyard popped up on it last night, talking (too briefly, Paxman was useless) about the brain. He has a new book out today called The Brain is Wider than the Sky. I'm halfway through the review copy (reviews and other exciting Yard-related things will appear on The Dabbler soon) and I can tell you you should buy it.

You should also go and read and comment on his blog, which is alive again.

Dabbler latest

Over at The Dabbler (beta) two terrific posts to brighten your weekend - Susan discovers a gloriously anachronistic tailor, and the Yard makes his Dabbler debut with an analysis of a stunning movie still.

We have been working hard on the proper, full-blooded Wordpress version of The Dabbler, and though holiday, illness, technical incompetence and the slings and arrows of et cetera have delayed things somewhat, we hope to launch in the next few days. Stay tuned...

The Yard update

The Yard has asked me to tell you that he's back blogging, or intends to be soon, at this shiny new location.

He's also taken up retrogressive photography, as you can see from his homepage.

Some blog-based auguries, possibly related to the Ides of March

Unsettlingly, the Yard has once again vanished from the face of the Blogscape. Were it not for the occasional feeble emission informing us that something Appleyardish has appeared in the Sunday Times, we would have no firm reason to believe he still exists in blogform at all. Should we send out a search party or posse?

I thought I’d found a clue in the Tobacco Factory – a trendy pub/café-bar/theatre in the Southville area of Bristol. ‘Aha! Here he is at last!” I said, upon spotting this sign:

I followed its arrow along corridors and through double-doors, fully confident that I would in some nook find the man himself tapping away at a laptop in consoling cowboy boots.

But alas, it was some sort of trick or red herring or diversion or prank, or else the Yard had fled before I got there, because after much walking I found nothing but benches, smokers and concrete slabs.

Blogdreaming, as we know, is one of the first signs of Blogmadness. This is where, in the words of Nige, one’s bodiless blog regulars become ‘shadowily present’ in one’s slumbers. But what happens when Bloggery, unbidden, begins to invade wakeful reality? Is it a tear in the fabric of The Matrix? Are these auguries, or auspices, or anything to do with the Ides of March (which I believe technically just refers to the 15th but which has, since Shakespeare, taken on an elusively sinister cultural significance)?

Imagine, if you can, the icy chill that gripped me as I pulled up on the pavement outside my house and saw this car number plate in front.

What is happening here? If these auguries aren’t something to do with the Ides of March then I don’t know what is. And if they are something to do with the Ides of March then I’m still not sure what is; it’s one of those difficult expressions.

Appleyard versus Portillo 2

Not really a successful discussion programme: too short, too many guests and too broad and therefore shallow. You can watch it on iPlayer here. I’m spoiled now by (good) blogs as far as debating goes, I think. Dinner with Portillo is probably the best that telly can do.

But it was quite rib-tickling from the point of view of a Thought Experiments reader with experience of the Way of the Yard. Bryan made about four utterances each of which fell stillborn into baffled silence. The other guests plus Portillo appeared to be suspicious of him; and rightly so since the Yard was starting from a position in which he took it as read that describing science as ‘amoral’ is meaningless because apart from a very narrow series of actions, eg. in the lab or at the computer, everything about any kind of science – from the rationale for the research and the justification for the funding through to the use of the results – is moral. Therefore all the obvious rhetorical points which you might expect to hear in a sixth-form debate about science and morality can be skipped. The rest of the guests listened to him, nodded warily and proceeded to make all the obvious rhetorical points which you might expect to hear in a sixth-form debate about science and morality. The Yard looked tired and picked the carbs out of his dinner.

Appleyard versus Portillo

The Yard is on telly tonight, which explains why he has removed himself from the country. Scoffing and Waffling with Portillo - 21.10 on BBC 4.

Should be a keenly fought meal, as it's about science and morals.

Freedom and surveillance

The Yard has a review of the noughties in the Sunday Times. This line struck me:

The British, watched by a greater density of CCTV cameras than any other nation, have been keen to swap freedom for security.

The direct association between an increase in CCTV cameras and a decrease in freedom is pretty much a given in the perennial freedom vs security debates. Those of us with conservative leanings instinctively baulk at the idea of surveillance. Orwell obviously looms over this issue, but so does a long British tradition of mistrusting officialdom and espionage.

But does the assumption that a tolerance of CCTV cameras equals a willingness to ‘swap freedom for security’ really stand up to scrutiny? A few things spring to mind:

First, although it might be theoretically possible for Big Brother to watch you every step of your journey from, say, Bristol Temple Meads to Piccadilly Circus, practically speaking Big Brother lacks the competence, the budget and the will to do so. In reality, most CCTV footage is not monitored in real time for sinister purposes, but reviewed after an incident when it might (or might not) assist in a conviction.

In other words, there are a lot of people in the world and you are much less interesting and important than you think you are. Big Brother could be watching you, but he can’t really be bothered.

Second, the existence of a camera does not by itself affect your freedom to do something in public - such as walk your dog, protest against the Iraq invasion or start a business - merely your ability to do it unobserved. So the freedom that is directly affected by CCTV is the freedom to do something in a public space without being seen. This is quite a specific freedom. Did it ever exist? Is it a fundamental human right? When you come to think about it, is ‘freedom’ the right word or is security verses privacy a better description for the debate?

It could be that CCTV is a trivial issue which, because it feels icky and Orwellian, is given far too much weight in freedom/security musings. What about the surveillance technologies that move beyond shopping centres and railway stations to enter our homes? Amazon and Tesco know what you like because they spy on you through your computer or your Loyalty card. But that’s not so much 'security versus freedom' as 'privacy versus convenience'. And we can, after all, turn cookies off or refuse a Loyalty card.

But the idea that CCTV proves a decline of freedom seems overly simplistic – the world changes and we have different but not necessarily fewer freedoms. You can’t lurk unrecorded in a dark alley or smoke in a pub but you can marry someone of your own sex or go to that pub or to the supermarket on a Sunday afternoon. None of which is to deny the feeling of ickiness when we confront the extent to which our privacy can be easily invaded. As ever, I have no answer except to say that most things that are assumed to be true turn out to be wrong.

Death

Following the Purdy case, the Yard writes about assisted suicide. The legal position of relatives who assisted with Swiss death trips was previously in a typically fudgy British grey area: illegal but unprosecuted. The Blind Eye was turned. Now we are apparently being forced to shine some legal light on this dark business.

It seems to me that the problem with the assisted suicide debate is that an unstoppable force of a principle meets an immovable object of an argument:

1) each individual should have the final say over how and when he dies – it is no business of the State.
2) a life must have an objective value beyond the worth accorded to it by the individual at any given time - because otherwise we have no obligation to discourage someone who is merely depressed from committing suicide.

This is another interesting instance of the left-right political distinction breaking down, or becoming counter-intuitive. Those on the Left are generally pro-death because of 1, but pro-universal state healthcare because of 2. Position 1 is libertarian but conservatives tend to be anti-death because of 2.

Terry Pratchett was on BBC Breakfast this morning arguing for assisted suicide, but he was soon struggling as the interviewer ran through the slippery slope arguments. Pratchett talked about how in Victorian times doctors would routinely ‘make people comfortable’, ie. kill them softly. The name ‘Shipman’ wasn't spoken but must surely have leapt to everyone’s lips.

There just isn’t a single argument or great, overriding trump card that can win this one and so it defies clean legislation, every attempt at which appears to make things worse. We had the least bad solution already: the British Fudge, the Blind Eye. This is conservatism, I suppose.

John Portsmouth Football Club Westwood

This man is an antiquarian bookseller.

No really, he is. His name is John Portsmouth Football Club Westwood. He changed his name by deed poll in 1989*.

John Portsmouth Football Club Westwood goes to every Portsmouth game, home and away. He rings a bell, whacks a drum and plays a tuneless trumpet for the duration of the game, no matter what is happening on the pitch. He is the most probably the most recognisable football fan in Britain and he’s often on television.

In real life, John Portsmouth Football Club Westwood looks younger and thinner than he does on television. I know this because last Sunday my father, my uncle and I sat in the JJB stadium, Wigan, amongst the travelling Portsmouth fans. We had been given free tickets to the final game of the season because we went to a wedding at the stadium the day before.

I don’t support Portsmouth but I ‘look out for them’ because I was born in the city. I was taken to a few games at Fratton Park in the 1980s, when the team contained players such as Neil Webb and Vince Hilaire. I can’t remember any of the other players, but John Portsmouth Football Club Westwood can because he knows everything about Portsmouth Football Club. He has written a book called The True Pompey Fan's Miscellany.

The game was a meaningless one in the sense that both teams were safe from relegation and could gain nothing much by winning. The Pompey fans - there were thousands of them – made a 600-mile round trip to watch a meaningless football match. They sang throughout. John Portsmouth Football Club Westwood led the singing, rang his bell, banged his drum and played his tuneless trumpet. There is no such thing as a meaningless Portsmouth match to John.

Portsmouth played some reserve players because it was a meaningless game. Most of the Portsmouth fans who made the 600-mile round trip to watch reserve players play a meaningless football match wear replica tops. John Portsmouth Football Club Westwood wears a novelty Pompey top hat, a blue and white dreadlock wig, a blue-check vest, shorts and a pair of tattered blue-check clown shoes. Portsmouth played badly and lost 1-0.

Many of the Portsmouth fans who made a 600-mile round trip to watch a meaningless football match in which their team played badly and lost 1-0 have Portsmouth tattoos. John Portsmouth Football Club Westwood has 60 Portsmouth tattoos on his body. He wears a blue check vest and shorts so you can see some of them.

John Portsmouth Football Club Westwood hasn’t missed a Portsmouth game, home or away, since 1980. He has a Wikipedia entry and an obscene definition in the Urban Dictionary. He has appeared on the BBC’s Video Nation series and on the cover of a book by American writer Chuck Culpepper.

John Portsmouth Football Club Westwood has 60 Portsmouth tattoos on his body and the club crest shaved on to his head. He changed his name by deed poll in 1989. Portsmouth played badly and lost 1-0 in a meaningless game. John Portsmouth Football Club Westwood rang his bell. He has "PFC" engraved on his teeth.

John Portsmouth Football Club Westwood has strange sad eyes and has been thrown out of several grounds for being drunk and disorderly. Many people want to have their photograph taken with him because he rings a bell, wears a novelty Pompey top hat and is often on television. John Portsmouth Football Club Westwood is an antiquarian bookseller and he has 60 Portsmouth tattoos on his body, the club crest shaved on to his head and "PFC" engraved on his teeth and he rings a bell.

John Portsmouth Football Club Westwood wants to eat Portsmouth Football Club and to be eaten by it. John Portsmouth Football Club Westwood is called Portsmouth Football Club and his body is Portsmouth Football Club and he rings a bell. John Portsmouth Football Club Westwood is running out of places to go and he has strange sad eyes. John Portsmouth Football Club Westwood.
John Portsmouth
Football Club Westwood
John Portsmouth
FootballClubWestwood
John
Portsmouth
FootballClub

Westwood.

Torture and the Non-Obvious Appleyard

I had been musing on Skipper’s comment on Bryan’s post about torture, trying to work out why I disagreed with Skipper when his argument seemed so coherent. Eventually I realised the answer and was going to post a reply but I had too much real-life flotsam and jetsam to clear in the meantime, so now I’m putting it here instead.

A key purpose of Bryan’s blog is to make generalist but non-obvious points. When you read his posts, therefore, you should hesitate before ascribing an obvious position to him. The obvious debate when it comes to state-sanctioned torture is the position torture is always absolutely wrong versus the position torture is regrettable but in some circumstances permissible.

Skipper’s argument – which, as always in his case, is logical and uncluttered – is for the latter position against the former. Skipper shows that it makes no sense to say that torture is absolutely wrong in all cases, because we can always construct hypotheticals (however outlandish and rare) in which the only moral conclusion is that torture is necessary (think 24*).

Skipper believes that he has thus shown Bryan’s argument to be, in his words, ‘piffle’. The first part of understanding why Skipper is wrong is to remember to look for the non-obvious in Appleyard. The second part can be found in Peter Burnet’s brilliantly insightful comment here in which he identifies commonalities between the American and the French philosophical approaches, in contrast to the English tradition, including: “The tendency to deduce from ideological opening premises in politics and law [and] the equation of government with "state" rather than "community"…”

In the American tradition, Skipper deduces policy from first principles. Since he has shown the principle “torture is always absolutely wrong” to be obviously flawed, he deduces policy from the opposite position; thus Goverments should act based on the principle that “torture is in some (rare) circumstances permissible”.

But from the British perspective, whereby policy and law are not deduced but emerge piecemeal and pragmatically from our liberal traditions (bottom up, not top down), then although Skipper’s framework is solid, he has built the scaffolding upside down. For Appleyard, the assumption that state-sanctioned torture is absolutely wrong is just part of what makes the Anglo Liberal West the Anglo Liberal West. It is not a naïve assumption because along with it is the grim acceptance that we will inevitably lapse (or as Bryan has it, ‘revert’ to our ‘fallen’ natures) and turn a blind eye to any torture which incumbent Governments have deemed necessary. But expecting that this will occur cannot itself represent a philosophical stance. Instead, torture must remain an absolute wrong regardless of efficacy, even though wrong things will inevitably happen, humans being what they are.

As well as being just the traditional British way, there are practical advantages to this approach. We resist both right-wing American and left-wing European calls to enshrine a British Constitution or Bill of Rights - even though it seems so obviously reasonable and good - because instinctively we are suspicious of moving away from a default where everything that is not explicitly forbidden is permitted, to one where everything that is not explicitly permitted is forbidden.

And in the torture debate, Bryan’s non-obvious argument for all torture being absolutely wrong avoids some big practical problems which Skipper’s more obvious argument has to deal with. If we start with a Government principle along the lines of “torture is forbidden unless exceptional circumstances demand it”, then the debates about what constitutes torture and what constitute exceptional circumstances open up and the slippery slopes await. Recognising this, Skipper comes up with some safeguards involving expert medical pronouncements for the former problem, and judgements on proportionality of the danger on the second. But the potential for abuse is glaring, because by enshrining a principle that torture is sometimes ok, torture becomes, in the right circumstances, not just respectable but a moral obligation on the state. (Torture's efficacy, note, is just assumed.)

Skipper’s argument seemed obviously right at first glance, but as ever, look for the non-obvious and even the most basic first principles wobble, bringing the whole scaffolding crashing down.

Anyway, the reason I couldn’t write this earlier is that I was putting books into boxes, and boxes into the attic. Mostly philosophical tomes which I haven’t opened since university and thus I’m no longer sure if they’re genuine reading matter or just props. Flicking through my Back Pages –Kant, Spinoza, Leibniz, Marx, even Dawkins – I realised that while I sort of remember reading this stuff, I have little connection with the person who read them. My ‘education’ in the decade since appears to have been a process of stripping away almost everything I once assumed, everything that was once obvious. But I was so much older then....

The books are going into the attic to make way (against the advice of my internet pals) for the nursery. The strange thing is that almost any idiot is allowed to bring up a baby – you don’t need a degree or even a license. In the place of the philosophical texts the shelves are to be filled with children’s books, many of which are coming down from various family attics. So it goes, so it goes, eh?



*Perhaps the biggest disservice that 24 has done to the torture debate is not so much to suggest that good people sometimes have to do it, but to suggest that it always works. The baddies who undergo torture always either resist to the point of death or crack and reveal the truth. Thus the question of efficacy is removed from the debate, and the only dilemma is whether it is morally acceptable to torture one (very very bad) person in order to save many innocents. Since 24 offers up an endless series of Skipper’s outlandish hypotheticals, it’s always a no-brainer. Staying in fiction, contrast Le Carre’s spy novels, in which agents are trained to spew out convincing disinformation when under duress, so that torture doesn’t work.