A semantic argument. (Also - the answer for who came first - the chicken or the egg!)

A conversation I had recently made me think a little about how a surprising number of disagreements we have can be boiled down to a question of semantics. I want to talk about this for a bit, and then I'll give the definitive answer (literally!) to "What came first, the chicken or the egg?"

The conversation, between me and a guy trying to sell me a book that "was the first book to successfully unite Eastern and Western Philosophy" - a claim I seriously doubt. [Future topic: Advertising things as "Eastern", and why it annoys me.] - and told me it would be a spiritual awakening. [Future topic: Why am I am not a spiritual person, and this is fine.]

I explained I wasn't spiritual. This seemed to confuse him. I guess he couldn't comprehend someone openly saying they weren't spiritual in the same way I can't comprehend what it would be like to be a cat.

He pursued a line of questioning as to where we came from, and so on down. I answered as best I could with scientific answers, until we got to "And what came before the Big Bang?"

"Nobody knows, but we're working on it?"

"No," he said, triumphantly, "scientists don't know. But I call it God."

I didn't want to go down the God-of-the-Gaps route, so I asked if me meant God as The Prime Mover. He said not, but he described God as something that "is, but has no cause", and that this idea was something totally new the East could teach the West. Totally wrong, but the phrase "scientists don't know. But I call it God" stuck with me.

I realised that we could have argued about the nature of what came before the Big Bang until the end of time, and not come to an agreement because, bizarrely, we were already at some sort of an agreement: that what came before has no explanation. He left the role of explaining this to God, and I placed it on science's to-do list. That was the ONLY difference. The differences in our viewpoint on this matter purely semantic.

Once you're on the look out for it, semantic arguments are all over the place. Many politicians from all views will argue for the same things in different language, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance argues that "Romantic" and "Classical" philosophies are two ways of looking at the same thing, and don't get me started on people who debate music genres.

By doing this, it's far easier to find things in common with people. And that's always fun.

Oh, and I promised an answer to "What came first, the chicken or the egg?"

The smart-arse answer is, of course, that animals were laying eggs long before the first chicken was a glint in the Rooster's eye. But obviously the question refers to a chicken egg, right?

Or is it a chicken's egg?

If we take it as given there was a first chicken (or some degree of "chickenness", at which point we call something a chicken... it's all hypothetical) we find that the answer depends exactly on the question.

A chicken egg is one which hatches a chicken, and must (therefore) pre-date the first chicken by about three weeks.

A chicken's egg is one laid by a chicken, and the chicken must have pre-dated the egg by about four to six months.

So the answer is - it's a question of semantics.

Team Orders in F1, and Sebastian Vettel

Earlier today the FIA published their judgement on Ferrari, regarding the team orders scandal.

While Felipe Massa was leading the race, he was told to allow his team mate, Fernando Alonso past. Ferrari argue, truthfully, that Alonso is their best shot at winning a title this season, and so the move makes sense in one respect. The only problem is that team orders are explicitly banned, and Ferrari were fined $100,000 after the race for breach of the rules.

The move causes mass outrage - rightly, I think. Team orders are against the spirit of individual competition, but the rules say each team must run two drivers and compete for the championships.

In this respect, the FIA decision was probably the correct one. Any rule against team orders is totally unenforcible. The teams just have to agree a code like "Fuel saving setting Delta" or something will mean "Slow down and let your team mate past." When asked, the team says that it's a heavy setting that slows the car down drastically for a little bit, and the other driver took advantage. It may end up being totally transparent to the public, but it's defensible to the FIA.

The fact of the matter is that team orders happen. Ferrari just happened to get caught. The incident simply highlighted the fact that the team orders rule is basically unenforcible, in part because of how badly Ferrari handled it. It was clear to all that if Ferrari handled the situation slightly better they would have got away with it.

In the end, a move to scrap team orders is probably correct. Teams will recognise that blatant use of team orders will warn off talented drivers, and annoy their fans, so they will use them in moderation.



I'm getting increasingly concerned with Sebastian Vettel. Having taken a close look at his collision with Mark Webber in Turkey, I'm convinced the accident was Vettel's fault. If you watch where his left wheel is compared to the white line at the edge of the track, you see that Vettel moves over before completing the overtaking move. A glance in his mirror - or even just listening for the engine sounds - would have told him not to move over. Webber for his part was careful to leave Vettel space, and you can see he's moving right, away from Vettel just before the collision.

In Spa Vettel had a really weird collision with Jenson Button. Having watched the video over and over again, it appears that what happened was that Vettel looked up the right, and saw there was no space, so he flicked over to the left. But he did so, as he reached the braking point. The combination of steering and braking caused him to lose grip, and he lost control, hitting Button.

I hope I don't have to say, this is an extremely basic error. Steering and braking simultaneously like that is something that amateur racing drivers learn very quickly. It should never have happened. Not even to crash prone Sato.

This combined with other, rather hot headed incidents in Vettel's career, and some frankly alarming overtaking moves in Germany, I have to wander whether Vettel would be keeping his seat if he hadn't won any races.

Adverts shooting their own foot. (Game)

Game is a UK computer game shop. They sell new and pre-owned games.

Yesterday I saw one of their adverts, raising awareness of their pre-owned range. It was aimed at the FPS market. (FPS = First Person Shooter...as opposed to RPG (Role Play Game) or RTS (Real Time Strategy) - gaming is full of TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms)). The advert had the words "I'm hit!!!" on the top, with the message below it "Pre-owned bullets fly just as fast as new ones."

The message is clear. An FPS game is just as good whether you buy it new or pre-owned, but the choice of slogan there is baffling. In real life a pre-owned bullet doesn't fly faster than a new one, because it's gunpowder charge has already been used, and the bullet has likely been deformed.

Furthermore, fans of FPS gaming are likely to know this.

So who is the advert aimed at, exactly?

Richard Dawkins' Books: A Holistic* Review

* "Holistic" is used as a sort of in-joke with myself.

I have a love/hate with Richard Dawkins' books. The Selfish Gene and The Blind Watchmaker are beautiful, wonderful fantastic books. While they don't make for easy reading, this because they don't contain easy ideas. Most importantly, they play to Dawkins' strength: evolutionary biology.

In The Selfish Gene Dawkins, bit by bit, builds up an argument that - given an imperfect and competitive reproducer - evolution by natural selection is not something likely to happen, but an inevitable consequence. Anyone presented with the case that not every member of a species reproduces (obvious) and that offspring are not clones of their parents (similarly obvious) is led to the inescapable conclusion that evolution is a fact. The book is well written enough to sustain interest, and in depth enough to flatter the reader. Anyone who can read should read this book.

The Blind Watchmaker pulls a similar trick. The focus of the argument is more on emergent complexity out of apparent simplicity, and is where Dawkins starts to lose the plot in his writing - fortunately after this book. It is in this book that he starts showing interest in theology, and the introduction suggests that the book was motivated by theological arguments. In this book he does a remarkable job of he unenviable task of making the arguments clear. He comes out with some beautiful demonstrations of complexity arising from simple rules. This book is another must read.


Sadly, Dawkins is a poor theologian, and I find his more religion-focussed books poor.

In the first instance, I'll look at Unweaving The Rainbow. This book is an attempt to demonstrate the natural beauty in the world around us from a purely secular viewpoint. Sadly he has a poor crack at it. Maybe his impression is different from mine, but I'll give you an example. Chapter 3 is "Barcodes in the Stars", where he points to the heavens to look at the beauty in rainbows, and at spectra - the spectra of stars are where we discover pretty much everything about them. When you look at the spectum of a star, it looks like a rainbow with lines cut out of it. I find the process by which we analyse these lines, and deduce or induce colossal amounts of information from this to be wonderful, fantastic and brilliant. The resemblance of a stellar spectrum with a barcode is entirely secondary. And yet Dawkins uses this analogy, referring to the stars barcode.

In a book about beauty in nature this feels wrong. Forgive the laconic attitude here, but when was the last time you looked at a barcode and thought it should be on the wall in the Tate Modern? (Actually, scrap that, the Tate Modern will take pretty much anything.) Dawkins here disappoints. He has missed the point in trying to explain that things in nature aren't the most beautiful thing about it - although there are some beautiful things in nature - but processes.


Finally, and you knew it was coming, The God Delusion. As an atheist, I find this book to be a horrible parody of everything I'm supposed to stand for. I don't hate religion or the religious, I don't find religion offensive, moralising or dangerous. Dawkins veers between plain wrong, to callously offensive. He tells us, for instance, that the trouble in Northern Ireland, Isreal, and terrorism are all caused by religion in one way or another. Rubbish. While the media may have deceptively labelled the two sides in Northern Ireland "Catholics" and "Protestants", the conflicts have nothing to do with religion and everything to do with owns that piece of land. The troubles in Isreal have nothing to do with Jews and Muslims and everything to do with the native people being turfed from their land so some Western countries can artificially meddle with them, and terrorism is more related to American oil interests then religion. While some involved in these cases may use religion as an excuse, in a secular world these things would still be happening, but with different reasons cited.

While Dawkins is right that religious extremists are worrying, all extremists - religious or not - are worrying.

That isn't even the worst part of the book.

The worst part is the way Dawkins argues his case.

He says the book is for everyone. It is not. Only those who believe in his ideas will see the book through to the end. He doesn't argue against certain points sometimes, so much as just ridicule them and I fail to see how Dawkins could have thought anyone would be convinced.

Take the ontological argument, for example. The argument runs, approximately, as follows:

1. If I am thinking of the Greatest Being Thinkable, then I can think of no being greater
1a. If it is false that I can think of no being greater, it is false I am thinking of the Greatest Being Thinkable
2. Being is greater than not being
3. If the being I am thinking of does not exist, then it is false that I can think of no being greater.
4. If the being I am thinking of does not exist, then it is false that I am thinking of the Greatest Being Thinkable
Conclusion: If I am thinking of the Greatest Being Thinkable, then I am thinking of a being that exists

(From Wikipedia)

Now, you may be looking at that thinking "that doesn't quite work..." (and you'd be right) even if you can't put your finger on it. Those who use this argument like to challenge you to point out where the logical flaw is, and it isn't simple to put your finger on it. So, how does Dawkins refute this argument that, while clearly flawed, isn't obviously disprovable?

He suggests the proof is self evident, and mocks it by presenting it as an argument between a pair of children. I did not make that up.

Of course, if you know the ontological argument is rubbish, you may find this wildly hilarious (though I doubt it) but if you know God exists because of this argument you will just close the book and give it away thinking "what an idiot!"

How should Dawkins have argued the case? By breaking it down into logical steps, as follows:
1. DEFINE: A perfect being HAS THE PROPERTY OF existance.
2. DEFINE: God IS a perfect being.
3. THEREFORE God HAS THE PROPERTY OF existence.

This is a tautology. The ontological argument defines God to exist, and cannot be used to argue that God does exist. THIS is what Dawkins should have written. This how he should of argued. This is how I know he can argue.

I recently bought a copy of "The Greatest Show On Earth", but haven't read it yet. I pray to the Flying Spaghetti Monster that it is a step backwards.

On Westminister Skeptic, and the problem with skeptics

Today I went to see Frank Swain talk at Westminister Skeptic. There were a few other faces I know from the blogosphere too, which was cool.

It was nice to meet a friendly bunch of people, it was nice to meet someone who shared my view on Richard Dawkins (Hi, Irene!) - which I'll save for another post - and it was an excellent talk on "The Problem With Skeptics".

In essence, Frank argued that the skeptic community were often perceived to be aggressive and arrogant and he finished by asking "How can we challenge these people?" (These people being those who believe that homoeopathy works, and such).

In the question and answer session I proposed that the best way of talking to believers was through Socratic Questioning. This is to challenge beliefs through asking questions, rather than stating facts. There are several reasons why this works well which I didn't really have time to go into in detail, so this is my soapbox.

The first benefit of this is that it is far less confrontational than the bare display of facts. Nobody likes to be told their wrong, and this way no one tells them outright they are wrong.

It is also more engaging. Everybody loves to talk about themselves and by asking questions you invite people to talk about themselves.

Some people will never be won around. Some people fundamentally believe, for example, that Jesus Christ died on the cross and was raised from the dead. They will never be convinced otherwise. Instead of confronting them, the questioning will instead find this given straight away ("I have total faith in this belief" or something). At this point, change the subject to wiffleball, or something. You'll never convince them.

Where people can be won over, this method is far more effective than bare presentation of facts. For a start, bare presentation is, in some ways, just another argument from authority. By leading someone through the lines of reasoning by which we skeptics form our beliefs we not only lead them to what we consider to be the truth, but we also demonstrate the way of thinking that we employ which is - in my opinion - far more important.

Furthermore, it isn't patronising when done correctly. It shows confidence in the other person that are bright enough to understand our ideas. (A common criticism of skeptics is that we are arrogant by seeing to assume that non-believers won't understand it. A criticism that is not wholly unjustified.) Furthermore, by making them find the idea themselves they are more likely to understand and accept it.

A final point is that it is good for you as well. You may receive answers you were not expecting, which throws a different light on the subject you were discussing. It may challenge your views! If you are a true skeptic, you will welcome this. Furthermore, in order to convince anyone with this method you will have to be familiar with the subject matter. How many of you could convince me that the Earth orbits the Sun with nothing but a telescope and as much time as you wished?

But what is the best way to do this? It isn't particularly easy. Be careful not to simply veil criticism by phrasing as a question. Don't you think that would be most unwise? People will see straight through it.

The best way to go about this is to show an interest in someone's beliefs before asking any leading questions. This will help you establish a rapport and understand some of the nuances. Asking where a particular belief comes from, for example. You can quite often spot those who can't be won around here.

An example might go:

PERSON: I believe that Jesus died on the cross and was raised from the dead.
YOU: That's interesting. Why do you believe that?
PERSON: Because the Bible tells me so, and is the divine word of God himself.

You'd be best here not to argue the point. However, if the same person argued that evolution was a myth, you could more easily lead them to the conclusion that evolution is an inevitable result from imperfect reproduction and natural selection, by asking the right questions.

This can be done with blog posts too, even though there isn't actually a dialogue happening. All it takes is a little more work. If you want to argue a case, present the opposing viewpoint. Present it fairly and without sarcasm - if you are actually right there is no need to distort or strawman the opposition (and if you are wrong then you'll learn something). Phrase headings as questions. Not "Homoeopathy is wrong" but "Is homoeopathy correct?" to be less confrontational. When making the opposition case link to their own sources, if possible. Doing this will allow those who disagree with you to agree up to a point. Even if they don't like your conclusions they are far more likely to actually read what you've written.

I hope this is helpful.

The UK badly needs electoral reform

As I write, 612 out of 650 constituancies have been declared, and it looks like the Tories are going to just fall short of a majority.

The results also show a deep inequality in votes cast for each seat.

Nationally, there are about 2.2 seats per 100,000 votes (or each seat is 45,000 votes on average, if you prefer), but some parties were able to gain considerably more than this. The Democratic Unionist Party won 4.76 seats per 100,000 votes. Labour and the Tories came in at 3.02 and 2.86 respectively.

As a result of this proportional representation would cost the Tories 68 seats and Labour 67.

At the other end of the scale some parties did quite badly out of First Past The Post. Four parties gained more than 45,000 votes but no seats. While I disagree with the politics of these parties (half a million people voted BNP. Really?) the principle that votes = representation must override the knee jerk reaction saying that any system keeping the BNP and UKIP out of parliament is worth the price.

It isn't worth it. Democratic principles are more important than political ones.

The really big winners of proportional representation would be the Lib Dems, who got 22% of the vote to win 8% of the seats. Out of parties who got seats, the Lib Dems were made to work second hardest with 0.8 seats per 100,000 votes. Green Party are next with 1 seat for their 264,000 votes (0.38 seats per 100,000 votes).

Clearly there are massive inequalities. 1.8 million people cast votes for parties which didn't win a seat, yet those votes should be worth around 41 seats. Why is a vote for Labour 8 times more valuable than a vote for Green.

To whoever gets in power, we need electoral reform, and we need it soon.

The upcoming UK election: why I'm voting Lib Dem

For the first time since I was born, it seems the Lib Dems are actually in with a shot of getting hold of some proper power.

Here's why I'm voting for them: it's between Labour and Lib Dems in my constituency and I really don't want to see labour get in for a fourth term. Governments are like nappies: they need to be changed regularly and for the same reason.

I'm sick of broken promises and a total attitude of don't-give-a-fuck-what-the-electorate-thinks regarding war in Iraq, ID Cards, 40 day detention, etc... I also believe Labour's policies regarding crime are totally counter-productive.

By making more and more things an imprisonable offence in an effort to appear tough on crime, they're actually filling up jails with people who don't need to be there, meaning people guilty of violent crimes are given a slap on the wrist.

Lib dems want to increase the use of community service terms, which are shown to reduce re-offending rates (unlike prison, which increases them). They have also expressed a commitment to support science funding, which I like. They also say they'll reduce to the curriculum and afford teachers more decision making in what they actually teach.

Their commitment to electoral reform also rings well with me, as I believe first past the post to be inherently unfair. Lib Dems are the only party to acknowledge that immigration can be a good thing.

The Lib Dems also came out pretty well from the expenses scandal; the most anyone could pin on them, it seems, is an egregious packet of Hobnobs. Finally, regarding the economy, it is common opinion (although I don't have the expertise to judge) that Vince Cable is the most competent treasurer.

I realise I have pretty much ignored the Tories here. This is for two reasons: 1. as I said nera the start, they're way behind on votes in my area, and 2. a hard cap on immigration, are you fucking mad, Mr. Cameron? 3. The most egregious piss takers in the expenses scandal. 4. I just don't trust them.

So there you are: get out there on May 6th, and vote yellow.