Bias Vs. Accuracy

If there is a glass of water on the table that can hold one liter, and there is only half a liter of water in it, is it half empty or half full? 

We all know the distinction between being an optimist and being a pessimist, and I am sure we have all heard the glass of water example.  The fact is that there is half a liter in a glass that can hold a whole liter.  If we say that the glass is full, we are not being accurate, we are claiming that the glass has a whole liter of water in it when it does not.  The same would be true if we claimed that it is mostly full.  It is not mostly full if it only has ½ of a liter in it; it would have to have more than ½ a liter to be mostly full.  Of course, the same is true for the opposite: empty and mostly empty. 

Of course we also have the crazy opinion that we could talk about it being half full of air, or half empty of air.  We could even talk of it being full because it is half filled with water and half filled with air.  But, those are beyond what I want to address here and beyond what most people would consider normal. 

If we can agree on the facts, in this case the quantified volume of the water in the glass and the total capacity that the glass has, then we can agree on what is accurate and what is not.  Once we agree on ‘the numbers,’ then we can venture in to bias.  If we can’t agree on what is accurate, then there is no bias that we can agree to disagree about.  If we can’t agree on what it means to be accurate, we are condemned to argue about the interpretation of things that we have not defined. 

After all, bias is a label for interpretations that you don’t understand or agree with.  We can’t call a person an optimist when they say the glass is half full if we don’t know (or can’t agree) that the glass has half the amount of water in it that is can hold.  A person that would call a glass that is 65% full, half full is not an optimist or a pessimist but a conservative.  If they called it mostly full they would be something else, a person of a different bias.  If they called it full, they would simply be wrong. 

It is often the case that debates and arguments skip over the question of accuracy and go right to matters of bias; this is a sure way to end up with a story full of sound and fury that means (and accomplishes) nothing.  If you can’t agree on what it is that you are talking about in a fundamental way (which these days often boils down to agreeing on data, or facts) then when you disagree, you can never be sure it is because you view it differently, or because you are talking about a different it.  That is not just a waste of time of your goal is to accomplish something, but it is a sure way to create and intensify divisions between people.

Note: I see this as part of a larger thought project I am working on that deals with the rehabilitation of the concept of opinion.  In a rough way, the word ’bias’ could be replaces here with ‘opinion.’  

Neil Postman's Ecological Change

“Technological change is neither additive nor subtractive.  It is ecological.  I mean ‘ecological’ in the same sense as the word is used by environmental scientists.  One significant change generates total change.  If you remove the caterpillars from a given habitat, you are not left with the same environment minus caterpillars: you have a new environment, and you have reconstituted the conditions of survival; the same is true if you add caterpillars to an environment that has had none.  This is how ecology of media works as well.  A new technology does not add or subtract something.  It changes everything.”

-- Neil Postman from Technopoly

The world is not linear. We often explore and analyze the world as if it were, but that is just an approach that makes it easier to understand. We think in linear ways; however, the world is more complex than that.

The principle of ceteris paribus, or ‘other things being equal,’ is behind most (if not all) formulas and theories we use to explain the world in the sciences, social sciences and even the humanities. We isolate two variables and look at the relation between them, forgetting that they are not isolated at all. What this forgets is that in any living system, things do not remain the same when other things around them change. In other words: when one variable changes, all other things are not equal. Things—a lot of things— adjust, react, counteract, etc.

Back in college I wrote in one of my journals that when we dissect things we distort them. The organs of an animal are not the same shape and size when they are taken out and laid on a lab table. They are not functioning either. As soon as we cut the skin, we distort. I shared that thought with a few friends, and it didn’t seem to impress anyone. I wasn’t very familiar with Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle at that point or Schroder’s cat. I couldn’t relate it to physical science; I think that made a difference. I felt my insight was dead on arrival.

Later, I talked about things in terms of weight and balance, especially changes in tradition and society. When one thing moves or changes, other things have to adapt by either moving their weight or changing their weight: their influence or importance. When people are given more freedom, when the government relinquishes some of its power, people need to take up more responsibility. Freedom is not a pure positive, it needs a counter balance to maintain order.

For example, the liberation of Iraq and Libya from dictatorships. With the freedom that the people gained they needed to be tolerant and cooperate with one another. In both cases, they did not take up those responsibilities and the groups and factions in the country fought with each other plunging the country into chaos. Freedom did not result in progress or the betterment of society.

A little over a year ago when I read Postman’s book Technopoly, the quote above hit a chord with me. It is not just dissection that causes distortion; it is not just Heisenberg’s observer that disturbs the thing he/she is observing; it is not just about weight and balance. It is also not just ecological change, but that is a very accessible way to talk about it. When one thing changes, everything must compensate. That is why no change, however minor it may seem on the face of things, can be taken for granted. Change is change, and the effects of that change cannot be know fully until the system as a whole has adjusted itself.  

Goodbye John Stewart

Last week marked the end of an era in American television.  Thank God!

It is not that I didn’t like John Stewart.  It is not that I didn’t think he was funny.  I like him very much and thought he was very funny, as well as smart and well informed.  Even when I disagreed with his politics (which was rather often) I still thought he was funny, intelligent and well informed.  Yet, somewhere along the line I wasn’t able to enjoy watching the Daily Show.  It made me uncomfortable and not because of what was on the show. 

The problem was not with John Stewart; the problem was with the audience.  Several years ago I started to realize that people were taking the Daily Show more seriously that I was.  I am glad that I didn’t hear it back in 2007 when people started to talk about him as the most trusted man in America.  That was what I felt when I watched the show with others or talked to them about it. He was more than just a comedian; he was important.

He is a smart man, and he wants to do good.  But he was not a news man, and he was not a politician.  He was a comedian.  His method of pointing out stupidity and hypocrisy was entertaining and even sometimes enlightening.  That however should not be mistaken for a serious contribution to political or social debate.  His jokes were sound bites, one liners.  No matter how clever or truthful they are, they simply spread and even magnify the superficiality and lack of thought and reflection that characterizes public debate in the US.

He can point out people’s faults, and that is useful.  He even did so in an entertaining way, but there is so much more that needs to be done.  In addition to calling people out for hypocrisy and stupidity, we need to analyze what the roots of the problems are.  We need to think deeply and carefully about the issues and the faults in the way that the politicians and other public personas deal with (or simply talk about) them. 

Exposing what someone did or said that was wrong or stupid is only a first step.  Then the hard work of finding explanations needs to start, after that new ideas and new plans need to be developed.  Yet, most of Stewart’s audience made the assumption that because someone was called out as stupid or a hypocrite that meant that the opposition must be right, must be better.  That in itself is stupid.  But when your discourse is based on entertainment and sound bites; that is the assumption that is made.

Granted, Stewart was not much worse than most of the news media in these respects.  News in general has become a form of entertainment: fast paces, thoughtless, superficial, filled with sound bites and fury.  This is something that Neil Postman talked about already more than two decades ago:

“But what I am claiming here is not that television is entertaining but that it has made entertainment itself the natural format for the representation of all experience…. The problem is not that television presents us with entertaining subject matter but that all subject matter is presented as entertaining…”  --  Neil Postman from Amusing Ourselves To Death

Before I ever read Neil Postman, I saw in the world what Postman was talking about.  It is not that Stewart is an entertainer, it is that everything is becoming entertainment and that the audience is embracing that as something of value.  Stewart was more entertaining than regular news, therefore it must be more important and trustworthy.  

"Things Happen" and "A Gay Priest"

Jeb Bush is in the hot seat.  Again, I am not trying to defend him necessarily, I just like to point out how public debate and media are so shallow and counter-productive these days.  The fact that people are focusing on the phrase 'stuff happens' and not listening to anything else that he said or meant is sad.  It seems to show that people are almost looking to be offended, and once they are they become blind to everything else and see only what offends them. 

The main point of his statement was that laws may not fix this problem; it is more about people, and "we need to reconnect ourselves with everybody else." That can be broken down into two parts: 1) laws are not the answer and 2) we need to reconnect with the people around us on a personal and everyday level.  These can be agreed with or disagreed with and debated.  And that is a discussion than can have meaning and depth.  That can do good even if we can't agree in the end.  Harping on 'stuff happens' and being offended does no good.

http://edition.cnn.com/2015/10/02/politics/jeb-bush-donald-trump-stuff-happens/index.html

The other media issue that is being distorted this weekend is the 'gay priest at the Vatican.'  This should not be news, but it is because it is being handled in a way that makes it news.  The origin of that is the priest himself, who wants to use his story to influence the synod that opened today.  Next is the way that the media has been covering it.

That he wants to use his personal story to influence the synod is not in itself bad.  However, he shouldn’t make it a public issue and a media circus.  He should know better than to think that the Vatican will easily be swayed by outside opinion or pressure.  I think he could have a much bigger impact (especially with this Pope) by participating in the synod.  Change in the Catholic Church come more often from inside than from out. 

The media if focusing on the fact that he is homosexual than on the other things that he announced: that he was in a relationship and as such is breaking his vow of celibacy.  Gay or straight, announcing that you are in a relationship is grounds to be stripped of a post in the Vatican.  Yet, this is a fact that most media outlets has buried deep in their articles, even leaving it out from the first ones I saw.  If people have an issue with celibacy that is one thing, but making it look like the Vatican punished him just because he was gay is misrepresenting the story.

As far a being a gay priest in the Vatican, there should be no surprise that there are.  And that the policy is a sort of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ approach shouldn’t be a surprise either.  If you have vowed to be celibate, what should it matter what your orientation is? 

http://edition.cnn.com/2015/10/03/world/gay-vatican-priest-krzystof-charamsa-feat/index.html

Gun Control

Oregon College Shooting

Maybe it is time for very strict gun control laws in the US.  Maybe it is even time to scrap the second amendment.  This is not something I say lightly; it is something I say as a sad sort of resignation.Too many people are unable to handle weapons responsibly and connected to that: too many people are unable to handle stress well; too many people are unable to handle their emotions; too many people have such little respect for other’s lives. In addition to that, most people seem resigned to those facts because far more time and energy is spent on debating gun control than talking about those other issues.  The approach is to use laws to fix problems, not to look to issues in families, communities and individuals. There are mental health issues in the US (and I don’t mean mental illness, which is more severe.)  There are family issues in the US (and I don’t mean ‘family values’ issues.)  There are community issues (and I mean real communities, not online communities.)  There are issues with values and respect in the US. 
But it is more important to talk about… actually argue about gun control. Maybe if we ban guns, people will move on and pay attention to these other issues. Maybe…