South African students call for the “fall of colonizing Western science” and its replacement by “separate ways of knowledge”

October 14, 2016 • 9:00 am

I don’t know much about this video sent by reader Jason, but apparently it’s a meeting between the science faculty of UCT (The University of Cape Town) and a group of students calling for the “decolonization of science”—that “Western science must fall” and be “scratched out” because “Western knowledge is totalizing.” The hashtag #ScienceMustFall is apparently a going thing in South Africa.

The one student speaking demands a new science that incorporates the protestors’ own “separate knowledge”. But what is that “separate knowledge”? She mentions only one phenomenon that she credulously accepts: one group believes that you can send lightning to strike someone through black magic.  But she adduces no evidence, only the claim that “some people believe this” and then demands “can you can explain that scientifically?” I’d like to see a demonstration first!

One of our South African readers sent out this tw**t that gives a link to an article about #ScienceMustFall:

The article, by an anonymous author at My Broadband, takes apart some of this student’s claims, and you can see more discussion at the #ScienceMustFall site (most of it denigrates that “movement”).

It’s dangerous for people to claim that there are “other ways of knowledge” besides science—knowledge that includes black magic. These other ways are touted by postmodernists, humanities professors, and some feminists, but, as far as I can see, they haven’t led to substantive knowledge. Science is now a universal practice, with real knowledge produced by those of all faiths, nations, and ethnicities, but attempts to “scratch out” Western science (which is no longer Western) are doomed to failure. One example is Lysenkoism: a genetic “theory” enforced on Russia by Stalinist ideology, and the result was massive crop failure and starvation.

This is not, of course, to say that valuable knowledge can be produced by non-scientists. Many of our medicines, for instance, derive from “folk remedies” produced by indigenous people (quinine for malaria is one example). But ultimately, the value of these things must be demonstrated by scientific testing.

Readers’ wildlife photos

October 14, 2016 • 7:30 am

I’m in a rush this morning, so will show only two photographs. As happens so often, we have some timely pictures by Stephen Barnard from Idaho; his notes are indented:

 

Bald Eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus). Desi hunting for fish over Loving Creek.

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Lucy [Desi’s mate] seemed wistful visiting the vacated nest, but maybe that’s my anthropomorphism.

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American Kestrel (Falco sparverius):

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Bull moose (Alces alces) kicking up mayflies across Loving Creek.

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Friday: Hili dialogue

October 14, 2016 • 6:48 am

It’s Friday, October 14, and thus the first day of Coynefest. Posting will be nearly nonexistent until Monday, as the symposium goes till tomorrow noon, and then there’s a party out in Indiana. . .  With luck, Grania will keep the Hili dialogues going, and perhaps host a Caturday felid.  On this day in 1066, the Normans defeated the British at the Battle of Hastings, and in 1322, Robert the Bruce defeated the forces of Edward II at Byland, producing an independent Scotland (for a while). On this day in 1908, the Chicago Cubs won the World Series, defeating the Detroit Tigers. The Cubs haven’t won since–a sore spot for Cubbies fans! On this day in 1926, Winnie-the-Pooh was published (see below; it’s the 90th anniversary), and, in 1947, Chuck Yeager exceeded the speed of sound flying the experimental plane the Bell X-1.  On this day in 1962, the Cuban missile crisis began when a U.S. reconnaissance plane spotted Russian missile launchers in Cuba. I well remember my father, who was in the Army then, telling us that he may have to be “deployed”. That is the closest the U.S. has come to a nuclear war.

Notables born on this day include Dwight Eisenhower (1890) and Lillian Gish (1893). Those who died on this day include King Harold of England, killed in the Battle of Hastings (1066), Errol Flynn (1959), Bing Crosby (1977), Leonard Bernstein (1990), and Big Moe (2007).  Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili has had the privilege of sleeping in the staff’s bed, where Cyrus is not allowed. Hili manages to mix a friendly greeting with an assertion of superiority:

 

Hili: I missed you.
Cyrus: Where have you been?
Hili: I was sleeping in their bed where you aren’t allowed to sleep.
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In Polish:
Hili: Stęskniłam się za tobą.
Cyrus: A gdzie byłaś?
Hili: Spałam na ich łóżku, tam gdzie ty nie możesz spać.

Coynefest tomorrow

October 13, 2016 • 3:30 pm

A final reminder that everyone is invited to CoyneFest, which is a symposium at which my former students, colleagues, and other folks I know will give short (20-minute) science talks, mostly on the subject of speciation. The details have already been given (you can find them here), but I wanted to add that you’ll have the chance, for making a very small donation to charity (Doctors Without Borders) to get a commemorative button, designed by artist Tubby Fleck:

coynefest-buttons

Is there such a thing as a non-negative campaign ad?

October 13, 2016 • 1:30 pm

Although I don’t watch much television, I do watch the evening news, and sometimes leave on the local news after that. And when I wake up, I listen to the morning headlines and weather as I get dressed. But even in this small window of time I hear plenty of campaign ads. And all of them, almost without exception, are negative. Virtually none of them give real positions on issues by the candidate (I did hear one this morning by a candidate saying he supports “a woman’s right to choose”, but that’s the rare exception). They involve tearing down the other candidate. I even heard an ad for a Republican candidate showing nasty clips of both Clinton and Trump, thereby disassociating himself with Trump—a tactic that may or may not be good in November.

While negative campaigning has been ubiquitous for a while, it now seems omnipresent. I date the modern era of Negative Campaigning from the famous anti-Goldwater “daisy” ad promulgated by LBJ supporters in 1964. If you haven’t seen it, implying that a Goldwater Presidency would lead to nuclear war, have a look. It was remarkably effective (be sure you put the sound on).

And I wonder what it is that has caused this change. Perhaps research has shown that negative ads are more effective than positive ones. Perhaps politics is simply getting more divisive, though I don’t really know why. Perhaps both are true. But what is clear is that the tenor of our political discourse is debased: we are reduced to calling each other names. And that’s not how democracy is supposed to function. It’s sad, and it’s why I don’t watch debates.

Examples can be found on both Right- and Left-wing sites. Because I lean Left, I particularly hate negativity among liberals. Here, for example, is the headline on today’s HuffPo page: a site that reeks of brimstone:

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“Monster”? HuffPo is descending into complete, abject lunacy, not only calling Trump a “monster” but using any accusation, real or simply out there, that can to defeat him. The thing is, Trump’s already lost (if you don’t think so, email me and we’ll make a bet), and those who read the site aren’t going to vote for him anyway. In fact, HuffPo resembles my Facebook page, full of good liberal “friends” who can’t stop posting about Trump’s latest perfidies—especially his sexual behavior. I don’t quite get it.

A year of panda cubs in Toronto

October 13, 2016 • 12:30 pm

Seriously, is there anything cuter than giant panda cubs? I can’t think of anything, and that includes Pallas’s Cat kittens. Take 3½ minutes to watch this video from the Toronto Zoo, showing the first year in the life of two new cubs. The YouTube description:

On October 13, 2015 the Toronto Zoo announced the birth of the first giant panda cubs born in Canada. Both Jia Panpan (Canadian Hope) and Jia Yueyue (Canadian Joy) have been a delight to watch as they have grown from two very small and vulnerable cubs to healthy and thriving youngsters and Toronto Zoo staff have appreciated each and every milestone they have reached. The challenges balanced with the number of joyous moments over the last 365 days have provided a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for us here at the Toronto Zoo, and we are thankful to everyone who shared it with us along the way.

Now my hope would be that these cubs would be returned to the wild, but I suspect that’s not on: they’ll serve as entertainment and as a source of dosh for the zoo. But these animals belong in the wild (granted, their habitat is vanishing), so what are we doing confining them in jails for their whole lives?

Panda fact: their scientific name is  Ailuropoda melanoleuca, which means “cat-footed black and white” (remember that fear of cats is “ailurophobia”).

h/t: Michael

Are we atheists or an agnostics?: A discussion by Matt Dillahunty

October 13, 2016 • 11:00 am

Here’s a nice 27-minute video by atheist (and former fundamentalist) Matt Dillahunty, discussing the meaning of the terms “atheist” and “agnostic”. Matt makes a number of points, nearly all of which I support, but then says one thing that I want to chew over a bit.  Here’s what I see as a summary of the talk:

  • There’s a difference between “soft” and “hard” atheism, with the former being “I don’t believe in gods” and the latter being “I believe there are no gods.” This distinction sounds reasonable to me.
  • A theist is someone who believes that a God exists, so an “a-theist” is someone who does not believe a god exists. That is, Matt sees an “atheist” as a “soft atheist.”
  • However, he doesn’t feel strongly about terminology. What’s important to him, and I fully agree, is that in debates or arguments each person understands what everyone means by the term. Often, Matt thinks, people squabble about the meaning of “atheist” as a way of avoiding the substantive issues: the weight of evidence for the existence of gods.
  • “Atheism” simply denotes the state of one’s belief in gods; it has nothing to do per se with secular humanism or social justice, which are separate movements. One might see a connection between all these movements, but the term “atheist” itself does not imply uniform positions on other issues, nor does it compel one to adopt positions on other issues.
  • One shouldn’t define atheist as someone who “lacks a belief in God.” As Matt argues, that implies that atheists are missing something—and is a pejorative connotation.
  • What about agnosticism, which Matt sees as some attempt to find a middle ground between “hard” and “soft” atheism? There’s a good discussion about why he sees this as a non-starter, because the idea behind agnosticism—that you ‘just don’t know’—is ambiguous. It could refer either to your refusal to answer the question, or to your dithering about what you really think about God’s existence. (If you don’t accept gods, you’re simply an atheist.) I, too, see the term “agnostic” as a weasel word, something that people use (sometimes admittedly) when they think the term “atheist” is too jarring or off-putting. (Matt sees it as a misguided attempt to claim intellectual superiority). We should just ditch the term. If you don’t accept gods, whether or not you aver that they don’t exist, you’re an a-theist: an atheist.

My one quibble with Matt’s discussion is his claim that atheism is superior because it abjures any burden of proof. Theists must adduce proof that their god exists; hard atheists, claiming that no gods exist, must also give evidence for their claim. I actually don’t like the word “proof”, as that’s a word scientists don’t use with respect to existence claims. We should simply talk about the degree and strength of the evidence, avoiding the usual theist demand that we must “prove” that God doesn’t exist.

Now is it often said that the burden of evidence lies solely on the theist, and without that the atheist can just reject claims about God.  I think it’s a bit more complex than that. If a theist adduces evidence for God—say the “First Cause Argument,” the “Fine Tuning Argument” or miracles, or any of the other stuff they use to support a deity—then those arguments have to be met. And they’re often met with empirical arguments, say with the rejection of causality that is part of modern physics, or the possibility of multiverses that could overturn fine-tuning. This all requires evidence of a sort, or at least arguments about evidence that are the normal part of science.

My quibble, then, involves more than equating atheism with simple “nonacceptance of gods.” It can even involve atheists adducing positive evidence: evidence that the world is not structured in the way a beneficent or omnipotent God would have constructed it. The existence of unexplained physical evils, like leukemia in children, the “poor design” of many animals and plants—all of this, too, is a sort of “burden of disproof” that lies on atheist shoulders. As Victor Stenger emphasized: “The absence of evidence is evidence for absence—if that evidence should be there.” And that applies to gods as much as it does to Bigfoot or Nessie. Note that Stenger equated “absence of evidence” with a kind of “evidence.”

This may be parsing Matt’s argument too finely, but I didn’t want to let the claim persist that atheists don’t have to adduce evidence—that ours is just a movement of simple rejection. It’s not: we proceed using rationality and empiricism, like good scientists evaluating existence claims.

Chess players’ objections grow over hijab requirement at World Championships, and a story about Oriana Fallaci

October 13, 2016 • 9:00 am

I‘ve posted several times about the decision of FIDE, the international chess organization, to host its Women’s World Championship in Iran next February, requiring players to don the hijab (headscarf). American champion Nazí Paikidze-Barnes objected, refusing to abide by the misogynistic covering laws of Iran and saying she’d boycott the championship. Here’s an update:

First, Nazí’s petition, which began, as I recall, with a goal of 1000 signatures, now has over 15,000. Click on the screenshot below to go to the change.org petition, and please add your name if you agree with her and haven’t yet signed. My big wish was that only half of the subscribers to this site would sign it, and that would be over 20,000 signatures alone! Sadly, I couldn’t rouse that much enthusiasm, but perhaps I can persuade a few more of you to sign. The goal will increase as each previous goal is met, so it’s an open-ended petition with no expiration date I can see. Paikidze-Barnes notes that, in forcing participants to wear hijabs, FIDE is violating its own regulations, as the organization “rejects discriminatory treatment for national, political, racial, social or religious reasons or on account of sex.” Mandatory veiling is, of course, discrimination against women.

And Pikidze-Barnes does offer alternative solutions:

  • Change the venue or postpone the competition until another organizer is found to host the championship in a “no conflict” venue.
  • Require that wearing a hijab be optional and guarantee no discrimination based on gender, nationality, or any other human rights as pointed out in the FIDE handbook (listed above).

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As CNS News reports, Nazí’s pettion is gaining supporters:

Former world chess champion Garry Kasparov expressed his backing in a series of tweets.

“Hosting an official championship in a repressive theocracy demanding all participants wear hijab is bad even for this corrupt FIDE admin,” he said in one.

“I hope the world’s chessplayers, women and men, find the courage to protest FIDE’s decision,” said another. “Women’s rights are human rights.

Carolina Lujan, an Argentinian woman grandmaster who is one of 64 women around the world who qualifies for the 2017 women’s championship, said in a social media post she was surprised at the FIDE decision to allow Iran to host the event, “knowing some of the laws of this country in relation to human rights and especially those of women.”

“I consider it a danger to me to take part in a competition in a country where by law they can force me to wear hijab or forbid me to work with my trainer in a closed room,” she wrote. “It also scares me that a misunderstanding or my ignorance of the country’s culture can produce an offense that can have me arrested or worse.”

Lujan said she does not intend to boycott the championship, but said she had written to FIDE’s women’s commission to air her concerns, “in the hope they help us finding a solution.”

British grandmaster Nigel Short has called the FIDE decision to hold the event in Tehran “scandalous,” and Emil Sutovsky, an Israeli grandmaster who is president of the non-profit Association of Chess Professionals, is urging people in the chess fraternity who share Paikidze-Barnes’ views to speak out.

“I know very well from the conversations with many top women players, that they are unhappy about the venue,” he wrote on Facebook. “I imagine that there are many [national chess] federations who see a clear problem – but still, no clear stand, no statement, no protest.”

Now it’s a bit cowardly for Lujan to protest so vehemently and still take place in the championship, but I do understand that her international ranking would be affected by her opting out. That’s why Paikidze-Barnes’s stand is so courageous. But I still find it puzzling that FIDE would not only violate its own principles and allow sex discrimination in a secular venue (a chess championship, after all, is not held in a mosque), but also require chess players, who are notoriously picky about the conditions of play (remember Bobby Fisher’s complaints about temperature?), to suddenly have to play wearing a covering on their head.

Sadly, FIDE appears to be holding firm, and bad on them:

Sutovsky also said he had received an answer from FIDE to an inquiry about the championship in Tehran: “the contract with Iran is signed, and the players will be required to follow all the local laws in regards to dressing.”

That’s simply reprehensible, but is not surprising in these days of the Regressive Left not only going along with veiling, but positively celebrating it.

I want to add another tale of a gutsy women defying veiling regulations Iran. That woman was the Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci, who died in  2006 but had been famous for her penetrating interviews, often requiring not just courage to ask hard questions, but simple physical courage. One example is her interview with the Iranian mullah Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979. Daled Amos’s website tells the tale:

For the interview, Fallaci was told she would have to  wear a chador, an open cloak worn by many women in Iran, during the interview,

Which she did.

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For a while.

During her interview with Ayatollah Khomeini, Fallaci called him a “tyrant,” removed the chador, and threw it to the ground:

OF: I still have to ask you a lot of things. About the “chador”, for example, which I was obliged to wear to come and interview you, and which you impose on Iranian women…. I am not only referring to the dress but to what it represents, I mean the apartheid Iranian women have been forced into after the revolution. They cannot study at the university with men, they cannot work with men, they cannot swim in the sea or in a swimming-pool with men. They have to do everything separately, wearing their “chador”. By the way, how can you swim wearing a “chador”?

AK: None of this concerns you, our customs do not concern you. If you don’t like the Islamic dress you are not obliged to wear it, since it is for young women and respectable ladies.

OF: This is very kind of you, Imam, since you tell me that, I’m going to immediately rid myself of this stupid medieval rag. There!

Ms. Paikidze-Barnes is in that proud tradition, and it pains me to envision a group of non-Muslim women playing chess in a big room while wearing headscarves. It’s the very picture of religious subjugation of women.

h/t: Malgorzata