articles of the week

After the Renaissance, the Reformation. The sunny days of progress transformed to stormy years of relentless religious and political conflict. The link between them of course was the printing press, and the sudden explosion and dissemination of thousands of conflicting ideas and nostrums. The development of the Internet has proved to be the same dangerous catalyst for our own times. So it’s worth considering carefully what is going on. This week we showcase two articles from the Conversation which do exactly that.

The first by Rotem Perach, Deborah Husbands and Tom Buchanan, from the prestigious University of Westminster highlights this wave of misinformation. Most chillingly, how people cheerfully spread it even when they know it to be false. The second by Dorje C Brody[2] looks at why. The basic problem is confirmation bias-when people are asked to make a difficult choice between two conflicting stories, and find it hard to sift the evidence they will choose the one that confirms their existing beliefs.

Is all this dangerous? Yes, it can be. We still recall people who declared in 2015 “I think all this country’s problems are caused by membership of the EU” They weren’t of course as we have since discovered. Now one could, some did, make a reasoned case for leaving the EU. But this kind of thought-excluding confirmation bias made all attempts to impose reason and evidence impossible. Bad choices followed; and they have been coming ever since. 

Which in turn raises a deeper thought, which we hesitate to write. Only because this is a site utterly open to all reasonable ideas do we broach it. Can people really be trusted with their own decisions? Or must we now consider return to rule by a governing elite, if only for the sake of social peace and order? It is a subject we will return to in due course.

[1]https://theconversation.com/some-people-who-share-fake-news-on-social-media-actually-think-theyre-helping-the-world-215623?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=

[2]https://theconversation.com/the-maths-of-rightwing-populism-easy-answers-confidence-reassuring-certainty-221355?utm_medium=email&utm_campaig

#populism #confirmation bias #cognitive functions #fake news #internet #memes

Because The Dawn of Language by Sverker Johanssen is so good that there is no room for a full review of it, nor to sufficiently praise the admirable work of translator Frank Perry, in the three paragraph slot they give us here. But we can tell you why you ought to read it, because for us it’s a masterclass in how to write a non-fiction book. Ready?

Deals with the big questions: and they don’t come much bigger, nor harder to solve than the origins of language, which has perplexed us ever since some reporter on the Jericho Times first broke the story of a building collapse somewhere near Babel

Simple accessible style: how many so called great books do you have to put down because reading them becomes a tiresome chore? Go on, admit it. But Johanssen is nice and light, without ever falling into the trap of facetious triviality; which leads us to:

Introduces all the big concepts: everything you need to know is here: Noam Chomsksy, AI models, fossil finds, ethology, anatomy, Nim Chimpsky, linguistic theory all served up with the necessary humility: there are no leaps to huge conclusions or daring Grand Theories. Which allows him to:

Take an entertaining risk: Using every element carefully taken from the well-verified studies of animals (bees, apes etc)he dares to suggest what the communication patterns of Homo erectus might have been like, for a small group on one brief cool afternoon in China, perhaps around one million years BC. We say might, because the author is careful to label his passage as speculation.

There’s something here for everyone: Every sentence is carefully constructed upon a well-signalled framework of learning from every necessary field, So even if you get fed up with language, you might want to dive down one of his well-signposted rabbit holes to neural networks, for example. There are plenty like that. We spent an hour googling videos showing different types of animals looking at themselves in mirrors. So, learning becomes a pleasure, not a burden. Every teacher’s dream. If we had five stars, we’d give this one six.

The Dawn of Language; How we came to talk by Sverker Johannsen , translated by Frank Perry Maclehouse Press 2021

#language #linguistics #human evolution #human #ape #dolphin

It’s funny how some things stick in the mind. We have never forgotten a line from the blurb on the back of our old 1975 Penguin copy of Keep the Aspidistra Flying. ”……Orwell knew how for many people, their political opinions really represented their own inner emotional preoccupations” In other words all that Enlightenment, Marxist and Chicago stuff about rational choices, class, economic determinism etc, etc, etc, is strictly for the birds.

We don’t always agree with everything from Aditya Chakrabortty. But he is readable, counterintuitive, and open to new ideas. Above all, he can be original-and that is much. Nowhere more so than in this fascinating article Heading Isolated into the Night, these are the voters our politicians created. Because he drills deep down into the lonely, overworked and desperately insecure world of the gig economy. Taxi drivers. Builders. Delivery Drivers. Call centre and warehouse workers. Fishermen. Is this demographic starting to sound familiar? Given the pressure they are under is it reasonable, or even remotely just, to expect them to argue like an LSE Professor?

The whole thing led us to do a bit more digging. And we came across the work of a man called Erich Fromm, whom, to our infinite shame, we had never heard of. [2] We think that we, and you gentle reader, need to do a lot more on this man and his field of political psychology. And remember this. Next time you meet someone with extreme political views, or even just ranting, ask yourself this. Are they really telling you about Political Economy? Or just their own unhappy. frustrated life? It’s a point we hope to revisit.

[1]https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/04/voters-politicians-angry-cynical-taxi-driver-travis-bickle

[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_Fromm

#aditya chakrabortty #gig economy #liong hours culture #politics economics #erich fromm #psychology