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The internet is awash with foolish opinions and fake facts. A troll through facebook will deliver you thousands of opinions on Covid 19 from people with no scientific or medical training. It will deliver you screams of rage and hate on matters of politics and public administration from people who have never run for, let alone held, any office in their lives. They are fools; but we don’t all have to be like them

The philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) was not just that; was a pretty good psychologist. He knew no-one is free from error: but you can take some simple easy steps to avoid making a fool of yourself. We are going to look at a few of his thoughts below. But first a thank you to the website FS, which we link below, wherein you can read the whole thing for yourself. Go on, try it.

1 If the matter is one that can be settled by observation, make the observation yourself.

The world is full of people with dogmatic beliefs about things that someone else told them. Check your facts, and check the biases of the people who are telling you. Have they left something out?

2 If an opinion contrary to your own makes you angry, that is a subconsciously aware of having no good reason for thinking as you do

Remember what we said about cognitive dissonance? This is why persecution is not used in arithmetic, but is in theology. In arithmetic, there are only facts. Theology is opinion.

3 Make yourself aware of opinions other than your own

We thought that this was crucial:

 seek out people with whom you disagree, and read a newspaper belonging to a party that is not yours. If the people and the newspaper seem mad, perverse, and wicked, remind yourself that you seem so to them. In this opinion both parties may be right, but they cannot both be wrong. This reflection should generate a certain caution.

If you find yourself disagreeing with something written in the Daily Mail, take time to prove why it is wrong. It’s just as good for mental exercise as a computer game!

4 Be wary of opinions that flatter your self esteem

Both men and women, nine times out of ten, are firmly convinced of the superior excellence of their own sex. There is abundant evidence on both sides. If you are a man, you can point out that most poets and men of science are male; if you are a woman, you can retort that so are most criminals. The question is inherently insoluble, but self esteem conceals this from most people. 

Gentle readers, Russell is one of those few philosophers whose writings really do bring moments of calm reflection. God knows we need them. We invite you to try, starting with the link below.

read://https_fs.blog/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ffs.blog%2F2009%2F09%2Fbertrand-russell-on-avoiding-foolish-opinions%

#bertrandrussell #fakenews #culturewars #seeingbothsides

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If the world is going to divide into hostile ethnic and religious tribes (see the works of Amy Chua and Eric Kaufman), then why not start a tribe for the educated and intelligent? We have a right to survive as well. We had even hoped that LSS might play a small part in this. Now thanks to our indefatigable interlocutor, Mr Peter Seymour of Hertfordshire, we have been guided to a site that so exactly fulfils the role that we wonder why we are writing this.

https://theconversation.com/uk

“Academic rigour, journalistic flair” is their mission statement. And they cover everything. science, medicine, practical everyday psychology, business, arts. All written in lively, sparkling prose-but all by experts in their fields, with more letters after their names than the post office.

Mr Seymour himself wants you to read this piece om procrastination. Most of us have worked for at least one boss who does that, and here’s why they do it.

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-psychological-origins-of-procrastination-and-how-we-can-stop-putting-things-off?

To tax or not to tax? And how much? It has bedevilled the whole discourse since at least 1910. Here Professor Vanhuysse has a new insight

//https_theconversation.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ftheconversation.com%2Fhow-high-should-taxes-be-new-study-shows-voters-back-lower-rates-only-for-income-earned-on-merit-145202

Well, that’s just two examples. My lords, ladies and gentlemen, educated intelligent people everywhere, the Conversation is a new Renaissance. Read it-and learn.

#theconversation #psychology #taxes

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Imagine you hard worked hard for years and saved to get your first handhold on the property ladder. And then were told-“sorry mate, everything you’ve done is worthless.” Such is the fate of millions caught in the EWS crisis. (External Wall System)

It’s one of those dreadful scrapes where the good intentions of different people have combined to effect bad outcomes for all. We cannot improve on the story by Faye Brown of the Metro*,which you should read. To summarise, changes in cladding regulations in the wake of the Grenfell fire have led a backlog of inspections for literally millions of flats, most of them new builds. The sorts of properties where striving young couples get their first foot on the property ladder, before moving on to a house to start a family. Now they can’t- because the properties are un-mortgageable, and unsellable. Faye’s stories will break the heart of anyone who still has a heart to be broken. Basically, we now have three million prisoners who can’t start a family; who can’t find space for their new family; or who have seen ten years of virtuous saving wiped out..

“But what has this to do with me?” we hear some readers asking. “Here I sit in my comfy semi in Guildford or Welwyn Garden City-why should I give the concern of a certain well known arboreal primate of the infraorder Simiiformes?” (surely “monkeys”?-ed) Well, for a start, small flat buyers underpin the rest of the property market- if they freeze up, so does it. So much for the value of your cosy little chateau, son. We could also wax sorry for the fate of millions of fellow-strivers, but we think there is a deeper problem.

Old hands on the Left will recall sitting round from the 1940s to the 1980s waiting for the Revolution that never came. Somehow, the Workers never did rise up and overthrow the Capitalist system, however many newspapers were sold at them, however many times they were hectored from a loudhailer at the factory gates. Some said that they had been seduced by Murdoch and the Daily Mail. Others that it was all the fault of rampant consumerism. We think there was a very simple reason-the twenty five year mortgage. “Buy a house, keep your nose clean for twenty five years and you get a stake in the system!” A person of property! It’s a rare and beautiful thing for ordinary people down the centuries. It certainly kept the peace. If that conveyor belt to full membership of society is broken, expect the rise of an angry, well-educated generation with no stake in the present order, and everything to gain by its overthrow. Think Russia in 1917.

The cladding crisis that has made 3,000,000 people’s homes worthless

https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/home/home/ews-crisis-nine-in-10-ews-checked-blocks-require-remediation-work-

EWS1 requirements mean many flats will become un-mortgageable?

#ewscrisis #proletariat #precariat #firsttimebuyer #housing #ews1 #mortgage #renters

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Welcome to another Saturday night of beer, chips and fun. But before you head off to the Dog and Duck, here’s a few thoughts which our intrepid interlocutors want you to share

Generating renewable energy is all very well, but we are going to need safe compact ways to store it. Especially if we want to use it in cars, trains and mobile barbecues. Mr Gary Herbert of Buckinghamshire points us to nuclear batteries, as originally used in the famous Voyager missions. This is from New Scientist

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24733010-700-safe-extra-long-life-nuclear-batteries-could-soon-be-a-reality/

Staying with Gary, he is anxious that test and trace works well to overcome the Covid 19 pandemic. Here the BMJ (journal of the BMA) discusses the UK Government’s soi disant moonshot project. Is one like this coming to a country near you? There probably isn’t an organisation quite so full of intelligent, learned people as the BMA in the world. So we should pay attention!

https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3558

Mr Peter Seymour of Hertfordshire always sees his science and technology through the lens of economics and society, like the great philosophers of the Enlightenment did. The UK has always had a North- South problem since the days of Disraeli and Mrs Gaskell. Here the BBC discuss how it plays out in the days of the corona virus pandemic

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/54250626

Time travel has fascinated thinkers for-well, a long time really. We at LSS frankly confess that the mathematics and physics of it are usually beyond us. Three cheers for all who make the attempt to explain. Here is Caroline Delbert in Popular Mechanics, chosen again by the indefatigable Mr Seymour

https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/math/a34146674/paradox-free-time-travel-is-possible/

Far back in the mists of time, around 1973, scientists made the first use of proteins to study human evolutionary relationships. It was mainly the ones in extant species like humans and chimps, but it gave exciting results. Then along came glamorous DNA studies and poor old proteins got pushed out into Cinderella status-as they did in so many fields. Now Cinderella may be about to go to the ball. DNA is feeble stuff, it breaks down quickly. But tough old proteins may last for millions of years.

What was Homo naledi? What were those funny little hobbits doing in the caves on Flores, and why so small? Who or what was a Denisovan? Questions that have puzzled us human evolution buffs may at last be answerable. Here’s Matthew Warren in Nature.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01986-x

Once again, thanks to all who read and follow our little blog, wherever you are. Have a great weekend.

#nuclearbattery #renewables #covidtesting #testandtance #moonshot #covid19 #sars-cov-2 #coronavirus #northsouthdivide #timetravel #humanevolution

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When the penny first dropped about the awful dangers of antibiotic resistance-with us, about 2016- we had the dread sense that no one, apart from Professor Colin Garner was doing anything about it. Five years on, how that situation has changed! Yesterday, a little throwaway tip in the New Scientist led us to the website of the University of Edinburgh. These dudes have five,- count’ em, five!- major lines of enquiry. We shall give you a brief resume, then let you enjoy the links below.

Er, what’s the situation in Global and local epidemiology of antimicrobial resistance like right now?

Is the uncontrolled use of antibiotics in agriculture rapidly building up resistance? Yep. Is looking through sewage in third world areas going to give us good data? You bet-nice work if you can get it. Are there major new populations of resistant Staphylococcus evolving? There certainly are! Try the link below

https://www.ed.ac.uk/edinburgh-infectious-diseases/amr/epidemiology

Shouldn’t someone be looking at better diagnostics?

Dr Till Bachman thinks so. Look at the work of his teams here: Bachman turns on the overdrive!

https://www.ed.ac.uk/edinburgh-infectious-diseases/amr/diagnostics

How why and what are bacteria evolving to beat antibiotics?

Well the University of Edinburgh is on the case. This bit is crucial

https://www.ed.ac.uk/edinburgh-infectious-diseases/amr/underpinning-mechanisms

What about alternatives and vaccines?

Nice idea, but Professor Dockrell got there first. Have a look here to see the amazing work of his teams

How can we stop people misusing antibiotics in future?

Professor Devi Sridhar (yes, the same one who’s always on Channel 4 news) is covering this

https://www.ed.ac.uk/edinburgh-infectious-diseases/amr/governance-stewardship-antibiotics

And Hats off to the University of Glasgow where Professor Lee Cronin is doing sterling work on trying to predict how bacteria will evolve resistance in future. (spoiler alert-this was the NS tip, but we couldn’t find a nice link for you than this one Can anyone out there help?)

Click to access Yoshida-NarCommun2017.pdf

Where there’s life, there’s hope

#antibioticresistance #evolution #antibiotics #bacteria #disease

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Seven million account holding customers of a major UK Bank have less than £100 in savings. According to retail banking specialists, it’s the same for customers at the other banks as well. The same people also have no home insurance and no life insurance. That’s not a narrow margin when things go wrong, it’s no margin at all. When we followed up with other professionals and ex-professionals, we found the same situation exists for millions without pensions. A little more digging revealed the appalling levels of personal debt that many people carry around with them, particularly the under 35s.

The reason we at LSS are shocked is that the situation is so unstable. Poor hungry people with little to lose will always be vulnerable to the promises of revolutionaries and extremists. Poor hungry people have little money to throw around, and that will quickly deepen recessions and slow recoveries, as the most simple textbooks will show. Their children are poor learners, with long term implications for the future of the economy, and society.

We don’t know the causes. It could be hyper-consumerism and addiction to debt. It may be low wages; we trembled for free market economics when we learned that ” the reason that teaching assistants had no pensions was that their meagre wages would not let them afford them.” It may be as long term as the decline of the Protestant Work Ethic, which has led to the end of saving and deferred gratification, leading to a narcissistic cult of everything today. We don’t know; and we doubt that you do either, gentle reader.

The consequences of a deeply unequal society were well outlined in The Spirit Level by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett. The UK Government has said it wants to level up, a desire that we fervently support. But from what we learned today, we think they have a mighty, mighty mountain to climb.

Wilkinson R, Pickett K The Spirit Level Allen Lane 2009

#poverty #inequality #savings #pensions #levellingup #rishisunak #ukgovernment

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It is not often that we at LSS find ourselves sunk in despair, in existential terror, but such is our state at the news of a terrible disease which has begun to sweep the world. It has the potential to destroy the very bases of our civilisation, to wreak untold havoc with our way of life, to tear at the very bounds of existence itself. Read now, if you dare * UK Gin supply under threat from Sarah Young in the Independent.

The basic facts of impending disaster are these. Gin, as every schoolchild knows, is flavoured using the berries of the Juniper tree. Otherwise it would just be insipid old hooch, a bit like vodka. Now the poor old juniper trees of Scotland are threatened by a deadly new fungal disease called phytophthora austrocedri: and get this, pop pickers-Scotland produces no less than 70% of the gin for the four home nations! We are in trouble. Deep deep trouble.

How did it get there, and who brought it in? Aliens? The Illuminati? Trotskyists? We don’t know. Clearly the first step must be for the SAS and security services to hunt down the culpable (we know the latter like a good cocktail, so they should be sufficiently motivated). Secondly, that Men of Science drop all else they are doing, and work on a cure for this terrible pestilence. Thirdly, to form Citizens’ Action Groups in local public houses, to hold politicians’ feet to the fire until the crisis is solved, once and forever. There can be no room for traitors and backsliders.

Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duty, go forward together, so that, if the British Hospitality Industry should choose to last for a thousand years, men will still say “This was our finest night out for a long time.”

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/uk-gin-supply-under-threat-from-deadly-plant-disease/ar-BB19ni9j?ocid=

#gin #juniper #phytophthora austrocedri, #tonic #disaster #illuminati

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We’ve all known them, and worked for them at some time in our lives. The manager or team leader who just isn’t up to the job. There are two types. Type A is the one who used to be a good worker- engineer, salesman, scientist or driver- who just can’t make the transition to the new skills set which a manager requires. Type B may be more familiar- the blustering narcissist, adept at working the higher ups, but whose relations with underlings and peers are already below floor level. Either way, the results for your company or organisation are disastrous. Toxic culture. Poor morale. Dreadful sales and productivity. Above all, that most precious business commodity of all is destroyed-trust.

It can take epic quantities of time and money to get rid of such an individual, by which time the damage to your balance sheet and reputation my be terminal. Better by far to spot them and weed them out before they are appointed. But how?

One man with some answers is Tomas Chamorro-Premusic, Professor of Psychology at such august institutions as University College and Columbia, among other things. We’ve attached a couple of links from Tom: but he writes clearly and well, and you should enjoy his pieces. Suffice this extract:

Overconfidence is the natural result of privilege. If the future of leadership were more meritocratic, and managers selected leaders on the basis of their talent and potential rather than Machiavellian self-promotion, reckless risk taking, or narcissistic delusions, we would not just end up with more women leaders, but also with better leaders. Many competent men are also overlooked for leadership roles because they don’t match our flawed leadership archetypes — meaning, they are perceived as “not masculine enough,” or fail to display the very attributes that make leaders less effective.

We at LSS still believe in meritocracy, for our sins. But you have to be very, very careful about the merit bit. Over to you, Tom.

https://hbr.org/2020/03/how-to-spot-an-incompetent-leader

https://www.businessinsider.com/my-boss-is-incompetent-signs-personality-science-expert-2019-3?r=US&IR=T

#overpromotion #incompetence #management #hr #narcissism #peterprinciple

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle

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There never was a more noble cause than the Emancipation of Women. Never was an untruth so blatant that women were morally and intellectually inferior to men. Never was there a better case for Reason to oppose itself to ignorance and hate, which appeared in their usual guises of “common sense” and “the way we’ve always done it”.

The trouble with humanity is that good causes can be hijacked by others, very often to make money. Such was the case with Torches of Freedom*. It was the way that the tobacco industry and early geniuses of marketing like Edward Bernays jumped on the bandwagon of feminism in order to sell cigarettes. And how they succeeded! There had been quite strong social pressure against women smoking for decades. But by pushing their Torches of Freedom campaign, and many other marketing ploys linking smoking to freedom for the gals, they soon had the entire second half of the population hooked, and well on the way to the cancer ward.

The success of advertising, marketing and PR has educated vast groups of people to believe that they can choose their facts in the same way they choose their brand of toothpaste or car. In place of critical thinking, the ideals are unquestioning brand loyalty, personal identity and unconscious choice. These are not the skills that created the Enlightenment or underwrote the Industrial Revolution. Some people call for teaching critical thinking in schools. There will be others who will fight that tooth and nail, as their jobs and power depend on it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torches_of_Freedom

#edwardbernays #smoking #criticalthinking #smoking #pr #marketing #emancipationofwomen #feminism

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Waiting for us after Covid 19 has blown out is a series of far more terrible pandemics. More terrible because there will be several of them. Because their symptoms will be more unpleasant. And because transmission will be harder to stop. Welcome to the war against antibiotic resistant bacteria. Update: we are losing. Regular readers will recall our several posts on rays of light in the gloom (LSS passim). But so far, it ain’t enough.

We need something extra, a game changer, that will give us a completely new way of tackling resistant bacteria, to eke out the precious supply of antibiotics. Writing in the Guardian,* Clement Giradot seems to have it. They are called Bacteriophages-little viruses that eat bacteria. They can be targeted, lab-grown and produced to high standards. Of course they are not the total answer, we will still need antibiotic drugs. But the link gives a real example of clearly-written popular science, and if you have any interest in the world outside your self, then read it for its own sake

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/sep/21/phages-the-tiny-viruses-that-could-help-beat-superbugs

if you want to help the world’s first charity designed to tackle the antibiotics crisis, click on this link

Homepage with ASK

#bacteriophages #antibioticresistance #antibioticresearchuk #billandmelindagatesfoundation