Conversation Article gets to the heart of why people get things wrong

You know a piece of writing is good when it explains many things, not just the ostensible subject the writer has before them. Such is the case with Edward White of the prestigious Kingston University in the UK whose article in the Conversation forms the basis for today’s blog [1] Ostensibly, the subject is Evolution. Now, we’ve always liked a bit of Evolution here. But only as abit of light relief, following it the way people follow the fortunes of Leicester City FC or the doings of celebrities.

Not so in the United states of America where the subject is of neuralgic importance as Edward points out. Huge numbers of the citizens of that country still hold that God created Man exactly according to the schemata laid out the in the early chapters of Genesis in the Hebrew Bible. And he has a barrage of statistics to explain how and why. But the point for us, gentle readers is why these people think as they do. For it explains a much wider truth, which is: no species as so supremely adapted to self delusion and to believing the lies, deceits and threats of charlatans as is Homo sapiens. And this is true in all fields-politics, religion, economics, even science and medicine(remember the MMR controversy?) The fault according to Edward is motivated Reasoning, where you start with a conclusion and work back to justify it. This ensures a high chance of error, whatever cognitive powers you may possess, as astute readers will have spotted. Why do people do this? Get this killer quote from Ed:

Brain imaging studies show that people with fundamentalist beliefs seem to have reduced activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex — the brain region responsible for cognitive flexibility and analytical thinking. When this area is damaged or less active, people become more prone to accepting claims without sufficient evidence and show increased resistance to changing their beliefs when presented with contradictory information. Studies of brain-injured patients show damage to prefrontal networks that normally help us question information may lead to increased fundamentalist beliefs and reduced scepticism.

As Edward concludes: for most people learning is about who gets to define truth, and own the power that flows from it thereby

And our conclusion? We seem to be drilling down to the bedrock at last and knowing why people make and hold errors, From here at last the Progressive Community may find a way forward

[1]https://theconversation.com/why-many-americans-still-think-darwin-was-wrong-yet-the-british-dont-260709?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversa

Andrew O’Neil on how to fix a broken education system

Veteran students of Britain’s national decline keep returning to a single motif: it’s our education system. For too many years the United Kingdom has tolerated appallingly low standards of literacy, numeracy and vocational skills which have left it trailing far behind the field of comparable developed counties. The reasons adduced include: a two-tier system of private versus public education, with all the opportunities rigged in favour of the former: under investment , with education ever in the firing line of the latest round of Treasury penny pinching: an atrophied system of vocational training with an overemphasis on bookish academia. Well do we remember the personal experience of a teacher who told us “in a one hour lesson I spend the first twenty minutes trying to calm them down and pay attention: in the next twenty I might get some teaching done; the last twenty is spent trying to maintain order as they await the end of the lesson” That was thirty years ago; but the experience is relevant today. Incidentally, we make that two thirds of the budget spent on every lesson wasted: but then, we were never very good in maths class.

Don’t take our word for it. Believe the words of Andrew O’Neil a heroic figure who pens a regular column for the Times Educational Supplement. Contrary to all experience, still believes something can be done. [1] He is honest about the problems: poor retention of teachers: endemic violence and above all an unwillingness to confront these issues until they break into total catastrophe, with the murder of a teacher by a disgruntled pupil, although quite often they do it to each other as well. His learning is vast, his interest multifaceted. Oddly he actually sees signs of hope for our poor land:

There are promising signs of change. In Bridget Phillipson, we now have a secretary of state committed to long-term solutions rather than short-term firefighting. Her emphasis on system design, fairness and early intervention marks a departure from crisis-led reform

Travelling on holiday, on business or whatever, we became used to a sort of condescending pity from foreigners whenever the subject of education came up. is there just a chance that, for once our appalling national system might be mitigated, or even turned around altogether? Could we actually start to catch you up?

_{thanks to d foley}

[1]https://www.tes.com/magazine/analysis/general/why-education-keeps-collapsing-into-crisis

#united kingdom #education #great britain #economics #schools #gangs #youth #violence #graffitti #drugs

G7 v BRICS: is this how the sides will line up for World War Three?

We know we started out as a science based blog, mainly devoted to the encouragement of more research into antibiotics. If our brief has widened a little, it is because we cannot ignore the wider world around us. If that world decides to spend more on weapons of mass destruction, and less on antibiotic research, it impinges directly on us and our readers. Which is why this pair of articles from the Guardian caught our eye. They strongly suggest that the sides for the next world war are lining up. And the outcome is by no means certain.

On the one hand are the G7 group of countries, led by the USA.[1] Thirty years ago they had the game in their hands. Immensely rich, accounting for an enormous slice of the global pie, their triumph over the Communist bloc had seemed to set them apart . They were the world’s bankers, the world’s policemen, the world’s shop keepers. Since when, hubris seemed to set in and it has been downhill all the way. Iraq, financial crash, tariffs, Brexit…………These words are shorthand, metanymies if you will, for a deep moral rot that is grounded in an almost childlike reverence for the supremacy of financial markets and the sorts of people who work in them. Now as the admirable Joseph Stiglitz and his colleagues observe, the once mighty G7 is in danger of being little more than a front organisation for the interests of large American multinationals. A position sure to alienate many around the world.

Among the alienated are a group which starting out as the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa)[2] has expanded to include rising stars such as Indonesia. It may not be morally perfect either(its stance on Ukraine, and the fact that many members are autocracies cannot be overlooked). But its members are united on one thing: they are tired of the whims and policy lurches of the US, particularly under such a nakedly self-serving President as the current one. They are ready to have done with the traditional instruments of US domination such as the Reserve Dollar. And they are developing the economic resources to make these ambitions feasible.

History has two lessons. The decline of one hegemonic power and the rise of another is usually a signal of impending war. Another is the formation of alliance blocks; as one small event triggers a chain reaction of consequences. Think Europe 1914 as the case example for both. And don’t expect the supply of antibiotics to go up any time soon.

[1]https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/jul/02/the-g7-has-once-again-put-multinationals-profits-over-the-interests-of-people?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

[2]https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jul/13/the-guardian-view-on-brics-growing-up-a-new-bloc-seeks-autonomy-and-eyes-a-post-western-order?CMP=Share_iOSAp

#G7 #BRICS #China #USA #IMF #dollar #geopolitics #brasil #russia #indonesia

Could global warming have been avoided?

Photo by Sebastian Voortman on Pexels.com

Historians of the future (assuming there will be any such) will probably point to the 2020s as the decade when the world began its short unhappy slide into climate catastrophe. The Greek forest fires of 2021; the Californian ones of 2023, combined with floods in Pakistan in the same year that drowned fully one third of that country, were proof, attributable proof ,[1] that human induced climate change had started to wreak incontrollable and irreversible destruction to the fabric of planet’s surface. A fabric that human beings needed to be intact if they were to survive. They will also ask how it was possible that a society with the most advanced techniques of science and communication had allowed itself to arrive at such a point.

Starting in the 1960s, the warnings had been coming, like the steady rise if a beating drum. The Keeling curve and the concerns of the LBJ administration were early examples. In the 1970s even the CIA (hardly a bastion of Green Woke Communism) had got in on the Act. Through the 1980s and 1990s there were conferences, resolutions and rising alarm. All action was undermined, subverted and rendered null by the fossil fuel industry and the petrostates. Whose actions bore such a resemblance to the tobacco industry and its efforts to deny the links of their product to lung cancer.[3] Perhaps the last reasonable chance to act in time was the Kyoto summit of 1997. Which, if its recommendations had been implemented in full, might have avoided the enormous costs, both economic and in lives, of what was unstoppable by 2020.

And that future was to be? As the temperature gradients warmed through 2⁰, 2.5⁰ and 3⁰C , rising sea levels and wildly fluctuating weather conditions caused whole societies to collapse. The resulting waves of refugees were halted, temporarily, on the borders of safer lands, Until those fleeing returned with armies and weapons which could never be stopped; and the last bastions of order fell. Like a smoker dying of cancer, or a boozer from liver failure: humanity as a whole could just not kick its habit.

[1]https://www.worldweatherattribution.org/

[2]https://earth.org/data_visualization/the-keeling-curve-explained/

[3]https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-53640382

#global warming #forest fire #climate change #flood #oil industry #fossil fuel #cancer #tobacco industry #greece #california #pakistan

More on the deadly dangers of stress (sorry, but you need to know this)

Photo by Michael Willinger on Pexels.com

A few decades ago, a friend remarked how his brother had left a stable happy marriage for a much younger woman at work. It didn’t last long- the man in question died a few years later of Crohn’s disease. The new relationship didn’t turn out very happily, as I learned from passing gossip. “Going over the side” they used to call it, back in the day. It seemed unremarkable enough -until a few years later a work acquaintance of about the same age and circumstances suffered a similar fate. Raising the question: was the knowledge of the awful decisions they had both made eating away inside, burning with stress, until their poor immune systems broke down altogether? This was the start of a trope we have followed ever since. We have alluded to it several times on these pages(LSS 2210 24; 23 8 20} to name but a few. Now we are glad to see our concerns addressed by altogether more weighty and learned persons (surely not?-ed)

For Nature and its brilliant Briefing arm have put the matter at the forefront of their latest editions Read this, Time to Take Stress seriously, if you don’t believe us:

When George Slavich’s father died suddenly, the clinical psychologist was well aware of how the stress could affect his health, but his health-care providers weren’t as interested. “The experience highlighted a paradox between what I know stress is doing to the brain and body, and how little attention it gets in clinical care,” says Slavich. He is among the researchers investigating how the body reacts to stress and how it contributes to deadly diseases.Nature | 11 min read

You see George isn’t any old George. He is a clinical psychologist at UCLA, no less. And he has launched a project with many other eminent scholars to research the link between stress and many disorders that plague us all, from heart and respiratory disorders to all kinds of psychological and psychiatric ones. Is there good stress? Is there bad? What causes each, and how to cure them? All these questions are now front and centre of George’s research. You can read more here[1] and here[2]

For the last fifty years or so, the whole psychological imperative has been to make people work ever faster for longer for ever lower wages. it is supposed to make us all more prosperous and happy, or something. What if it is doing the opposite?

[1]https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-02066-z?utm_source=Live+Audience&utm_campaign=5e2c1eb595-nature-briefing-daily-20250708&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-33f35e09ea-

[2]https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1471084/full

#immune system #stress #coronary disease #psychology #chronic illness #overwork #health

Calling all Billionaires: Please read this blog

John Caudwell[1] is no fool. Anyone who has started a company like Phones4U and turned it into a multibillion pound company must be pretty well endowed in the brains department. Yet he has one particularly intriguing belief. He believes in meritocracy: he is deeply suspicious of the idea of inherited wealth. If you want to know more about why you can hear home talking to Tony Hawks in this podcast [2] Tony Hawks is Giving Nothing Away on the BBC. But essentially Caudwell thinks that in the long run his children will lead healthier, happier lives if they have to make their own way. Like he did.

We don’t know about individuals. But we know societies function better if the follow Caudwell’s prescriptions. Old LSS hands will recall our long time advocacy of the works of Thomas Piketty [3] and Wilkinson and Pickett. [4]Who show that societies with more equal economic structures have better health outcomes, lower crime, more scientific innovation and much higher social mobility, than less equal peers. One of their key findings was that wealth hoarded into family dynasties is one of the key blockers of healthily mobile societies.

Which is why Caudwell has joined the Giving Pledge. [5]No it’s not a marxist commie plot: it’s run by some of the richest people on the planet. In the words of the organisation’s own website:

Pledgers support a wide array of issues in every corner of the globe and give in a multitude of ways. What unites them is a shared promise and a commitment to creating an impact.

Wealth can be spent in two ways. It can be wasted in endless competitions as to who drinks the best bottle of wine, drives the fastest Rolls Royce or has the biggest yacht. Or it can be re invested like this creating a healthier better world, with-who knows?-maybe even enough antibiotics. if you really want to spend your money to make your children safe, this is the way to do it. If you are a billionaire, thank you for reading. If you are not-find one gentle readers, and press the works of the Giving Pledge into their hands.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Caudwell

[2]https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/m002fj92

[3] Thomas Piketty Capital in the 21st Century Harvard University Press 2014

[4] Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett The Spirit Level Penguin 2009

[5]https://www.givingpledge.org/pledger/john-caudwell/

#john caudwell #the giving pledge #economics #philanthropy # equality #social mobility

Weekly Round up: Air Pollution, Gene therapy and raspberries

Air pollution is the new smoking Stopping smoking has led to massive falls in rates of lung cancer. But this fearsome disease is still lurking out there. The current cause? Air pollution ,as Ian Sample explains for the Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/jul/02/air-pollution-lung-cancer-dna-mutations-study

Gene therapy chalks up another win Ok,today it’s one particular form of deafness, attributable to one particular gene, as Maoli Duan explains for the Conversation. But: the more science you do the more you learn. Meaning other disabilities may one day prove susceptible as well. And the more you spend on scientific research the more you get benefits like this. A lesson rapidly being forgotten in the United States of America

https://theconversation.com/gene-therapy-restores-hearing-in-toddlers-and-teenagers-born-with-congenital-deafness-new-research-258112?utm_medium

Machines that out think humans It’s the scary nightmare of science fiction films from Blade Runner to the Terminator series. Up until recently the idea still seemed to be fiction. All that may be about to change as Nature Briefing reports

An artificial-intelligence system called Centaur can predict the decisions people will make in a wide variety of situations — often outperforming classical theories used in psychology to describe human choices. Trained on data from 160 psychology experiments in which 60,000 people made more than 10 million choices, the system can simulate human behaviour in tasks from problem-solving and gambling, and even those it hasn’t been trained on. Using Centaur, “you can basically run experimental sessions in silico instead of running them on actual human participants”, says cognitive scientist and study co-author Marcel Binz.

Nature | 4 min read
Reference: Nature paper

Friday Night Feast Raspberries and Ice cream We are not all gloom and serious stuff here. Thinking it was time for a quick Friday Fun feature, we realised that we’d done strawberries several times (LSS passim), In which case the humble raspberry can make a really pleasant alternative, especially if combined with ice cream instead of cream. After all, even if we are on a diet-you, gentle reader may not be. So- eat a bowl for us we used to love it.

#cancer #AI ~pollution #gene therapy #raspberries

Why a falling population will solve most of our problems

Photo by Kostiantyn Stupak on Pexels.com

Back in the 1970s we used to worry about rising population the way we worry about antibiotics now. Problems like pollution, energy shortages and even climate change were being discussed in the better pubs in the area where we grew up. Birth rates were soaring around the world. Everyone agreed that by 2010 there were going to be far,far too many people for the planet to support (and you wondered why you weren’t invited to more parties?-ed)Since when the situation has changed. Rulers, particularly of the more authoritarian sort, are fretting that their populations are actually starting to fall. The reason this keeps them awake at night, they asseverate, is that thereby there will not be enough young workers to keep pensioners in the style of living to which they have become accustomed (although we privately suspect they have darker motives) “Make women have more children!” is their cry. How about “the pram is the tank of the Home Front!” Or has that one been used already?

The reality is rather different as Larry Elliott points out so limpidly in this short piece for The Guardian [1] A falling population means less pressure on oceans, air and land. Less need for antibiotics! More seats in cinemas and restaurants! And, quite quickly, a rising GDP per head of population. As for the economic thing: a single modern worker produces and consumes far more GDP and products than a hundred medieval farm hands. To keep the economy growing you just need to raise the standard of living, you don’t need more workers

But as committed feminists we have another sort of worry. If you really want women to have more children, you will have to take them out of universities and higher education generally. Re- structure the wage market so men are again the main breadwinners. Recreate ideologies of patriarchy and submission, a bit like those currently popular in Afghanistan. is that what you really want?

[1]https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jul/02/britain-falling-birthrate-economy-politics

#feminism #pollution #population #economics #ecology

The terror of the male Time for a Lively debate

Every so often something comes along that plugs like a mains cable into the heart of our thinking. That articulates what we have been groping to articulate for years. That explains not just the problem it addresses, but much else besides. Professor Harper on why the Roman Empire fell, or Amy Chua on the intractable nature of tribal hatreds were two such, as our readers recall. Now we think Sophie Lively of the University of Newcastle may have done the same for the neuralgic topic of Masculine Identity.[1] Far from being some idle construct of the Sociology schools, we think that masculinity and the toxic psychological flows around it are at the heart of the problems which this blog has been discussing for years, with such remarkable lack of success. Things like climate change, inequality, hostility to learning(and thereby scientific research) hyper-consumption and even health and traffic management (that’s enough problems-ed)

Let’s start with Sophie . She has been avidly researching social conditions in the city of Newcastle in North east England. Formerly a region of heavy industry it is undergoing profound economic change. English people will recognise the stereotype of its characteristic inhabitant:- a hard-working no-nonsense Geordie who loves his beer and football and has no time for fancy intellectuals. He can be glimpsed in TV shows like Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?, as Biffa Bacon in the Viz comic strip or in songs like Lindisfarne’s Meet me on the Corner. He is proud, he is brave, he is tough he can be kindly and amusing. And like working men across the world, he is in deep, deep crisis As Sophie explains

“Traditional” views of masculinity were particularly prevalent during the height of industry in the area. These views centred around ideas of men as providers and ideas of toughness. Value was placed on a willingness (or need) to do physical and often hazardous labour.

And now that’s needed less and less. Are we surprised they find themselves bewildered, alienated, anxious? In need of quick easy assurances that everything about them is still alright. How would you feel, gentle reader, if you were told that University graduates are not needed any more?

And so we come to the light this sheds on the big problems this blog poses but has never satisfactorily answered. Why have progressive parties so utterly and completely lost the support of working men? Why do so many poor people vote for people whose aim is to make the rich richer and the poor work harder? Why are so many young men drawn to the cults of rap music, football hooliganism and religious terrorism? Why all the cults of nostalgia around Spitfires, country houses and the urge to go back down horrid coal mines? (LSS 8 12 22) Why do men in lorries feel impelled to chop down trees, flowerbeds and every other measure designed to curb pollution? Why do simple lies trump complex truths? In the next few weeks we will be running a series of blogs designed to look at these issues We hope all of you, whatever your age, class, sex and preferred form of relaxation will enjoy it and feed back in what we hope will be a lively debate. Thanks to Sophie for at last getting us started.

[1]https://theconversation.com/class-and-masculinity-are-connected-when-industry-changes-so-does-what-it-means-to-be-a-man-258857?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=

#climate change #sociology #feminism #masculinity #populism

Is Donald Trump a Socialist? #2: some readers responses

A few months ago(LSS 7 4 25) we published a blog called Is Donald Trump a Socialist? It was one of those end-of -the -day tired pieces which we expected to be soon forgotten, by ourselves and everybody else. Instead it turned out to be one of the most read, and remarked-upon pieces we have put out in months. Sadly, much more so than our ones on antibiotic resistance ones which was what this blog is supposed to be all about.

The essence of the piece boiled down to this. Capitalists, Liberals, Neo-liberals, call them what you will, believe that individual liberty is the only true basis of a healthy society and a prosperous economy. People making their own choices on how to spend their money, whom to hire and whom to fire, where to live, etc will allow the optimum possible outcome in the supply of Capital, Goods and Labour. The essence of socialist belief is that people cannot be trusted to make those decisions and that the state must often step in to ensure the best possible social and economic outcomes. In that sense, Mr Trump’s attempts to control the supply of Labour by immigration controls, and of Goods by tariff controls are socialist policies, not capitalist ones. The responses have been coming ever since. Here are a few which are broadly representative . (We protect the respondents anonymity for all sorts of reasons)

MC from Edinburgh pointed out that if a Communist like Mr Xi could run a capitalist economy in China, why shouldn’t a Capitalist like Trump run a socialist one in America? (intriguing!)

DG from Texas said that Mr Trump’s policies were not Socialist, they we Nationalist (that doesn’t make them Capitalist, we thought)

JS from Massachusetts said he had studied economics at Princeton. And that essentially we had “placed Trump on a New Deal continuum, with fewer unions and more nationalisation” (We are still struggling to understand this)

V. from Mumbai wondered “if all leaders become Socialist when it comes to steel and swing states”

As we write an actual self-proclaimed Socialist called Zohran Mamdami is running for Mayor of New York, that Holy Ground Zero of Capitalism. If we are right, he and Mr Trump may find more in common than they realise. Maybe it’s all about what you do, not what you call yourself, that counts.

But we feel exceedingly grateful for your reactions. Keep ’em coming.

#Donald Trump #Xi Jinping #Capitalist #communist #socialist #liberal #neo liberal #free market #tariff #immigration control