Self-Gaze
le regard [the gaze] in the philosophical sense is an individual's awareness of 'the other.' By 'the other' a myriad of concepts can be meant. It might be one's awareness of other people, other things, even awareness of oneself.
le regard [the gaze] in the philosophical sense is an individual's awareness of 'the other.' By 'the other' a myriad of concepts can be meant. It might be one's awareness of other people, other things, even awareness of oneself.
Tonight I contemplate marriage. Or rather, I am contemplating what I will eat after I am married. For this evening sees a sampling of what could be on offer for my intended's and my special day.
I was in conversation the other day about starting a blog. To offload or not to offload, that was the question. The heart of the conversation, confidence.
At midnight #onthisday in 1588, the English ignited eight fire ships and cast them into the Spanish fleet which was menacing Blighty. Though the Spanish misjudged the situation, fearing the vessels were hellburners, the effect was to break the crescent formation of the Spanish ships which had hampered English attempts to engage with the fleet.
I am asked on occasion, how do I go about finding time to write. Sometimes this is in the context of my research. Given how much reading goes on, making the time to actually write a meaningful contribution can be challenging. But more recently, it is in the context of the #100DaysToOffload challenge. How do I find the time to post everyday.
Social networks generally have you ‘friend’ or ‘follow’ an entity (be it a person, group or organisation). To 'friend' implies friendship. But with all due respect to some of the people I 'friend,' it is usually more to do with a desire to hear more than one side of an argument than anything which would constitute friendship.
While keep my friends close and my enemies closer may create a loophole for 'friending' people who are not friends, following someone is, arguably, more problematic.
Being a follower involves a tripartite relationship between the follower, the leader and the situation. This is a complex interrelationship which doesn't easily lend itself to an ever increasingly fractured social media landscape.
Some might argue I am following the conversation, but again, social media isn’t usually a conversation but a disconnected series of posts, often about unrelated topics.
In another feat of philosophical gymnastics, it could be argued that 'following' someone is more akin to 'watching,' in the sense that an undercover officer may 'follow' a suspect.
But this seems to add a dark connotation to the process which also isn't entirely accurate. At least not for me, as I don't subscribe to the trend of watching people on social media, poised to pounce at the slightest sign of nonconformity to the prevailing zeitgeist.
Enter my 3am idea of listenership.
It struck me that a more appropriate term would be 'listen.' For there are many voices on the internet to whom I want to listen, even if for no other reason than to build a comprehensive rebuttal to their drivel. People who I would never call a leader, there for I do not follow them, nor would I call a friend. Some rank so low in my esteem I wouldn't even put them on my enemies list, making 'friending' them even less appropriate.
There is also the intriguing other use of the term listener. This is a prisoner in a UK jail specially trained by Samaritans to provide emotional support to other prisoners. In some senses this is very apt, as on social media we are too often prisoners in a system providing emotional support to other prisoners.
Well, that was the hard bit, coming up with the idea.
Now for the easy bit, convincing the multifarious warring tribes of the fediverse and a few billion dollar companies to change their nomenclature.
Good night and good luck.
Pink headphones on a pastel background by Icons8 Team is liscensed under Unsplash.
This post is day 086 of my #100DaysToOffload challenge. If you want to get involved, you can get more info from 100daystooffload.com.
Continuing from my musing yesterday about supporting evidence, I started thinking about another potential trap when writing: generalisation.
Having done your due diligence, gone to the primary sources and been sceptical in your reading, two key issues still remain.
Data from studies generally only covers a very small sub-set of a population. For example, it is well near impossible to survey all the inhabitants of a country (though census data tries to come close). Thus surveys which claim X per cent of people in Australia think this or Y percent of people in America do that, is generally an extrapolation of data based on a sub-set of the whole population. Perhaps a sample of 1,000 people was used, from which a data model was built to make a broad claim about the population as a whole.
While this is reasonable, it does mean a writer can fall into the trap of imagining because 67% of respondent to a survey support X, there is genuinely wide spread support. When in reality, the people chosen and the methodology of the questions asked has in fact skewed the sample.
A wonderful example skewing a sample though leading questions comes from Yes Prime Minister. In a memorable scene, Sir Humphrey demonstrates to Bernard how leading questions can sway a respondent to be both for and against National Service:
Sir Humphrey Appleby: Mr. Woolley, are you worried about the number of young people without jobs? Bernard Woolley: Yes Sir Humphrey Appleby: Are you worried about the rise in crime among teenagers? Bernard Woolley: Yes. Sir Humphrey Appleby: Do you think there is lack of discipline in our Comprehensive Schools? Bernard Woolley: Yes. Sir Humphrey Appleby: Do you think young people welcome some authority and leadership in their lives? Bernard Woolley: Yes. Sir Humphrey Appleby: Do you think they respond to a challenge? Bernard Woolley: Yes. Sir Humphrey Appleby: Would you be in favour of reintroducing National Service? Bernard Woolley: Oh, well I suppose I might. Sir Humphrey Appleby: Yes or no? Bernard Woolley: Yes. Sir Humphrey: Of course you would, Bernard. After all, you told you you can’t say no to that. So they don’t mention the first five questions and they publish the last one.
Conversely, the wily civil servant shows his junior how the opposite response can be achieved:
Sir Humphrey Appleby: Mr. Woolley, are you worried about the danger of war? Bernard Woolley: Yes. Sir Humphrey Appleby: Are you worried about the growth of armaments? Bernard Woolley: Yes. Sir Humphrey Appleby: Do you think there's a danger in giving young people guns and teaching them how to kill? Bernard Woolley: Yes. Sir Humphrey Appleby: Do you think it's wrong to force people to take arms against their will? Bernard Woolley: Yes. Sir Humphrey Appleby: Would you oppose the reintroduction of National Service? Bernard Woolley: Yes. Sir Humphrey Appleby: There you are, you see, Bernard. The perfect balanced sample.
With that example of wisdom...
Good night and good luck.
Image by Sydney Rae is liscensed under Unsplash.
This post is day 085 of my #100DaysToOffload challenge. If you want to get involved, you can get more info from 100daystooffload.com.
My weekends are usually spent cloistered away in my study, working on one project or another. My fiancée laments I spend too much time tinkering with my blog, time that could be better spent ploughing through more of my PhD or even writing a cogent article for here (Muse & Reason).
I remain defiant, contending that tweaking each element of this site, tweaks which will probably go unnoticed, is a productive use of time. My argument loosely follows Antoine de Saint-Exupéry:
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. ― Airman's Odyssey
Thus my quest for minimalism in my publishing platform continues. But this contretemps put me in mind of an important rule when writing:
That is not to say abandon it. As a child I thought many things I couldn't support in the face of vehement adult objections. Not until decades later, when I had a thick dossier of supporting evidence, did I return to those thoughts and press them with a new found certainty. A certainty that was based on more than my gut instinct or a 'wouldn't it be nice' philosophy.
I am wholeheartedly glad I didn't abandon those lines of reasoning, but it was prudent to drop them at the time. Particularly when faced with the withering gaze of the headmaster.
But to return to the point at hand, it is prudent to drop a concept or an assertion from your writing when there is a dearth of supporting evidence. This is particularly the case when straying on to technical topics, which in this age of scientism seems to be just about everything.
The paradoxical twin of this maxim of prudence, is to always be sceptical. A paradox, because scepticism is necessary when the evidence supports your thesis.
This is an ever present issue in the age of the search engine, where a couple of key strokes puts a library of information on people's screens. In such a soup of 'source material,' it is hard to find a topic for which there ISN'T a supporting post or website.
Thus, always go to the primary sources. By that I mean primary sources written by people with a modicum of bona fides.
Check who wrote the article or who is the controlling publisher. Everyone has their biases, and these pervade the work produced. Even for those who are ever watchful and, as Edmund Burke counselled: question their absolute convictions and spend a long time ‘lost in Doubts and uncertainties.’
Finally, having marshalled your evidence and checked your sources, provide this to your readers. Add names of authors, titles of books or links to websites. This will not only allow your readers to check your facts, but it should also build confidence in the work you produce. That it is work, though pervaded by biases, which seeks to establish a verifiable truth claim.
The more you can build this trust relationship, the more people will come back to your articles and value your judgement.
Good night and good luck.
Image by Markus Winkler on Unsplash.
This post is day 084 of my #100DaysToOffload challenge. If you want to get involved, you can get more info from 100daystooffload.com.
Day 83 of the 100 day challenge and I have drawn a total blank. I have faced writers block before, but often this has been a catalyst to a post as it has caused me to muse on mental indigestion, the void and how these help me to overcome the struggle with topic.
Today is different, in that I normally feel a restlessness with not being able to conjure a topic. This inner struggle is the catalyst for the creative juices.
Today, I feel the most wonderful tranquility. Without meaningful agonism, a topic isn't emerging from the primal soup of my mind.
Thus dear reader, till next we meet when I trust I shall have richer literary pickings for your delectation.
Good night and good luck.
This post is day 083 of my #100DaysToOffload challenge. If you want to get involved, you can get more info from 100daystooffload.com.
I am a simple man. I like things I can see and touch. In the technological realm, I like things I can see and organise. This is perhaps why I am happier with knobs, levers and buttons than I am with touchscreens and complex scripts I can’t understand. To take a line from the book of Potter:
Never trust anything that can think for itself if you can't see where it keeps its brain ― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
There was a time when this held true for computer systems. Spools of tape, piles of diskettes or banks of hard disks. Today, cloud computing, intricate code with hooks of hooks of hooks, and systems where even the devs aren't quite sure how everything fits together, presents an alarming landscape.
One of the more deadly examples of flaws in the complexity was in the fatal crashes of Boeing 737 MAX aircraft in 2019. In consequence, airlines are now advised to:
Turn the plane off and on again every 51 days, to stop its computers displaying false data in mid-flight. A similar problem found in 2017 in some aeroplanes made by Airbus, Boeing’s European rival, prompted the European Union Aviation Safety Agency to require that such aircraft be rebooted at least every 149 hours. – The Economist
Perhaps the irony is that the solution may eventually come from the ever growing complexity. As Adam Barr observed in his book, The Problem with Software: Why Smart Engineers Write Bad Code, as software increasingly shifts from being a product to a service, the companies and people who produce it will have ever more incentive to code it well, rather than 'good enough to ship.'
Good night and good luck.
By Bug de l'an 2000 is liscensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
This post is day 082 of my #100DaysToOffload challenge. If you want to get involved, you can get more info from 100daystooffload.com.