Qantas is regarded as one of the world's safest airlines, to the extent that in the movie Rain Man it was mentioned that Qantas had never had a fatality (It did have some before becoming a commercial jet liner). On my recent trip to Finland (I'm finally home) I flew Qantas from Sydney to Brisbane, then finally Hong Kong to Sydney. Despite knowing of the severe rarity of plane crashes and the safety record of Qantas, those two flights I was particularly nervous. Why?
In 2008 there were a string of accidents involving Qantas, thankfully no-one was killed, but it was still headline news. Air safety is a big deal after all. So while I had read all the statistics, understood at a statistical level how unlikely a crash is, each little sound or the hint of turbulence was enough to send me into a state of mild panic. Oh I wish I had my copy of the Hitch-hiker's Guide with me. Though at that stage of the journey I was quite sleep deprived so that may have had something to do with it.
It's important to realise that there are thousands of flights around the world each day and accidents are rare. Fatal accidents are even rarer. Yet even with a tiny statistical probability of there being a problem in a flight, it's only those times we hear about through the media. I wonder how different it would be if we constantly heard on the news "142 flights have happened in the last 24 hours in this country alone and all made it to their destination safely." But of course we don't hear that, it's not really newsworthy.
And in that is the core of the problem. It's far safer to travel in a plane than in a car, and on a practical side of things pilots are far more trained than the average driver is. Airlines have to make sure they keep their planes in working order because a single disaster could be disastrous for business. Yet despite these statistics, the means by which news is reported, the threat of an accident seems very real through sheer repetition of disasters as portrayed by the media.
News is reporting of statistical aberrations that couple with emotional significance. Statistically, events that happen to 1 in a million people on any given day should happen on average 20 times a day in a country the size of Australia. One in a billion occurrences should happen at least once every 2 years. And this is where I personally have a problem with the media - it's rarely informative and almost always sensational. It brings up an important question - what makes something newsworthy? It seems that these days it's whatever grabs the best ratings. So while that happens, what gives us emotional satisfaction will formulate and alter in our minds our view of reality. We are victims of selection bias on a global level, vicariously viewing the world through heavily and sensationally filtered eyes.
Showing posts with label media. Show all posts
Showing posts with label media. Show all posts
Friday, 20 February 2009
Thursday, 16 October 2008
Dumbing Down The Media
Yesterday I came across a great article on Crikey written by Paul Collins on the decline of journalistic standards on our national broadcaster.
Words tell you everything. When you hear "interdisciplinary" you know it means "dumbing down" and "consumer focused" always refers to the lowest common denominator. This is precisely the rhetoric used yesterday by ABC Radio National management to describe their intentions for RN programming next year.He said so eloquently what I clumsily tried to say. The need for experts cannot be overstated, especially in areas that matter. The journalists who give the news are the teachers of the general population. They need to be trained in the areas they cover as their voice has influence on the general population. The domain expert has been lost in mainstream media, and if what Collins is saying is true, then it's sad that our national broadcaster is sacrificing quality for ratings. This opinionated blogger has nothing but respect for Paul Collins.
Several specialist programs are being taken off-air including the Religion Report, the Media Report and Radio Eye. The Reports are flagship programs that deal with issues central to current culture. Apparently they are being replaced by a movie show and something about the future. Specialist broadcasters will spend more time responding to opinionated bloggers rather than making programs. God help us!
Let's be clear what ABC Radio management is up to: it is a case of the bland leading the bland. Specialisation is out. Nowadays the belief is that any old (or, more likely, young) "interdisciplinary" journalist can deal with any topic. Well, I've been interviewed literally hundreds of times on ABC radio and TV. My experience is that while most journalists make a reasonable go of it, they just don't know the detail and often have to be led to the key questions.
Take religion for example. There are no more than half a dozen specialist religious journalists in Australia. Two work for Fairfax (Linda Morris and Barney Zwartz) and the rest for the ABC which has had a religion department since the beginning of the Corporation. Stephen Crittenden, John Cleary and Rachael Kohn are able to cover a complex spectrum of beliefs, practices and theologies from a wide cross-section of traditions precisely because they are specialists.
Nowadays religion is a mainstream political, cultural and socio-economic issue with enormous impact on world affairs. To cover it adequately you need specialists. That is precisely what Stephen Crittenden has done on the Religion Report. He knows what the issues are and where the bodies are buried. Sure, he's upset some powerful people, but that's the nature of a free media.
I'm not paranoid. I don’t see this as an attack on religion. It's more a lack of appreciation of specialization, derived from the half-witted, post-modern conviction that everyone can do anything. Sure, they can ask a few prosaic, "man-in-the-street" questions. But that's not the task of Radio National. If you think it is, get a job with the commercials.
We need to be clear where this is leading. It effectively spells the end of religion as a specialization in the ABC. If you only have a couple of minor, essentially life-style programs on air you don't need people who know their stuff. All you need is an 'interdisciplinary, consumer-focused' approach, produced by the type of journalist who doesn’t know the difference between an Anglo-Catholic and an Evangelical!
Tuesday, 7 October 2008
Cute Animal News Story
Now I normally rip into the media for it's ability to report irrelevance, but this highly irrelevant story I thought was kind of cool.
Yes, it's a puff piece, even quality news services like BBC and the ABC put these kinds of stories out there. So what's my interest? It's a pseudo-experiment in animal behaviour. Maybe stories like this are the bridge we need to show our connection to the animal kingdom. Sure a cat dialling emergency is cute and makes for a nice story, but this shows an animal that is capable of doing a job that requires higher brain function.
Anyone who has seen the sublime documentary series Life on Earth should remember what the macaque is capable of. In the 1950s, researchers left sweet potatoes on the beach for the monkeys to eat. One clever girl decided to wash hers in the water to get off the sand. Soon, other monkeys started to do the same. Then the researchers tried the same with rice, that same clever girl threw handfuls of the rice and sand into the water - the rice would float while the sand would sink and she was able to eat the rice in handfuls without digesting large clumps of sand. These experiments have resulted in the pseudoscientific claim of the 100th monkey effect, a phenomenon that doesn't even have a factual basis on which it's conclusions are drawn. The point is that these small-brained simians are smarter than we give them credit for.
Now of course there are plenty of scientific experiments involving the intelligence of many different animals, and we have seen many times where animals are not only able to perform complex problems but are able to do some quicker than humans. It's becoming harder and harder to keep our species as something unique, every time a unique trait is defined we find an animal capable of doing the equivalent. For all the progress and accumulation of knowledge, we have indeed separated ourselves from nature. But in each of us lies genes that came about over hundreds of millions of years, that were able to provide the organism with some survival advantage throughout it's various forms. Most of these genes and the variation we have is shared by both us and the macaque, our last common ancestor was about 25 million years ago - not long on the geological time scale.
Maybe there is more than simply anthropomorphising the animal kingdom in these stories, certainly that element is there but it might not be the whole picture. Maybe we see us in them because 90something percent of us is in them. It's not that they are exhibiting human behaviour, it's that they are exhibiting behaviour that shows us we are animals. Of course this is nothing revolutionary to say; scientists have understood this for around a century now. But it's something neglected by a society where we are taught that we are unique, that we are above behaving like animals. But nature keeps reminding us, it keeps sending us subtle hints that we are a part of the same process as the rest of life on earth. Having a man in a labcoat announcing it won't convince many people, but having a monkey that can work customer service just might.
A Japanese tavern has turned to two monkeys for help with its table service.
The Kayabukiya sake house, in the city of Utsunomiya north of Tokyo, is using a pair of uniformed Japanese macaques called Yat-chan and Fuku-chan to serve its customers. The younger of the two, Fuku-chan, usually begins the first shift and is quick to give customers a hot towel to help them clean their hands before they order their drinks, as is the custom in Japan. Twelve-year-old Yat-chan is the crowd pleaser at the tavern, moving agilely around the restaurant as he responds to customers' requests.
With only two years of experience, the younger monkey's workload is limited to delivering hot towels, but both are well appreciated by customers, who tip them with boiled soya beans. "The monkeys are actually better waiters than some really bad human ones," one customer, 34-year-old Takayoshi Soeno, said. The 63-year-old tavern owner, Kaoru Otsuka, originally kept the animals as household pets. Mr Otsuka says it was only when the older one began aping him that he realised he could use them as waiters. "Yat-chan first learned by just watching me working in the restaurant," he said. "It all started when one day I gave him a hot towel out of curiosity and he brought the towel to the customer."
Once the restaurant's employees were properly certified by local authorities to work with animals, both Fuku-chan and Yat-chan clocked in for work. A regular of the tavern, 58-year-old Shoichi Yano, says the animals are like her children. "Actually, [they're] better," she said. "My son doesn't listen to me but Yat-chan will." Some clients, like retiree Miho Takikkawa, say Yat-chan appears to understand their exact orders. "We called out for more beer just then and it brought us some beer," she said. "It's amazing how it seems to understand human words."
The monkeys work in shifts of up to two hours a day due to Japanese animal rights regulations. But the owner is hoping to bring up a whole new generation of furry waiters and waitresses after receiving three new baby monkeys this year.
Yes, it's a puff piece, even quality news services like BBC and the ABC put these kinds of stories out there. So what's my interest? It's a pseudo-experiment in animal behaviour. Maybe stories like this are the bridge we need to show our connection to the animal kingdom. Sure a cat dialling emergency is cute and makes for a nice story, but this shows an animal that is capable of doing a job that requires higher brain function.
Anyone who has seen the sublime documentary series Life on Earth should remember what the macaque is capable of. In the 1950s, researchers left sweet potatoes on the beach for the monkeys to eat. One clever girl decided to wash hers in the water to get off the sand. Soon, other monkeys started to do the same. Then the researchers tried the same with rice, that same clever girl threw handfuls of the rice and sand into the water - the rice would float while the sand would sink and she was able to eat the rice in handfuls without digesting large clumps of sand. These experiments have resulted in the pseudoscientific claim of the 100th monkey effect, a phenomenon that doesn't even have a factual basis on which it's conclusions are drawn. The point is that these small-brained simians are smarter than we give them credit for.
Now of course there are plenty of scientific experiments involving the intelligence of many different animals, and we have seen many times where animals are not only able to perform complex problems but are able to do some quicker than humans. It's becoming harder and harder to keep our species as something unique, every time a unique trait is defined we find an animal capable of doing the equivalent. For all the progress and accumulation of knowledge, we have indeed separated ourselves from nature. But in each of us lies genes that came about over hundreds of millions of years, that were able to provide the organism with some survival advantage throughout it's various forms. Most of these genes and the variation we have is shared by both us and the macaque, our last common ancestor was about 25 million years ago - not long on the geological time scale.
Maybe there is more than simply anthropomorphising the animal kingdom in these stories, certainly that element is there but it might not be the whole picture. Maybe we see us in them because 90something percent of us is in them. It's not that they are exhibiting human behaviour, it's that they are exhibiting behaviour that shows us we are animals. Of course this is nothing revolutionary to say; scientists have understood this for around a century now. But it's something neglected by a society where we are taught that we are unique, that we are above behaving like animals. But nature keeps reminding us, it keeps sending us subtle hints that we are a part of the same process as the rest of life on earth. Having a man in a labcoat announcing it won't convince many people, but having a monkey that can work customer service just might.
Friday, 28 March 2008
The Lying Liars and their Dirty Lies
Accuracy and evidence seem to be two words that escape fundamentalists, where what they are saying doesn't matter if it's backed up. All that matters is pushing their belief as if it were fact and if lying about scientific discovery helps them do so, then it's somehow justified. I spoke a couple of entries ago about wilful ignorance, it seems I'm giving the benefit of the doubt to some people that really don't deserve it. One thing I've come to learn is that people are ignoring evidence to the point they utter outright falsehoods in an attempt to silence dissent. That irks me to no end, I think I'm under my own delusion; one of which people will willingly tell the truth as they see it. There has to come a point where someone's ignorance can no longer be excused, especially when they are subjected to the same evidence as the rest of us.
Sharing (lies) is caring (about God)
There isn't much better than lying to someone's face. We've all had that door-knocker before, the one who picks up on your scientific nature then tries to spiel off something that sounds vaguely scientific in an effort to show they are an authoritative source. Unfortunately for them, their attempts are specious at best, and outright wrong at worst. And not for one second I'm convinced they believe it either, it's just another tactic to turn your life over to the mythical entity that is Jesus Christ. For them I feel that the science is just another tool to inspire belief. Too bad their understanding of science is ignorant to the point of absurdity.
I was inspired to write this blog thanks to this video. It's an investigative report into youth earth creationists leading home schooled children though a museum so they can explain science from a biblical perspective. Believe what they want eh? That's fine. Except that they are lying to the children deliberately. Now I could bore you with a point by point refutation of the absolute absurdity the people in charge are spieling off as fact, but it's obvious. The journalist does a half-decent job of calling them out. What I take exception to is the way they place the argument in the children's heads. To set up a false dichotomy about a Tyrannosaurus is just absurd. To say that humans lived for 800 years pre-flood is stupid. To say scientists use circular logic to get the age of the rocks is an outright lie. Not to mention dismissing displays as art instead of science. It's clutching at any straw necessary and hoping that it's strong enough to carry a child's mind, and at that age it probably is.
It feels so unmercifully unrelenting to the point of nausea. They believe something else, there is nothing stopping them from doing so. But to deliberately lie to children to get them to believe what they do surely has to come to the point where they can see that their position is out of line with human knowledge and evidence. Sometimes you can't back up what you believe with evidence, but to go contrary to evidence is blind ignorance.
Repelled - no propaganda allowed
The old way is far more personal than the new way, but the propaganda machine that is media is a far more effective and global way to reach people. Why go around street to street converting others when you can make a website to potentially reach millions? Or better yet make a video which could be distributed and viewed en masse. We are seeing creation museums open based on websites deliberately spreading misinformation, films like Expelled complaining that Intelligent Design doesn't get a fair go in the science classroom. It's not about being right scientifically, it's about been seen as scientific by the unscientific public in an effort to show that their belief is compatible with science. All they have to do is ignore mountains of evidence, attack the character of evolution advocates personally, drop the J word a few times and use the bible as history.
Anyone who wants to see a poorly written propaganda vessel, just head here. The irony of the name is far outweighed by the idiocy in the blog. For something meant to be dealing with evolution (a science), he sure goes on about God (not science) a lot. The blog itself is an absurd amalgamation of everything possible one could muster to make something that sounds scientifically possible that really doesn't disprove a thing. But this is the kind of nonsense that people push as ways of marginalising one of the strongest scientific theories out there. I've had the displeasure of actually debating the fool who wrote it, he's more infuriating than even his blog would have led me to believe. He even uses his blog as an authoritative source for his arguments. The most ironic thing about it is the quotes he uses:
"A mind bent on suppressing or hindering the truth will ultimately find the lie it is chasing." - Ravi Zacharias
How appropriate...
It will be interesting to see what the full write-up is on Expelled once it hits theaters. The PZ Myers incident really shows how pathetic the movie is, on the one hand having him in the movie and thanking him in the credits while on the other hand not even allowing him to see the finished product. Thankfully Dawkins was there to give his thoughts on the movie, though The Discovery Institute is still pushing the lies for the sake of belief. I'm looking forward to watching the film, I'll download it, sit back, have a few brews and enjoy it in the same way I would an episode of Bullshit! A poorly researched episode of Bullshit! that employs every dirty trick imaginable, but still that's where the appeals lies to me. Unlike it's target audience, I do have a reasonable knowledge of science, I do have a reasonable knowledge on the start and end points of freedom of speech and I do have a knowledge on what constitutes religious belief masquerading as science as a means of getting it taught to children.
Selective scepticism
The internet is a wonderful vessel for information, it's a way to connect with people around the globe. Same goes for television, radio, films, books, etc. They are ways of communicating ideas between one another, and because these have become the new trusted source of information, the imperative for truth is paramount. Media is easy to manipulate, it's self-confirming and plays on peoples emotional response to the point where ideas so abstract and irrational can get paraded as truth by the willing viewer. Though you need to wonder how much some of them still believe in an inerrant bible.
Is the earth really flat? Is there a light source that isn't the sun? Does the sun orbit around the earth? Are bats birds? If the bible is inerrant the answer to all these should be yes. Yet the scientific method can demonstrate otherwise. We can see the earth as being spherical from space. We see that we orbit the sun which provides us light where day and night come from the earth rotating. Bats are mammals, which have evolved wings. Yet we don't see creationists questioning astrophysics, it's an outright attack on a science that shows we weren't crafted by God out of dirt, but by a process of mutation over billions of years. Why the double standard? I honestly don't know. Evolution is one of the strongest sciences out there, but it's somehow incompatible with an inerrant bible that is compatible with a round earth orbiting a light-giving sun.
Evolution should not be under attack in the way this is, all science is a system of discovery and falsification that is constantly updating. Yes it should be questioned, but the arena for that should not be in a public forum, it should be in scientific laboratories where the claims can be analysed and tested. Otherwise it's deliberately stirring up controversy for the sake of irrational arguments to bypass a rigorous screening process and enter the minds of the masses. It's a point where truth is irrelevant and the thing that matters is that people believe what you do, regardless of the evidence. And in a world where spreading anecdotal information as fact is easier than ever, these irrational ideas are being perpetuated by those selective enough to take it in without question. The meme that is Creationism has found it's ultimate conduit.
Sharing (lies) is caring (about God)
There isn't much better than lying to someone's face. We've all had that door-knocker before, the one who picks up on your scientific nature then tries to spiel off something that sounds vaguely scientific in an effort to show they are an authoritative source. Unfortunately for them, their attempts are specious at best, and outright wrong at worst. And not for one second I'm convinced they believe it either, it's just another tactic to turn your life over to the mythical entity that is Jesus Christ. For them I feel that the science is just another tool to inspire belief. Too bad their understanding of science is ignorant to the point of absurdity.
I was inspired to write this blog thanks to this video. It's an investigative report into youth earth creationists leading home schooled children though a museum so they can explain science from a biblical perspective. Believe what they want eh? That's fine. Except that they are lying to the children deliberately. Now I could bore you with a point by point refutation of the absolute absurdity the people in charge are spieling off as fact, but it's obvious. The journalist does a half-decent job of calling them out. What I take exception to is the way they place the argument in the children's heads. To set up a false dichotomy about a Tyrannosaurus is just absurd. To say that humans lived for 800 years pre-flood is stupid. To say scientists use circular logic to get the age of the rocks is an outright lie. Not to mention dismissing displays as art instead of science. It's clutching at any straw necessary and hoping that it's strong enough to carry a child's mind, and at that age it probably is.
It feels so unmercifully unrelenting to the point of nausea. They believe something else, there is nothing stopping them from doing so. But to deliberately lie to children to get them to believe what they do surely has to come to the point where they can see that their position is out of line with human knowledge and evidence. Sometimes you can't back up what you believe with evidence, but to go contrary to evidence is blind ignorance.
Repelled - no propaganda allowed
The old way is far more personal than the new way, but the propaganda machine that is media is a far more effective and global way to reach people. Why go around street to street converting others when you can make a website to potentially reach millions? Or better yet make a video which could be distributed and viewed en masse. We are seeing creation museums open based on websites deliberately spreading misinformation, films like Expelled complaining that Intelligent Design doesn't get a fair go in the science classroom. It's not about being right scientifically, it's about been seen as scientific by the unscientific public in an effort to show that their belief is compatible with science. All they have to do is ignore mountains of evidence, attack the character of evolution advocates personally, drop the J word a few times and use the bible as history.
Anyone who wants to see a poorly written propaganda vessel, just head here. The irony of the name is far outweighed by the idiocy in the blog. For something meant to be dealing with evolution (a science), he sure goes on about God (not science) a lot. The blog itself is an absurd amalgamation of everything possible one could muster to make something that sounds scientifically possible that really doesn't disprove a thing. But this is the kind of nonsense that people push as ways of marginalising one of the strongest scientific theories out there. I've had the displeasure of actually debating the fool who wrote it, he's more infuriating than even his blog would have led me to believe. He even uses his blog as an authoritative source for his arguments. The most ironic thing about it is the quotes he uses:
"A mind bent on suppressing or hindering the truth will ultimately find the lie it is chasing." - Ravi Zacharias
How appropriate...
It will be interesting to see what the full write-up is on Expelled once it hits theaters. The PZ Myers incident really shows how pathetic the movie is, on the one hand having him in the movie and thanking him in the credits while on the other hand not even allowing him to see the finished product. Thankfully Dawkins was there to give his thoughts on the movie, though The Discovery Institute is still pushing the lies for the sake of belief. I'm looking forward to watching the film, I'll download it, sit back, have a few brews and enjoy it in the same way I would an episode of Bullshit! A poorly researched episode of Bullshit! that employs every dirty trick imaginable, but still that's where the appeals lies to me. Unlike it's target audience, I do have a reasonable knowledge of science, I do have a reasonable knowledge on the start and end points of freedom of speech and I do have a knowledge on what constitutes religious belief masquerading as science as a means of getting it taught to children.
Selective scepticism
The internet is a wonderful vessel for information, it's a way to connect with people around the globe. Same goes for television, radio, films, books, etc. They are ways of communicating ideas between one another, and because these have become the new trusted source of information, the imperative for truth is paramount. Media is easy to manipulate, it's self-confirming and plays on peoples emotional response to the point where ideas so abstract and irrational can get paraded as truth by the willing viewer. Though you need to wonder how much some of them still believe in an inerrant bible.
Is the earth really flat? Is there a light source that isn't the sun? Does the sun orbit around the earth? Are bats birds? If the bible is inerrant the answer to all these should be yes. Yet the scientific method can demonstrate otherwise. We can see the earth as being spherical from space. We see that we orbit the sun which provides us light where day and night come from the earth rotating. Bats are mammals, which have evolved wings. Yet we don't see creationists questioning astrophysics, it's an outright attack on a science that shows we weren't crafted by God out of dirt, but by a process of mutation over billions of years. Why the double standard? I honestly don't know. Evolution is one of the strongest sciences out there, but it's somehow incompatible with an inerrant bible that is compatible with a round earth orbiting a light-giving sun.
Evolution should not be under attack in the way this is, all science is a system of discovery and falsification that is constantly updating. Yes it should be questioned, but the arena for that should not be in a public forum, it should be in scientific laboratories where the claims can be analysed and tested. Otherwise it's deliberately stirring up controversy for the sake of irrational arguments to bypass a rigorous screening process and enter the minds of the masses. It's a point where truth is irrelevant and the thing that matters is that people believe what you do, regardless of the evidence. And in a world where spreading anecdotal information as fact is easier than ever, these irrational ideas are being perpetuated by those selective enough to take it in without question. The meme that is Creationism has found it's ultimate conduit.
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