Category: General

I arrived at Changi Airport about ten Sunday night. After clearing Customs (where my long name was not remarked upon because of its ridiculousness but rather because palangi don’t usually have so many middle names) I headed to the outside world, one filled with heat and humidity..

The queue for the taxi was long and, whilst not arduous, taxing (see what I did there?). When I got in the taxi I realised just how much of a Libertarian paradise this place is; the taxi driver’s onboard computer was showing ads, but they were aimed at the driver, being about buying a better cab and getting more training, rather being for my ‘benefit.’

I was also amused by the sign on the driver’s seat that read “Belting up is compulsory.” When you are jetlagged that seems very funny.

Anyway, I didn’t get to the hotel, the Mardarin Marina, until eleven, which was too late to meet up with my other conference attendees. I was now on my second wind, which was good and bad; it was five in the morning to my bodyclock. I drew a bath, ordered french fries and checked my e- mail.

My sleep was intermitent.

I woke awkwardly and ate a bemused breakfast. The coffee, which tasted awful and had the kick of goldfish, failed to raise the spectre of my vim and vigour. With nothing better to do, I decided to give a paper on the epistemology of rumours.

So, what to say about the workshop?

Well, first, my talk was not my best work. I’m glad I didn’t record it. The paper version is much better.

That being said, my talk’s inadequacy didn’t seem to be noted by the attendees, which means I might just have been a little precious at the time. Two things contributed to that; a lack of real sleep after the flight and my being moved from second speaker to first.

That particular move, being made to speak first, was a little unexpected. Originally I was the third speaker; there was going to be a talk on Critical Theory and media-blindness in regard to academic discussion of rumouring and rumour-mongering and then a talk by a fellow philosopher, followed by me. Greg, the organiser, realised after the papers were submitted, that the fellow philosopher actually referenced my paper in his, so it made sense to move me to second place. I didn’t see a problem with that, especially after I read said paper.

Still, being moved to first speaker… Well, that was a challenge.

Greg wanted the philosophers to set up the discussion, which I think is all fine and good. I just wish I had had more than fifteen minutes notice of this fact. My original plan was to build on the first paper; either accept or reject its definition and then explain why I think rumours are reliable. Being moved to first place meant I had to situate the debate and introduce the definition, which on one level is good; I set up the terms of discussion, but on another level this was bad, because I wasn’t adequately prepared for that.

It didn’t help that as soon as I got to the lectern I realised that my jetlag was either going to let me read my notes in silence or talk to the audience in a blind fashion.

Still, as I said, my colleagues seemed to think it went well, although I do wonder whether that was because I got my second wind in the Q&A.

And, I did manage to get people to talk about rumours as being reliable.

When I first wrote this up I had a fairly detailed listing of who spoke and on what, but I’ve decided to forgo the details and talk generally ((I will say the following, though, about one paper. Chris Lundry talked about the case of Noordin Top and rumours as to the shape of his anus. His paper would make a great Fortean Times article (I must suggest it to him). Basically, some people still think that a funnel-shaped anus is evidence of homosexulity and the Indonesian government seem to have deliberately spread a rumour that Top, a terrorist involved in the Bali bombings, was a Sodomite, which rather defused his potential matyrdom.)).

The first panel was a mostly academic discussion of what rumours are. That was my role in the proceedings; to talk about rumours in a conceptual manner. Axel Gelfert, the other philosopher at the table, and I were very much on the same page when it came to the notion of rumours and their reliability, although Axel’s paper had a Kantian focus on rumours being some attempt to persuade a hearer of the proposition being rumoured, and how trying to persuade hearers of propositions they do not know to be true is morally suspicious (I’m sure Axel will correct me if I’m wrong about this). I don’t think rumouring is meant to be some kind of persuasion; I think it’s best thought of a social grooming behavior where people try to tease out just how plausible a proposition is by testing it out on others.

The second panel was mostly in the field of political studies and sociology. The papers were case studies; Babak Rahmini told us about the rumours spread before, during and after the last Iranian Presidential elections and Mark Woodward gave an entertaing talk about how the seemingly implausible rumour that Suharto that was collecting magical heirlooms from all over Indonesia turned out to be true. We also had a talk on how Twitter was used to confirm or deny rumours after the 2008 Mumbai bombings.

The third panel was were, to my mind, it got interesting, because the case studies here were often informed by the presenter’s involvement in strategic information.

For example, Scott Rushton’s paper was largely developed out of his time in Iraq working as a chopper pilot in Al-Hillal. He’s an academic by day and a member of the US Naval reserve by night, which makes me think I need a better day job so I can sound so impressive when I introduce myself at parties.

For the Conspiracy Theorists out there, the most interesting talk, if not just by content but also by who was giving it, was Todd Leventhal’s. Todd is the head of the Counter Misinformation Team at the US Department of State, so the fact that I am now admitting to being in friendly e-mail correspondence with him means that ‘serious’ Conspiracy Theorists will say I’m either compromised or will go ‘Ha, so he is working for them after all!’

Todd combats rumours (or ‘rumors’, as he probably prefers to spell the word) in the USA (you can read some of his work here). His resumé is impressive and the examples he cited of rumours he has had personal dealings with (that sentence seems wrong) was both entertaining and also a little depressing, something that was amplified in the Q&A session where someone pointed out that baseless rumours are rife not just in areas where one nation state is agin another but inside nation states, even ones which are seemingly stable and where you would think things would be nice and harmonious.

Which lead to the potentially disturbing talk at the end of the workshop about the West’s attitude towards propaganda.

It can be argued that the ‘West’ doesn’t do propaganda (let’s read that as deliberately targeted rumour propagation), which has been a problem in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, where the so-called insurgent forces (I think ‘insurgent’ is a deliberately provocative and pejorative term which can skew the debate as to the legitimacy of political and military action) are rather good at propaganda (often, it must be admitted, because the insurgents are indigenous and thus know a) how their society works and thus who to talk to and b) are more trusted than the counter-insurgents, who sometimes aren’t local/indigenous).

Noe, the argument that the West doesn’t engage in propaganda needs finessing; during WWII a lot of propaganda was generated by the Axis and the Allies, and they were, for the most part, Western nation states. It also isn’t clear that the West is not currently engaging in propaganda (and this is where things get tricky, because what counts as ‘propaganda’ is a little ambiguous. I’m not going to finesse the argument because I don’t have the time and the ambiguity bugs me.

Anyway, technically speaking the West thinks propaganda is immoral and suspicious activity, and prefers things like leaflet drops and the like, which, as people like Todd, Scott et cetera admitted at the workshop, doesn’t often work. So the question was raised as to why we don’t engage in targeted propaganda? Someone (not a presenter) even asked why we don’t do it domestically…

Which is were things became a little fraught, with sociologists and the philosophers going ‘No, no, no, no…’ and other people going ‘Hmm, well…’

Which is why it’s taken so long for me to get round to expressing my thoughts about the workshop; I still don’t know what to think about where the Q&A went in that third panel. I suspect it’s a classic case of ‘You had to be there.’

But you weren’t, and through no fault of your own.

There is going to be a book (which I believe will be the collected papers of the workshop) which may serve to make my thoughts more concrete. I’ll want to review the papers to situate my paper (especially if the sequence of papers reflects the sequence of talks; I’ll need a new introduction to my piece), at which point I may have more to say.

Well, how to express my thoughts on the workshop? The Singaporean experience was, in itself, great and I really should have extended my stay by a few days. I spent Tuesday looking at art and exploring shopping malls, which I will claim are both perfectly legitimate investigations, anthropologically, of the local culture.

Singapore’s shopping is world famous and the malls are pretty spectacular, especially since the tunnels and public transport system that is found beneath the city streets allows you, in most cases, to walk kilometres in air conditioned comfort without ever having to see the outside world.

Which is how I found myself at the Museum of Art. I decided to see where I walked to, which is difficult underground, what with the landmarks being shops and only shops. According to my map, upon reaching the surface, I was moments away from the Museum of Art, the largest collection of South-East Asian art in the world, and it seemed a waste to not go and look at it.

Art was an afterthought, really.

Part of my reason for going ‘above’ was the need to find a proper foodhall. Not one of the mall ones, a place where locals, in their lunch breaks, would go to eat. I had been dreaming of a decent salted fish fried rice for days. I know I’m meant to be a vegetarian-cum-vegan, but in situations like these I’m a very bad one. I could blame it on the locals; the food on offer at the conference was chock-a-block with fish and satay beef, and all of it was so good and very tasty…

Which reminds me. Here’s a little secret between you and me; I quite like airline food. Not because it’s a tasty and pleasurable treat. No, I like it because I know the reason why it can never taste truly great (due to altitude and pressure issues that change the receptivity of our taste bud). I think’s interesting and fun to eat something you know has been crafted to resemble a dish you might find passable in normal circumstances, but still fails to be good. “Man,” perhaps my grandmother might have said, “was never meant to fly and the food up there proves it.”

Digression ends.

So, I wanted a salted fish fried rice. I like salted fish, which is a little like anchovies but stronger in taste and fairly revolting to smell (a little like durian, which I also like). I once cooked salted fish in my flat in London and the stink of cooking took days to dissipate.

It was worth it, however, because it is delicious, and flatmates forget culinary mistakes with ease.

So, after wandering through malls, looking but not buying, I decided that I needed to go above and find a foodhall that “real” people ate at. Finding myself outside Raffles, I looked at my tourist map and found the closest point of culture, the Museum of Art, and headed towards, hoping to find food on the way.

I did, sort of (I had to pass the museum, but only by about a block) where I found a very cheap salted fish fried rice. This was ultimately very useful, because whilst I can’t get an authentic salted fish dish in Auckland at the moment, I can get a vegan fake meat version, and I wanted to compare (answer: very similar but I had forgotten how tough real salted fish can be).

Talking about authenticity, that reminds me of the post workshop dinner, which was at the rather spectacular Aquamarine restaurant at the Mandarin Marina Hotel (five deserved stars). We had seated ourselves at the table when a large orange bowl was brought out. It was filled with noodles and chopped vegetables. Someone asked what it was for; the local contingent explained that it was a unique Singaporean invention, a Chinese New Year thing, where all the people at the table joined in making a dish, tossing the noodles and the added condiments, to bring good luck and prosperity to us all. What irked me about this was the suggestion that it was wasn’t really a tradition, wasn’t properly authentic, because it’s new/recent; it’s come out of the mix of peoples in Singapore and is not found elsewhere. That just seems insulting. It also seems so Western. Tradition, we seem to think, means “old.”

Authentic or not, the dish was delish.

As was the Guinness. Best Guinness I’ve had outside Ireland. Superb.

Which gets me to the point where I should probably talk about the workshop, eh…

21st of February, 2010 – Transit Day

3:07pm (New Zealand time)

Well, I’m on the flight to Melbourne and I’ve just wasted near two hours on (yet another pointless adaptation of ‘The Portrait of Dorian Gray.’ Colin Firth was, to use the vernacular, “well wasted” on the part of Oscar Wilde, whilst Dorian himself never really had the gravitas of an old man in a younger body; Matt Smith’s sixty seconds as the Doctor at the end of ‘The End of Time’ was much more convincing.

The trip, thus far, has been uneventful. The officials at Customs were fascinated by my long name, and I caused a minor hold-up in proceedings when another of the officials was called over to appreciate the epic length of my name. After that I just spent two hours waiting for my flight, and, as usual, I was unimpressed by the fact that if I wanted to access the internet I was going to have to pay for it. Why we/they can’t offer free access to people who are travelling overseas I do not know.

Also, the only real food option inside the Departure gates is “Burger King.” To use an acronym: WTF?

Oh well. I really shouldn’t be complaining; I’m going to Singapore to hob-nob with the intelligence community. It’s just that I don’t like the travel part of travelling. All that endless waiting, the terrible food and the forms. Oh, the forms you must fill out. Just RFID me already and scan my cavities for prosperity.

Hmm, kinky.

Missing the now former FHG; aside from the memories of writing this paper when we were together I’d also have an ally in the contemplation of how ridiculous travelling all the way to Singapore for a one-day workshop seems, in the context of Life, the Universe, Everything (especially the planet).

Right, time to queue for a bathroom (another delight of travel) and then I might risk some ‘Fringe.’ Either that or a doco about some conspiracy theory.

4pm (Melbourne time)

I probably sounded a bit grumpy in that last entry and I really shouldn’t be giving that impression. Oh well, if I used smileys more often this would a) sound more joyful and b) probably would destroy any semblance of ‘good writing’ my prose still has.

In Melbourne now, and I’m waiting to board the flight to Singapore. Although this isn’t Sydney Airport (nor Hawaii), I’m still prepared for the ‘LOST’ aircraft disaster. The island’s magical ability will cure me of my stammer and my kerotoconus, as well as making me viril and capable of tan.

Yea, verily, good times will be had by all, until I get killed off by the smoke monster a few minutes into episode three.

I need to start looking over the papers for the workshop. I’ve read through and annotated Axel’s paper but the others… I had thought I might do that on the first leg. Now it’s going to have to be the second leg.

I think I want a bath on my arrival.

4:47pm (Singapore time)

Well, almost half-way to Singapore and I’m listening to Weird Al on the entertainment system. There’s actually an incredible selection of material on it, and I’m content to watch and listen to rubbish. I mean, Weird Al is all okay and all that, but surely I could be listening to something more… relevant? No, no know where I’m going with this, either.

I did listen to some Gin Wigmore. I knew her father (not well, but still), you know.

In other ‘rubbish I have spent my precious time on this flight over,’ ‘Jennifer’s Body’ is pretty mundane. Megan Fox really isn’t so much an actress as a beautiful trestle table people want in their films. Amanda Seyfried; now there’s someone to have a wet dream over.

But I digress.

‘Jennifer’s Body’ is a Buffy homage several years late, and Joss Whedon’s quirky dialogue, although equally false, sounds much more nuanced than Diablo Cody’s.

In other news: I have a new skill; I have discovered that I’m adept at leaving my seat when sweet treats are about to be offered. And, gods above and below, the stewards don’t want to give them out if you’re not seated.

(I didn’t chase my ice cream down, but I did stand up and try to get the steward’s attention, which she did not like. I mean, it’s not as if I shouted out ‘Gascon!’ Well, not that loudly.)

Right, finish off this episode of ‘Fringe’ and then it’s time for some critical theory about rumours.

Midnight (Auckland time)

I want to sleep but I can;t quite get off. Nervous energy, methinks.

Also, too much water. The OCD is getting me again.

Reading papers. Learning a lot about Malaysia and forming some interesting thought as to how I might fend off criticisms of my take on rumours. There is an awful lot of talk about false rumours and politically endorsed rumours in these articles and I’m not sure I want to classify them as rumours proper. I think they’re both cases of the pathological form of rumours; if the rumour has been endorsed or is known to be false, then rumour-mongering is going on, rather than rumouring, I’d really quite prefer to keep rumours to some kind of social grooming behaviour.

Also, am I suffering from e-mail withdraw? I think I am and that’s disturbing. It’s been less than a day…

—

This new notes doesn’t deserve a timestamp (if it did, I’d call it 7:09pm (Singapore time); some of these papers also define rumours as being merely unofficial information, which I don’t think is helpful.

1:56am (Auckland time)

I’m hoping that, in an hour, I’ll be on the way to the hotel. Headphones on the entertainment system have broken on me. Can’t concentrate on heavy-duty reading so have resorted to skimming over a ‘Fortean Times,’ which makes me a feel a bit guilty (I like my FTs and don’t like to think I’m not paying them my full attention). Still, now (once again) only one issue behind.

Also, elf needs food, badly. I hope I can get a bowl of chips sent up to my room when I arrive. I’ll eat those, run a bath and then take some sleeping pills in the hope that I’ll be sleeping like a well-trained baby.

About to be told to shut down this computer, so I’ll say fare thee well. I suspect that, if the hotel gives me free internet, I’ll be checking e-mails in no time. The quality of my replies; well, that may not be stellar (and if the e-mail I am expecting has come through, I need to be as pure starlight).

My nose is to the grindstone at the moment, and whilst, every so often, I look up to see what is happening, I’m hard pressed to find the time to blog about (or even put in hyphens where they are necessary). If I had the time, I’d be talking about the vapid conspiracy theories being put forward to discredit the cadré of climate scientists who, using our best inferential practices based upon the evidence and well-accepted scientific principles, have shown that anthropogenic climate change is occurring.

I’ve noted the histrionics of Poneke before, who appears to be leading a one-person brigade against the Science Media Centre. He’s at it again, now essentially arguing scientists can’t have political views that are based upon their research, which resurrects that strange notion that the Sciences are not just politically neutral, but that we also shouldn’t expect policy makers to take heed of what the Sciences tell us.

Poneke’s central problem in this debate is that he doesn’t seem to be able to:

a) see the ‘problem’ in perspective, and

b) identify appropriate authorities.

The first issue has to do with his, and other journalists, contention that the Himalaya glacier error is an egregious mistake in the IPCC report. People like Poneke think that individual mistakes like these show evidence that someone or some body is trying to pull the wool over our eyes. What they fail to realise is that mistakes like these will occur in large reports like the fourth assessment; if these errors are common, then we have a problem, but the evidence indicates that this is one a very small number of mistakes. The IPCC’s response to this has been entirely appropriate; people are embarrassed and are working to ensure such mistakes don’t creep in again.

Of course, for a conspiracy theorist about anthropogenic climate change, like Poneke, this admission that it won’t happen again is probably proof positive that ‘they’ will ensure similar mistakes are never spotted.

The second issue is the more crucial, I think. Poneke and others in the media sometimes mistake people who present themselves as authorities in a discussion as being appropriately qualified authorities in a field relevant to the discussion. Let me say this straight out: Christopher Monckton is not an appropriately qualified authority when it comes to the discussion of climate change. He is merely someone who presents himself as an appropriately qualified authority.

How can we tell. Well, a legitimate appeal to authority requires that all of the following three conditions be met:

1. The person appealed to is a genuine authority in a field relevant to the discussion,
2. There is substantial agreement among experts in that field that the view endorsed is correct, and
3. The expert is testifying honestly.

Monckton fails on condition one; he is not a genuine authority in a field relevant to the discussion. Rather, he is, at best, a talent amateur with a gift for self-promotion.

Now, I’ve chosen Monckton here because he seems to be the golden boy of many a climate change denier; Poneke relies more on the utterances of our own New Zealand Climate Science Coalition, which is made up of industrial chemists and the like. Poneke is, at least, mistaking scientists in one field for being experts in some other, which is better than the Peter Cresswells of this world who put Monckton on a pedestal and also claim to be big fans of Science.

Naughty naughty.

Humans are quite bad at recognising appropriate authorities, and even the ‘saints’ of critical thinking in the world of Skeptics have a hard time of it; James ‘The Amazing’ Randi recently mistook the Oregon Petition as denoting a set of genuine authorities in a field relevant to the discussion rather than what is actually represents, which is mostly TV weather forecasters ((Although ‘TV weather forecaster’ probably suggests someone who forecasts weather on TV, I’m now reading it as suggesting ‘people who forecast TV weather…’ “Over on ‘Lost’ it looks like it’ll be a windy day for the survivors, with scattered rain and hail towards the afternoon…”)), for example. It’s a difficult business appraising whether someone has a qualified opinion on a subject (and it certainly doesn’t help that there is a growing movement of anti-intellectualism in grassroots skepticism; in some of these debates you either need to be an expert to contribute or you need to know who the actual experts are). Common sense won’t get you very far, especially when you are dealing with systems that are so complex that they defy our facile intuitions about how we think the world works.

Which is all I’m going to say about the vapid AGW conspiracy theories for the time being. PhD theses don’t complete themselves, you know.