Porky Pies

From what I believe is a fairly common childhood viewpoint, as a child I was convinced of the idea of universal truth being something that adults had access to and full knowledge of. I think more than that, I believed on some unconscious level that adults had some sort of innate moral compass that allowed them to know the right decisions to make. In my childish mind these two things went hand in hand: knowing all the answers and deploying them in a morally responsible manner. I think there may be some way in which we all expect to wake up on our 21st (or 25th or 30th) birthday in full possession of all the facts; essentially grown up. I think the lack of this knowledge is one of the things most responsible for adults saying "I don't feel grown up". Of course part of becoming a grown up is coming to terms with the fact that you'll never have access to universal truth, with the accompanying comfort that no one else will either. In an ideal world we would all strive to reach as close to a universal truth as possible and negotiate our way through the world accordingly, so that to any observing child it would appear as if we were indeed in possession of universal truth and an unimpeachable moral code. Unfortunately the 'child' test is a long way from foolproof, given that it is not difficult to fool a child. It's not even that difficult to fool an adult; the Internet seems to have given us a desire to treat almost everything with credulity. It's as if we've taken the David St.Hubbins maxim to heart: "I believe virtually everything I read, and I think that makes me a more discerning individual than someone who doesn't believe anything." Perhaps even more problematic than our willingness to believe any old crap is the desire to feed any old crap to us that appears to drive so many of those we, in our childish state, believe ought to know better. 

The banner under the headline in the Metro on 14th January 2015 included the phrase "inflation hits an all-time low". I was surprised at this fact and so decided to do a little bit of research to find out if 0.5% really was the lowest rate of inflation ever. It didn't take me more than a couple of minutes to confirm that the rate of change in RPI had actually been negative for a time in 1959 and 1960, which is definitely lower than 0.5%. I'm sure if I were to present this fact to the Metro (assuming they didn't ignore me completely), they would point out that the index they were referring to as a measure of inflation was the CPI, not the RPI. The CPI didn't exist in the late 50s and early 60s, so in that sense, the Metro is entirely correct: a current measure of inflation is at an all time low, but only because 'all time' in this instance is less than 10 years. I don't think the Metro had anything more devious than a spot of sensationalism in mind when they came up with that banner, but it is indicative of the way people often use data selectively to make a point that the same data in its correct context would not illustrate quite so well (if at all). The fact that an entire radio series exists simply to look at the (mis)use of statistics in the news indicates the amount of liberty that is taken with data in politics and the media. Of course I don't think any of us is innocent of telling an incomplete story to make our point some time in our lives, but in certain quarters it appears to be almost an industry in itself. Certainly it seems almost impossible for a politician to quote any statistical data without poorly contextualising the crap out of it, even if the correctly contextualised data would have supported their point (albeit possibly less decisively or sensationally). It's almost as if being able to find data that corroborates your views is insufficient, and all data must eliminate the possibility of any other viewpoint. 

Given the amounts of data at our disposal these days, we are increasingly dependent on others to interpret it for us and it appears that an awareness of that fact has made many less, rather than more responsible in that respect. Climate change denial lobbyists seize on any inconsistency in a single piece of research to illustrate a point that flies in the face of almost all the other evidence. This is the sort blinkered logic that we call belief and associate with faith. We accept the application of such logic when it is associated with the supernatural beliefs of religion, but it seems altogether more difficult to accept when applied to more worldly topics. 

There has been much debate recently about the differences between fundamentalism and religion, with mainstream Muslims feeling compelled to distance themselves from the actions of a minority of fundamentalists who profess the same religion. In the case of the Charlie Hebdo killings, this was complicated by the fact that a number of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons were clearly offensive to almost all Muslims. Now many western observers (and indeed pretty much everyone in France) would say 'tough luck, offence is the price you pay for free speech', and I would agree with this: witness the amount of not killing Nigel Farage I do. However, making a point about free speech simply by finding the thing that most offends someone and doing it to the greatest extreme again and again is also a fundamentalist position. Just as Muslims find themeves having to apologise for some of those who profess the same religion, I find myself wanting to apologise for some of those who profess the same secularism as me. Unfortunately it seems that the Charlie Hebdo approach to making a point is the only one we can understand these days: as if we must all be absolutist or we are not genuine. Again, I can't help thinking this comes back to the dearth of real debate in 21st century society. As we no longer understand how to talk to those who disagree with us, we select evidence to satisfy those we agree with and to deny any alternative completely. We have all become fundamentalist in our outlook even if we don't express that outlook through violence. The intransigence and extremity of our position doesn't persuade anyone of the validity of our argument and the mis-contextualisation of the data we use as our proof simply undermines our argument. In our desire to win the argument we lose the debate and sacrifice any moral highground to a kind of vanity of rectitude. Surely it is better to tell the whole truth and be accepted as fallible than only tell a half truth and be rejected as a liar.  

Prizes

I won the raffle. I never win raffles. Indeed, that is what I said when I won the raffle, which seems self-evidently incorrect with hindsight. It occurs to me that it is one of the most platitudinous inaccuracies in modern speech (and that's saying something), being statistically provable as incorrect. Of course, now that I have actually won a raffle, the statistics are much more provable, and I may be bound to say that I win raffles with a frequency that is roughly consistent with the aggregate probability of all the raffles I have taken part in. This is clearly nowhere near as neat as saying you never win raffles and is probably a cast iron conversation killer. So I guess next time I'm short of things to say in a raffle situation I'll just have to remain mute, or possibly relay the story of how I used to believe myself incapable of winning raffles until I won one. Yep, being stood next to me at a raffle is going to continue to be a conversational goldmine. 

I think I might have viewed the statement about never winning a raffle as a bit of a family heirloom, as it is a favourite of my mum's, deployed most inaccurately on the occasion she won a trip to New York in a free raffle. I think for me there was a sense of familial entitlement to the downtrodden enoblement of being an eternal loser. But this outlook itself is all about a sense of entitlement: the idea that the fact of our 'never' having won is somehow a universal injustice, that raffle upon raffle has been weighted against us, denying us our rightful prize. This is only an extension of the mindset that allows successful entrepreneurs to believe that their success is entirely due to their hard work and genius, whilst it allows everyone else to feel resentful that their hard work is not similarly rewarded. It is common knowledge that we have to hold an opinion of ourselves as in some way special so that we may avoid the crushing depression that will inevitably come from realising that we are just one of 7 billion idiots bumbling about the planet with no real idea what we're doing or why we're doing it. However, this opinion must also be one of humanity's greatest stumbling blocks: if we're so clever, why would we need to listen to others? Time after time we collectively suffer the consequences of this surfeit of hubris, "never again" we all say before getting straight back to thinking we can shit gold and giving ourselves chronic constipation. 

Would changing our attitudes to raffles, the lottery or any other games of chance change any of these things? There is a chapter of the excellent '10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10' that deals with our relationship to the random, looking briefly at its transition from a cause of fear throughout the majority of human history (largely because the unknown generally brought death and/or destruction) to a source of entertainment and stimulation in the modern era through games of chance. Whilst the chapter is not explicit on the point, it seems as if taking the danger out of the random has somehow convinced us we have control over it. We are probably no more superstitious than our ancestors but in all likelihood we have a stronger belief in our ability to influence random chance than them. We have more agency over our lives than ever before, although possibly not as much as we think we do. So much of what we think we know about the world we live in is based on assumptions about how much technology, government or corporations impact on our lives and we have little, if any, evidence to support these assumptions. Our understanding of the world seems as informed by James Bind as Edward Snowden, and it is through this agglomeration of fact and fiction that we arrive at our understanding of our control over our destiny. Given our propensity to overestimate our own abilities and agency, is it any surprise we believe that we can tame chance and, when we fail to, we feel cheated? I'm fairly certain that much of the frustration underlying the social media rages that wash across our age is due to this misconception of the limits of our possible agency in fate. 

In my defence, I'd like to think that my surprise at winning the raffle was a genuine surprise that random chance had resulted in my favour despite the logic of the odds telling me that it was unlikely. I genuinely don't think that my raffle winnings are reparations that the world should pay me for all the statistical wrongs it has influcted on me thus far in my life; I just think it was a nice surprise. I guess if we can view as many as possible of the good things in life like that, then we're probably doing OK. Certainly if we view less of the setbacks as personal sleights, we'll be less angry.