Hard News by Russell Brown

And on the other hand, I know I wasn’t the only one who had qualms about both the TPP and some of the crankery and conspiracy theorising in the broader campaign against it.

Can be a very awkward place. On the one hand, you don’t want to antagonise allies or get involved in internecine warfare. On the other hand – puh-leez! I mean – you actually believe that?!
I get that politically. Overall the Green Party’s policy probably comes closest to what I’d like to see for Aotearoa. I’ve voted Green more than once (and probably will again.) But I spray weeds and I’m not blanket opposed to GMOs and all the kids have had their shots – so there are times when I just don’t feel like one of the club.

Is it enough to merely get people fired up?

Sometimes its just easier (and the right have no qualms about getting their desired policies through using whatever means work).

E.g. whisper it not, but fracking doesn't cause (noticeable) earthquakes. However it's a Bad Thing because it enables more oil to be extracted - but it's an easier sell to tell people their house will fall down and their water will be poisoned than talk about climate change in 50 years time.

Also, Mr Greenpeace Nuclear tests won't aid security.

Kim Jong Il is alive and has his job. Saddam Hussein isn't and doesn't. I think the former is probably happy with his decision to make nukes. An unfortunate side effect of deciding that 'regime change' is a good idea.

information is at the heart of activism

Really?

Yeah there have been some cases where folks got data out there for the public to see and that spurred action. But there are many many other cases where folks have got very active based on no facts at all ... cough Greenpeace cough.

I LOVE that some folks are using data and research and facts to base form their opinions and then spread those data to spur others on, but it isn't universal or even common.

Russell said "For all the efforts of researchers, protest vox-pops revealed that many of the people marching did not know a lot about what they were opposing, and believed some strange things about what the treaty portended. Is it enough to merely get people fired up?"

I am surprised you take such a stance on the TTPA protests and didn't recognise a media beat-up job when you see one.

Maybe this will remind you...
https://www.facebook.com/thespinofftv/videos/vb.585595504882807/818024834973205/?type=2&theater

I am surprised you take such a stance on the TTPA protests and didn’t recognise a media beat-up job when you see one.

Jose’s piece was on-point. But that doesn’t make it untrue that people had some very odd ideas about the TPP. My Facebook feed told me that, as did the good-faith vox pops that John Campbell did. That bung information allowed their cause to be mocked and undermined.

And I would point out that I was actually part of a TPP video campaign organised by Jane Kelsey, in which I explained what I thought some of the problems were.

Maybe this will remind you…
https://www.facebook.com/thespinofftv/videos/vb.585595504882807/818024834973205/?type=2&theater

Watching this clip, I was struck that, despite editing, abbreviation, and hyperbole, the supposedly ignorant protesters were not so far off-target. What they said in the bits shown in Jose’s clip – loss of sovereignty, more power to corporations, and worry that one’s children would suffer – all seem fairly close to what, eg a Nobel-prize winning economist thinks.
Maybe it’s the journalists who don’t understand what they are reporting on?

data and research and facts

information is broader than those things

information is broader than those things

then again perhaps...

A growing number of scientists, Gleick writes, are beginning to wonder whether information "may be primary: more fundamental than matter itself."

or not...
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/why-information-cant-be-the-basis-of-reality/

data and research and facts

information is broader than those things

True, and that's often where nerd-advocacy falls down: helping ordinary people understand where they fit in, what their rights are. And probably more so for extraordinary (disabled) people. It's important to not let go of your issues as an advocate, and also to let others in.

A growing number of scientists, Gleick writes, are beginning to wonder whether information "may be primary: more fundamental than matter itself."

Sounds like reification, that old pitfall for the academically inclined whose erudition exceeds their life experience: "Reification (Gestalt psychology), the perception of an object as having more spatial information than is actually present."

Nine-tenths of the universe is the knowledge of the position and direction of everything in the other tenth […] It is unaccounted for because it is doing the accounting for the rest of it [….].
Nine-tenths of the universe, in fact, is the paperwork.

—Terry Pratchett, Thief Of Time (p11)

Excellent, thank you.
Sounds a bit like Junk DNA.

data and research and facts

information is broader than those things

Which is fine, but information (as you are defining it) that contradicts the observed data is simply a lie and that is the constant problem.

By all means add the nuances of culture and societal needs but the moment you sacrifice the actual data then you are doing more harm than good.

Information is not always drawn from data as such. Experiences and ideas can also be conveyed to drive action.

Information is not always drawn from data as such. Experiences and ideas can also be conveyed to drive action.

I do understand what you are saying but in my experience when people use experiences to drive activism without supporting those experiences with data then you end up with anecdote driven actions.

Experiences are observations of the world, ideas are hypotheses that allow you to predict future events based on the past observations. In a structured (data driven) environment you test those hypotheses and you are always prepared to reject your hypotheses if new observations (experiences or data) contradict those hypotheses.

What happens all too often is people develop a theory based on their observations and then never accept any new data, that is my fundamental problem with many activist groups, they are unable to change when new data proves them wrong.

BTW that's pretty much exactly the scientific method, come up with an idea, test it, and when you are wrong, change the idea. And get used to being wrong a LOT.

get used to being wrong a LOT

Yes; and that’s one of the hardest things to learn. As I keep reminding my grad students: getting results you didn’t expect is a good thing. You’ve either just found a problem with your method, or else a limitation to the theory driving your prediction. Either way, it gives you a lot more to write about.

Consider the origin of information: from the Latin verb informare, which means to give form, or to form an idea of. So it's the object of thought.

Merely opinion, then? Can a rumour inform us? Makes the scientific equation of information with data seem too reductionist, huh?

Activists are motivated more by concerns than information. It's the emotion that generates their activism. People are likely to be (mis)informed by rhetoric, opinions of others, a shared belief that masquerades as reality. Information showing that GE produces frankenstein food motivates activists into public protest mode. Information showing that GE saves lives in medicine (tonight's headline news) will motivate scientific activists into lobbying for the right to perform that public service.

There's a line of ancient wisdom relevant here: hermetic philosophy runs through 23 centuries up to our time. Starting from Mercury (Hermes) as messenger of the gods: mediating between the realms of heaven & earth. Thus oracles. Thus Prometheus (thief who stole fire technology from the gods).

Via the cross-fertilisation between cultures, this medial conduit of information flow took technology from place to place, thus Mercury/Hermes was credited as originator of trade. Quite a deep well, this one. Way too deep for most academics!

Mercury is the only planet with a relativistic orbit (measured deviation from the orbit predicted by Newtonian physics verified Einstein's theory of relativity more than a century ago. But was this information fact? Or was it merely the opinion of the physicist doing the measuring? The transcendence from subjectivity to objectivity is performed in physics via the principle of replication: another conduit of information flow, connecting the individual psyche to the group mind. A scientific discovery doesn't become a fact until other scientists verify it. Fair to say that journalists try to conform to this discipline too, but it's in the nature of reality that doing so is often impossible - and media owners want a good story...

But was this information fact?

To quote Brian Cox

Yes

Okay, Bart, would I believe someone born a couple of months after I enrolled at AU to get my physics degree? He's a Fellow of the Royal Society, just like Sir Isaac Newton (the famous alchemist) so I'm tempted, but my point was that physicists conceived the principle of replication to transcend reliance on just such hearsay.

To get from the subjective nature of individual opinion to the objective nature of consensus reality some other scientist must do the same experiment and get the same result. Cases of scientists misinterpreting data are legion. Here's a nifty explanation of the relativistic nature of Mercury's orbit: http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/26408/what-did-general-relativity-clarify-about-mercury

Not too technical, but also not all that satisfying. Doesn't say who - if anyone - independently verified Sir Arthur Eddington's 1919 validation of Einstein's prediction. So how can we tell if it even happened? Just trying to make a nuanced point about the unacknowledged role blind faith plays in providing us with a social reality based on the supposedly sound basis of science.

Just trying to make a nuanced point about the unacknowledged role blind faith plays in providing us with a social reality based on the supposedly sound basis of science.

Yup I do get that. I really do understand the role interpretation can play in conclusions drawn from observations and I'm very aware that it's possible to have systematic errors that thoroughly distort the data.

The problem is that for those not embedded in the scientific system there is a tendency to go from seeing scientists challenge and test each others observations to assuming all observations are suspect. And also to assume all opinions about observations are equal.

It is not reasonable to say scientists are like lawyers I can always find one with another opinion. It also isn't reasonable to base activism on thoroughly debunked experiments simply because they fit preconceptions.

There really are facts, with enough experimental data to be certain they are real. Activism in opposition to facts is just stupid.

That's not to say there aren't areas where the data really isn't certain. Or much more importantly the response to the facts is not subject to the needs of society.

For me that's where Sasha's comment has it's greatest importance - the experiences and knowledge of society need to be considered and incorporated into responses to the data. Society informs the response.

... I believe someone born a couple of months after ...

I really hope you're not suggesting his age, or gender, or race has anything to do with his intelligence and knowledge.

Of course not. It was just an oblique reference to the effect of postmodernism on younger generations. In particular, to how that culture makes it hard to discern what's real. I'm aware there are pros & cons to postmodern culture, so I'm just citing the relevant downside.

In respect of the topic originating this thread of comments, it seems to me very relevant to the relation of info to activism. The TPPA was mentioned, and I found myself so ambivalent several years after my initial total hostility to secret corporate lawyer tribunals (went on the first TPPA march about 5 years ago but none since) that I ended up disgusted with the simple-mindedness of many opponents. Dumb buggers couldn't grasp that enforcement of tribunal decisions is the crux of the issue: the Herald editorial pointing out that the Ecuador case proved the point of unenforceability wasn't a fact that they wanted to know.

We live in the era of information, but what informs people is just as likely to be rumour & innuendo as fact. So I was sceptical that Brian Cox was doing anything other than going with the flow of postmodernism. To put the best gloss on it, I presume he was simply reporting the consensual view handed down by a century of physicists. I'm sceptical that any of them bothered to check that replication had actually occurred. But I could be wrong...

I see you just got a shout-out on the BBC Radio 4 science show The Curious Cases of Rutherford and Fry (Series 3, Episode 4, The Portly Problem, addressing your question about middle-aged spread).