We have no choice…

Via Commentary . The Economist reports on progress in the field of neurology that is threatening what little hope we cling to assert ourselves as free and individual.

It is also emphasising to a wider public that the brain really is just a mechanism, rather than a magician's box that is somehow outside the normal laws of cause and effect.

Scientists have looked at anger and violence, though, and discovered genetic variations, expressed as concentrations of a particular messenger molecule in the brain, that are both congenital and predisposing to a violent temper. Where is free will in this case?

Our freedom may well be an illusion – but it’s an illusion that my brain (mechanism or not) wants to believe in. I want to know that the bit of individuality that I exert on the world is really my doing, not that of an automaton.

There’s a great scene in the David Lynch movie Wild at Heart where the Nicolas Cage character Sailor Ripley excitedly trumps his snakeskin jacket as a symbol of his own free will. It’s an enthusiasm about being individual and masters of our fate that we all share, some more quietly and openly than others.


19. EXT. PEE DEE COUNTY WORK FARM - DAY

Sailor is waiting out front as Lula pulls up in her T-Bird - throwing out a cloud of dust. They’re both smiling.

LULA Hey baby...

SAILOR Peanut...

They kiss tenderly and then Sailor walks around the car to get in while Lula opens up a suitcase and gets out his snakeskin jacket.

SAILOR Hey, my snakeskin jacket... Thanks,baby... Did I ever tell you that this here jacket for me is a symbolof my individuality and my belief in personal freedom?

LULA’Bout fifty thousand times. I got us a room at the Cape Fear, and guess what?... I hear Powermad’s at “The Hurricane.”

SAILOR (smiling)Stab it and steer.

Lula tromps it and throws out an even larger cloud of dust.

Full text here.http://www.un-official.com/wildatheart.txt

While I’ve always felt the arguments for Determinism to be particlularly convincing I enjoy the faint hope that just maybe I do have free will. It will be sad to have this thrill pulled from under us by science.

Additional reading – the more serious stuff. Ted Honderich is one of the best academics in the game.

The Determinism and Freedom Philosophy Website A comprehensive collection of important papers on the philosophy of free will, freedom and determinism. By Prof. Ted Honderich.

And I love the work of Dan Dennett. (though I don’t necessarily agree with him much).

"Human freedom," he writes in his book Freedom Evolves , "is not an illusion; it is an objective phenomenon, distinct from all other biological conditions and found in only one species, us."

Fossilised Sharks

I nearly died. I'm not sure where I was late last year when this news broke, but Bob Skinstad has signed for the Sharks next season.

Keo has the story (and about 2500 comments!).

I'm just utterly amazed at this story and keep looking at my calendar to see how close we are to the 1st April. I am also mighty curious as to what sort of compensation could lure him from his part-time lower leagues rugby playing and Saatchi&Saatchi golf , ahem, sponsorship manager, job in the UK to come and warm the Sharks bench.

Monty (age 32) AJ Venter (age 33) & now Skinstad (age 30+). I know that sharks as species are from the prehistoric era (somewhere between the late Silurian to early Devonian period - around 400 million years ago) - but surely the Sharks players don't have to hail from the same time!

Well, ironically - good luck to the man - so long as his "friendship" with coach Dick Muir and director of rugby, Rudolf Straueli doesn't permit him preferential treatment in getting onto the match park ahead of youngsters like Kankowski.

I always felt that his Springbok selection of a then inform Andre Venter against Scotland in 97 (I think) was a turning point for the worse of Bok rugby at the time. Hopefully something sensible comes out of this. I'm not really holding my breath though.

Cheongyecheon

Reminded by this article in the M&G.

Just more than a year ago several million people headed to a park in the centre of Seoul, the capital of South Korea and seventh-largest city in the world. They didn't go for a rock festival, a football match or a political gathering, but mostly just to marvel at the surroundings, to get some fresh air and to paddle in the river.

The tale of reclaiming the 160,000 car a day freeway and returning it to the Cheong Gye Stream or Cheongyecheon in Seoul is both heartening in its boldness and rousing in its result.

As seen by this picture I took in September it is a place where all and sundry of Seoul's citizens and tourists frolic and enjoy the break from their daily routine.
Read the wikipedia article or a good old Google search (did I just call google old?) for the full story.

While some have criticised the project as being an expensive ($900m) symbolic folly the level of enthusiasm that still embraces the project a year after its completion and the pride that the South Korean people display when discussing and using the river is for me sufficient justification. The fact that a freeway and underground sewer has been converted/restored to open river and park is an inspirational triumph over industrialisation. It also felt safe enough to walk along (alone & and well before dawn) – but that’s probably just to me.

It is also fascinating physical example of the Braess Paradox . This paradox indicates that by removing space in a road network you can actually increase the flow of traffic, and, by implication, by adding extra capacity to a road network you can reduce overall performance.

I wonder if we could intelligently apply this to Jozi traffic. Would the closing of Witkoppen Road improve the traffic flow? Sounds counterintuitive doesn’t it but if you read the Braess link above and follow the theory then perhaps it would make a positive difference?

And I can think of a good freeway in Port Elizabeth to get rid of.

And a railway line and road in Fish Hoek.....

Mother Knows Best

Things to do in the bath

Do you know where I found him?
You know where he was?
He was eating a cake in the tub!
Yes he was!
The hot water was on
And the cold water, too.
And I said to the cat,
“What a bad thing to do!”
“But I like to eat cake
In a tub,” laughed the cat.
“You should try it some time,”
Laughed the cat as he sat.
And then I got mad.
This was no time for fun.
I said, “Cat! You get out!
There is work to be done.
- The Cat in the Hat Comes Back by Dr Seuss

And completely unrelated - a fascinating article from New Scientist.
Moths drink the tears of sleeping birds.

The bell tolls for thee

I hope I never become a politician because a stance on the death penalty will always be divisive. It’s also something I don’t think you can change your mind or the mind of anyone else about.

With the passing of Saddam Hussain and the new year sms jokes aside the more serious death penalty debate is now receiving heightened publicity

Lawrence Douglas ,Professor of Law, Jurisprudence & Social Thought at Amherst College puts forward a good specific article on the Saddam hanging in which he concludes.

It is only in defense of humankind that the death penalty can be justified. When it only defends the sensitivities of the group, the penalty does not purge, but only pollutes. Saddam’s execution spreads that noxious stench.

In this case it is an act of revenge and difficult to justify. The outcry over the behaviour, video-making and taunting by the guards on the basis that this somehow made the procedure undignified and inhumane is misplaced. The whole scenario is inhumane, there is no such thing as humane execution.

Where do I stand in my own country. In the same watershed speech on 2 February 1990 when FW De Klerk announced the release of Nelson Mandela, he announced a moratorium on the death penalty which later lead to its abolition. Since then there have been repeated calls for the reinstatement of the penalty for capital crimes. My view is that this would be as logical as re-imprisoning Mandela. The main argument seems to be that the death penalty will be a deterrent to crime.

I am not going to go into any heavy philosophical argument here – the debate is really a personal one – and one is bound to choose whatever thesis supports one’s personal view.

This paper by Unisa’s OS Mwimnobi is pretty solid and thorough on the South African debate. The Reasonableness Of Reinstating The Death Penalty: A Juridicophilosophical Approach.

Mwimnobi maintains “that if any form of punishment cannot be shown to affect the criminal in an educative, reformatory or encouraging fashion, i.e , if there is no positive function connected with punishment, such form of punishment should be rejected.”,and shows “that the principles of ‘sanctity of life’ and ‘persons as moral subjects’ overrides the deterrent effect of the death penalty”.

If the death penalty is to be used as deterrent then, in my view, it should be a macabre spectacle held up to show would-be criminals what their fate could be. To be effective – it should be public, on TV. It should be as horrific as possible – “drawn and quartered” comes to mind as suitable method of execution. Not a quiet lethal injection. But that would be uncivilised wouldn’t it? And we are not uncivilised are we?

We cannot correct the inhumane by being inhumane

I leave it then to John Donne.

No man is an island, entire of itself
every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main
if a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were,
as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were
any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind
and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls
it tolls for thee.