London Celebrates the Joy of Multiculturalism

More: Multicultural celebrations spread throughout London as well as Birmingham as festivities extend into their third day

Extensive photographic coverage and more

Holiday Atmosphere at Multicultural London Festivities
A multicultural society must open its heart to the diversity of celebratory behaviours and fun-seeking activities which different cultures tend to embrace. London exemplifies this appreciation of multiculturalism, as it continues to experience impromptu celebrations of diversity spreading out from Tottenham to other parts of the city. In this new age of ubiquitous social media, celebrations are apt to expand rapidly.

The UK is not the only modern developed nation which has whole-heartedly embraced multiculturalism, of course. We should expect the same type of joyous celebration, pictured above, to spread almost everywhere that multiculturalism has found a home.

Blogger Dennis Mangan has followed the festivities in London, and similar recent celebrations in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

There truly is no way to escape these happy festivals if one lives in the heart of a multicultural zone -- and in today's modern world, who doesn't? The best response is to go with the current and let your inner multiculturalist emerge. In today's political climate, resistance is futile.

Everyone is looking forward to the upcoming Notting Hill Carnival, the end of this month. Celebrate multiculturalism. We are all Londoners now.

Social Sciences in US a Hotbed of Politically Correct Bias?

“If a group circles around sacred values, they will evolve into a tribal-moral community,” he said. “They’ll embrace science whenever it supports their sacred values, but they’ll ditch it or distort it as soon as it threatens a sacred value.” _NYT

Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt spoke at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology’s conference last month. Professor Haidt mad a lot of waves when he came right out and called the US social sciences bigoted and quasi-religious in its biases and dogmatisms. Will Haidt become the next target of hate for having spoken his mind honestly? More about Haidt's talk:

He polled his audience at the San Antonio Convention Center, starting by asking how many considered themselves politically liberal. A sea of hands appeared, and Dr. Haidt estimated that liberals made up 80 percent of the 1,000 psychologists in the ballroom. When he asked for centrists and libertarians, he spotted fewer than three dozen hands. And then, when he asked for conservatives, he counted a grand total of three.

“This is a statistically impossible lack of diversity,” Dr. Haidt concluded, noting polls showing that 40 percent of Americans are conservative and 20 percent are liberal. In his speech and in an interview, Dr. Haidt argued that social psychologists are a “tribal-moral community” united by “sacred values” that hinder research and damage their credibility — and blind them to the hostile climate they’ve created for non-liberals.

“Anywhere in the world that social psychologists see women or minorities underrepresented by a factor of two or three, our minds jump to discrimination as the explanation,” said Dr. Haidt, who called himself a longtime liberal turned centrist. “But when we find out that conservatives are underrepresented among us by a factor of more than 100, suddenly everyone finds it quite easy to generate alternate explanations.”

Dr. Haidt (pronounced height) told the audience that he had been corresponding with a couple of non-liberal graduate students in social psychology whose experiences reminded him of closeted gay students in the 1980s. He quoted — anonymously — from their e-mails describing how they hid their feelings when colleagues made political small talk and jokes predicated on the assumption that everyone was a liberal.

“I consider myself very middle-of-the-road politically: a social liberal but fiscal conservative. Nonetheless, I avoid the topic of politics around work,” one student wrote. “Given what I’ve read of the literature, I am certain any research I conducted in political psychology would provide contrary findings and, therefore, go unpublished. Although I think I could make a substantial contribution to the knowledge base, and would be excited to do so, I will not.”

The politics of the professoriate has been studied by the economists Christopher Cardiff and Daniel Klein and the sociologists Neil Gross and Solon Simmons. They’ve independently found that Democrats typically outnumber Republicans at elite universities by at least six to one among the general faculty, and by higher ratios in the humanities and social sciences. In a 2007 study of both elite and non-elite universities, Dr. Gross and Dr. Simmons reported that nearly 80 percent of psychology professors are Democrats, outnumbering Republicans by nearly 12 to 1.

The fields of psychology, sociology and anthropology have long attracted liberals, but they became more exclusive after the 1960s, according to Dr. Haidt. “The fight for civil rights and against racism became the sacred cause unifying the left throughout American society, and within the academy,” he said, arguing that this shared morality both “binds and blinds.” _NYT

Unfortunately this is a widespread phenomenon in the humanities and social sciences faculties, and in administrative staffing at universities. To the victor go the spoils. In this case what is being spoiled are the futures of students and entire societies.

Higher education in the US is overpriced and of decreasing quality. As faulty assumptions get incorporated into mainstream academic thought -- and into the thinking of research funding institutions -- the outcome of multi-billions of dollars worth of scholarship and research comes into question.

Affirmative action for libertarians, conservatives, and white males is not the answer. The answer is a complete housecleaning in higher education staffing and research funding to get rid of the ideologues and riff-raff who have managed to clog the system. Such a housecleaning of personnel is necessary at all levels, from K-12 to the highest levels of education. The stink of bigotry, indoctrination, and dogma throughout the educational system is too great to ignore any longer.

Jonathan Haidt's TED Talks page

More: The same phenomenon has been observed among economics professors as well
H/T Powerline

On Not Knowing What the Frack You are Talking About

Those of us who wish to break through to the next level of human existence, are going to have to learn to love uncertainty (via Bishop Hill). The science correspondent of The Guardian looks at some answers to the latest Edge question:

Carlo Rovelli, a physicist at the University of Aix-Marseille, emphasised the uselessness of certainty. He said that the idea of something being "scientifically proven" was practically an oxymoron and that the very foundation of science is to keep the door open to doubt.

"A good scientist is never 'certain'. Lack of certainty is precisely what makes conclusions more reliable than the conclusions of those who are certain: because the good scientist will be ready to shift to a different point of view if better elements of evidence, or novel arguments emerge. Therefore certainty is not only something of no use, but is in fact damaging, if we value reliability."

...Neil Gershenfeld, director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Centre for Bits and Atoms wants everyone to know that "truth" is just a model. "The most common misunderstanding about science is that scientists seek and find truth. They don't – they make and test models," he said.

"Building models is very different from proclaiming truths. It's a never-ending process of discovery and refinement, not a war to win or destination to reach. Uncertainty is intrinsic to the process of finding out what you don't know, not a weakness to avoid. Bugs are features – violations of expectations are opportunities to refine them. And decisions are made by evaluating what works better, not by invoking received wisdom." _Guardian_via_BishopHill

The mind naturally hates uncertainty. If we do not know what is to happen, we cannot plan for it, and are at the mercy of "the fates."

The basic idea is simple. It is that to perceive the world is to successfully predict our own sensory states. The brain uses stored knowledge about the structure of the world and the probabilities of one state or event following another to generate a prediction of what the current state is likely to be, given the previous one and this body of knowledge. Mismatches between the prediction and the received signal generate error signals that nuance the prediction or (in more extreme cases) drive learning and plasticity. _AndyClark

Of course it is one thing to embrace uncertainty and accept humility. It is quite another to pretend to embrace uncertainty, then to tell everyone to shut the fuck up because you understand what is going on better than anyone else does. That is what several of the commenters at the Edge site appeared to be doing.
True science does not attempt to limit what models can be tested by which experiment. True science does not limit the nature of models which can be entertained and played with. True science does not play down the massive uncertainty within its boundaries so as to influence public policy on a massive scale -- for its own financial benefit and increase in prestige.

This is what we are dealing with in modern climate science -- and in a wide range of other sciences which have attracted the attention of politically ambitious scientists, politicians, and bureaucratic administrators. The quest to build better models -- falsifiable models which can be ruthlessly tested by experiment -- is being hampered and biased by political and ideological concerns. Even at more "enlightened" websites such as Edge.org you can see the underlying corrupting influence of politics.

That is why science is escaping the bounds that "scientists", science bureaucrats, science journalists, science publishers, politicians, political lobbyists on scientific issues, and other supposed gatekeepers of science are trying to maintain. The tools of experimentation are escaping into the public domain, with all the attendant risks and opportunities which that entails.

Scientists are also politicians, at least within their own little realm. Some of them actually sell themselves to "the dark side" and attempt to practise politics on a grander scale. If a scientist lacks humility in his public pronouncements and policy recommendations, he is not practising true science, but is practising politics.

Until we can quantify the uncertainty in our statements and our predictions, we have little idea of their power or significance. So too in the public sphere. Public policy performed in the absence of understanding quantitative uncertainties, or even understanding the difficulty of obtaining reliable estimates of uncertainties usually means bad public policy. _LawrenceKrauss

All models are metaphors and all metaphors are man-made. The greatest danger in financial modeling and the modeling of all human activities is therefore the age-old sin of idolatry. Financial markets are alive but a metaphor is a limited human work of art, entrancing perhaps, but inanimate. To confuse the model with the world is to embrace a potential future disaster. All metaphors have their limits. _EmanuelDerman PDF

Emanuel Derman Map of Emotions PDF
Humans are not programmed for rationality, except insofar as finding the next meal, or a relatively warm, dry, and safe place to sleep are measures of rationality. The lofty world of grand scientific ideals and integrities is more of a convenient fiction to justify academic and research budgets. The reality is more one of roiling emotions and jostling egos of unbridled ambition and jealousy.

Politicians of all stripes want to project an image of invincibility and absolute certainty. Journalists, speechwriters, and public relations hacks assist them toward that end. Scientists -- by keeping their mouths shut about how little they themselves know -- also assist the politicians (at all levels) toward their petty, venal ends.

One of the happy exceptions among scientists is Freeman Dyson.

My first heresy says that all the fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated. Here I am opposing the holy brotherhood of climate model experts and the crowd of deluded citizens who believe the numbers predicted by the computer models. Of course, they say, I have no degree in meteorology and I am therefore not qualified to speak. But I have studied the climate models and I know what they can do. The models solve the equations of fluid dynamics, and they do a very good job of describing the fluid motions of the atmosphere and the oceans. They do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry and the biology of fields and farms and forests. They do not begin to describe the real world that we live in. The real world is muddy and messy and full of things that we do not yet understand. It is much easier for a scientist to sit in an air-conditioned building and run computer models, than to put on winter clothes and measure what is really happening outside in the swamps and the clouds. That is why the climate model experts end up believing their own models. _Dyson

But if your paycheck depends upon wrangling a grant from a government that is down to writing IOUs, you want to project a degree of certainty and a crucial pivotal nature within your research, which you cannot actually know or prove. You probably don't even believe it yourself, deep down, but bills must be paid, kids must be raised, appearances must be kept up....

The enormous academic, political, and journalistic house of cards which exists to bamboozle the public into believing that the ruling and credentialed class knows what it is doing, cannot last forever. It is already crumbling about the edges and showing deepening cracks in its infrastructure.

What should you do about it? Learn to embrace skepticism toward the proclamations of would-be authority, and adopt a robust system of planning in your personal life. Things do not typically turn out the way we expect. Learn to deal with a healthy measure of uncertainty and unpredictability.

And keep your powder dry, you just may need to use it.

Burning Down the House

Source
Americans are living in amazing times. Living under what is nominally a "constitutional republic", they find themselves bumping into limitations and restrictions more likely to arise within a hereditary monarchy or a totalitarian state ruled by a party elite. What is going on?

Professor Anthony Codevilla is a student of government and international affairs who has become quite aware of this phenomenon. He goes so far as to paint a brief portrait of America's Ruling Class, and publish it! That struck me as an act of extreme courage for an academic, until I saw that Professor Codevilla was actually Professor Emeritus Codevilla. He is relatively safe from their vengeance, then, perhaps.

Few will be satisfied by such a brief and teasing look at America's new royalty. They will want a more detailed examination of this phenomenon, and what it may portend. Thomas Sowell in Intellectuals and Society, provides a well-fortified survey of these well connected, often behind-the-scenes lever pullers. According the Sowell, the thing that distinguishes ruling intellectuals from the subservient citizenry, is that intellectuals are not generally held accountable for being wrong. Think about that in the context of real tenure, and tenure that comes from being a "made" member of the group.

Paul Johnson in his Intellectuals, provides the necessary historical and brief philosophical introduction to this central phenomenon of modern public life. Reading the historical portraits of famous paradigm shifting intellectuals provides as many examples of Sowell's "distinction" as one might want.

To understand how a group of well-connected dunderheads could pull off something as audacious as Sowell and Codevilla suggest, take a look at media insider Bernard Goldberg's Arrogance. As I read the continuing saga of the Journolist insiders, I cannot help but recall the many incidents of similar collusion related in Goldberg's book.

Trying to pinpoint an exact date when Americans rolled over and accepted a ruling class of pompous but numbskulled intellectuals within government, media, academia, the judiciary, etc. is futile. From before the day the Declaration of Independence was signed, agents of the old world of authoritarianism were at work chipping away at the ideas that underlay the thinking of the American founders.

But undeniably, they hold the reins firmly in their grips for now. But as I may have mentioned, this ruling class is quite stupid, despite the broad areas that it controls. The seeds of its destruction -- the impending burning down of the royal house -- is inextricably contained within the stupidity of its policies. That, of course, is the fatal flaw for any intellectual. When they finally achieve absolute power and are forced to put their ideas into action. Without having had any experience contending with the unforgiving hand of reality before this point, the ruling class stands helpless before the cascading failures of its ill-founded ideas and prescriptions.

Blaming predecessors and stowaways from the old regime might work in holding off the angry victims-cum-arsonists for a brief time. But eventually, the inner nature of this ruling class will burst forth in the revealing flames of self-immolation.

All we have to do is to learn to take care of ourselves throughout what is going to happen next. The ruling class is going find the appeal of burning down the house themselves to be beyond their powers to resist.

Intellectuals are not meant to rule. They are critics and revolutionaries, not competent leaders. Which does not make the coming pain and hardship any easier to endure. But if you are the type who wants to understand why things have become ten times harder than they needed to be, take a good look at America's ruling class, and how they came to be.