Breaking the Spell

My current reading is Daniel Dennett's new book, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon. It is pleasantly (and a little surprisingly) easy to read: clear, methodically structured, and elegantly argued.

Dennett's main point is to call for rigorous - and fearless - scientific research on all aspects of religious faith and experience, which does seem like a good place to start in assessing the role played by religion in today's world and what it's place may be in the future. There are few, if any, more important topics, and this is a book I recommend to everyone, whatever their particular beliefs.

Fringe cosmology

Over at Wikipedia there's an arbitration going on involving the editing of articles relating to cosmology and astrophysics, where some editors have seemingly sought to use the encyclopedia to promote minority or fringe theories (not necessarily pseudoscientific theories akin to creation science, but certainly views that are currently marginal within the scientific maintream).

Given Wikipedia's aspiration to be a trustworthy reference work, and given that it actually is the first port of call for many people seeking information, it is important that it strike the right balance here. These fringe theories should be treated fairly, but even more importantly the widely-accepted and well-tested findings of mainstream science should not be presented as more controversial than they actually are. The "neutral point of view" doctrine should not extend to giving marginal viewpoints in science a prominence and credibility that they lack in the real world.

Except for some dealings with the parties from the standpoint of a neutral administrator, I've had very little involvement in the dispute that led to this point. However, I think that a good outcome to this case is critical to Wikipedia's ongoing efforts to be credible: is it going to evolve into a reputable encyclopedia or not? Accordingly, I've been commenting on the issues in some detail, for whatever my comments may be worth to the arbitrators.

In this situation, a good outcome will have some balance; the fringe theories should be described in a factual, objective way in the articles devoted to them, without the need for a debunking tone. However, the encyclopedia's overall balance must lean towards presenting scientific orthodoxy wherever such a thing exists. In some cases, there may be genuine division of opinion within the scientific mainstream, but that is not the problem here.

A small victory for reason

Last night the Australian Senate passed a bill that will allow therapeutic cloning under strictly regulated conditions, and it is likely that the same bill will now pass through the House of Representatives and be enacted as law. The vote was very close, 34-32, and it required a last-minute compromise to amend the proposed legislation, but it does now look as if Australia will be joining the UK as a nation that allows the use of the somatic cell nuclear transfer technique to create stem cells for scientific research.

I am still trying to understand exactly what the effect of the last-minute amendment is. According to The Australian this morning, it seems to involve the mixing of "human cells" with animal eggs. This seems rather oddly worded, but perhaps the point is to prevent the insertion of human nuclear DNA into enucleated animal eggs. However the amendment is actually worded, media reports suggest that it was aimed at preventing the creation of human-animal hybrids, such as furry rabbit men or human beings with horns. A specific ban on this is quite unnecessary, since the legislation is not about allowing scientists to arrange for the gestation and birth of cloned humans - this whole reprise of the cloning debate in Australia has never been about reproductive cloning. We are talking, rather, about the creation of embyros that can be used for the separation of stem cells within the first 14 days - prior to gastrulation. Those cells can then be used for research that may one day lead to better medical therapies involving the use of stem cells to provide tissues or organs for the sick. There is no scope for the creation of rabbit-like monsters out of this - and anyway, no one is seriously looking to bring into the world miniature Donnie Darkos or infants with budding horns (shades of Rosemary's Baby).

Actually, it's difficult to see what would be so wrong with creating human beings with some non-human features and abilities, if it were ever possible to do so safely, and if they were born into a more tolerant society in which they would be welcomed and treated well. As I see it, the major problems are threefold. (1) We are at an impasse with any research that could possibly lead to such attempts, since it is difficult to see how any experiments could be done safely. (2) Because genes are typically pleiotropic, there is no guarantee that we could ever create such beings without scrambling important human capacities as a by-product. Even if the creatures we created were not deformed or diseased in some obvious way, as a result of the disruption of gene expression, they might be poorly equipped to bond into human society. (3) And even if neither of these were the case, we could not guarantee that such strange-seeming beings would be welcomed - in which event, creating them would be a terrible error. But all that is beside the point of the current debate.

If, in the real world, there are gains in scientific knowledge to be made from experiments that, in some sense, mix human cells and animal eggs - or whatever exactly it is that the Senate has tried to rule out - then let the research take place. We have nothing to fear. We really must stop getting so far ahead of ourselves; it is not good public policy to ban research simply on the basis that, speculatively, it may one day lead to some practice that we currently find uncomfortable and bizarre (and would be wise to abjure in contemporary circumstances). Speculation about the hypothetical motives of any Dr Frankensteins or Dr Moreaus out there is always a poor form of contribution to serious political debate.

Be all that as it may, the situation in Australia now looks far more hopeful. Despite the closeness of the margin, the Senate has rebuffed those irrationalists who have been lobbying rabidly for the past few weeks. We are still confronted with a whole smorgasbord of bio-Luddites to choose from - coming in all political and religious colours - who value insentient "human life" above the goal of finding therapies for actual human children and adults who are burdened with disease. Irrational though it is, these people want to protect tiny blobs of biological material that are incapable of hopes, ambitions, fear, grief or any kind of suffering. Just for once, though, the rest of us have a chance to celebrate a political outcome.

There's been a small victory for reason!

Now we must await the deliberations of the House of Representatives to see whether Australia will take the next vital step to a reasonably enlightened set of laws on embyro research.

Midnight at the Black Sun

I spent Friday mooching around, as far as I can remember, although I did do some work on the pile of exam papers that I have to mark. I'm always too much of a perfectionist about marking - too conscious of the responsibility to get it right, knowing what can be at stake for people whose work is being assessed and graded.

Jenny and I went out that evening to Race and Iola Mathews' place for their monthly film night, and caught up with the folks from that group. Race was showing The Triplets of Belleville on their big TV screen. I'd never seen this Canadian animated movie, and I totally enjoyed its surreal comedy. Hey, and the theme song is incredibly catchy; it had me shuffling around and snapping my fingers in what I hope were the right places, during the ice cream and discussion period afterwards.

Meanwhile, an old acquaintance of mine from the days when I was on the Extropians list-serve was opening his elaborate Second Life sim, the Black Sun Night Club. So when I got home after the show at the Mathews' place, I called into there for the opening-night party and enjoyed a taste of virtual reality.

Pundits who just don't get it

The clash between radical Islam and Western modernity has led to many opportunistic analyses that are themselves essentially reactionary. In the Australian context, we have the country's most senior Muslim cleric, Sheik Hilali, demonising the pleasurable (for all concerned) and essentially harmless exercise of female sexual power when attractive young women wear clothes that display their beauty. The mufti says that this is wrong and that it invites rape - as if most men are dumb brutes who cannot control themselves when confronted by the sight of female skin.

This has led to a storm of commentary here, almost all of it denouncing the mufti's views, but much of it in a way that is itself reactionary. A good example is the op.ed. piece by Michael Keating this morning, in which he wants to compare Hilali's attitude to that of footballers who have (consensual) group sex. Both are, supposedly, "disrespectful" to women.

Keating, like many other pundits who are having their say at the moment, just doesn't get it. The issue is not about whether people are in some sense "disrespectful". For what it's worth, Hilali probably treats women with (a strange kind of) respect. The issue is about the suppression of women's sexuality, and about acts of terrible cruelty and violence that, quite rightly, led to some rapists in New South Wales facing long prison terms.

Call me an unreconstructed nerd, but I'm no great admirer of football players, most of whom strike me as little better than narcissistic thugs. Still, if there are women who enter willingly into group sex with football players, I call that an exercise of their freedom. Good for them, if that's what they want to do; I hope they enjoy the experience, and I'm glad to live in a society where it is allowed - if not exactly admired.

As long as they are consensual, the sexual antics of footballers or anyone else have nothing to do with Hilali's medieval view that women are meat, should be covered, and deserve what they get if they show their beauty outside the home. The comparison is trivialising and obnoxious.

Sinning Against Nature - in JME

The November issue of the Journal of Medical Ethics contains my article "Sinning against nature: the theory of background conditions" - the citation is R Blackford J Med Ethics 32: 629-634. As of this morning, this is still being advertised on the site as "next" month's issue, but I expect that will change very soon, as JME is quite timely about these things. I'll probably be getting some feedback soon.

Putting the (police) boot into freedom of speech

Strictly speaking, there is no right to free speech unless granted by law - talk of moral "rights" is nonsense on stilts, as Jeremy Bentham memorably said. There is, however, a well-recognised principle in modern societies that goverments should be very reluctant to interfere with the speech or other expression of their citizens. In most jurisdictions, this is supported by constitutional provisions that impose severe restrictions on government power to control what citizens may say. Australia is somewhat backward in that regard, but at least the High Court has found an implied constitutional limitation on the ability of the state and federal parliaments to legislate to restrict political speech.

Unfortunately, we still see governments attempting to control what we can say about matters of public importance, as with the religious vilification laws in Victoria that I have to keep in mind every time I blog on matters relating to religion. This legislation needs to be repealed now.

To add insult to injury, the Federal Police Commissioner, Mick Keelty, apparently took the opportunity yesterday to attack the media for reporting on the outrageous claims by a senior Muslim cleric that women are largely responsible when they are raped. As reported in the media, Keelty played down Sheik Hilali's comments, suggesting that "many in the community say offensive things" and apparently took exception to the Australian's reporting of the mufti's views.

For a leading police figure to be attacking the freedom of the press to report (seemingly accurately) on these issues is unforgivable. Of course, Keelty can say whatever he wants - in his role as a private citizen. I have no wish to censor him. In fact, I don't even wish to censor the views of Sheik Hilali; let him say what he likes, as long as the rest of us are free to deplore it in the strongest words we can muster. But Keelty should realise that there is something frightening about a person in his position putting the police boot into freedom of speech.

Keelty has gone too far. If he believes that newspapers should be muzzled in reporting these things, let him say so as a private citizen, not while wearing the mantle of a police commissioner. I'm really struggling here trying to imagine what he was thinking. Let's get it straight: in a society such as Australia's, the police are there to enforce the law - to protect us against violence and criminality - not to express personal opinions about what journalists should write or what citizens should be able to read in the news. If the police commissioner wants to take that role, he ought to find another job.

The "she asked for it" defence

Sydney's Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali is reported this morning as having delivered a Ramadan sermon last month, in which he suggested that the problem of rape begins with women who "sway suggestively" and wear make-up and immodest dress. Judges "without mercy" are likely to impose long sentences, he said, "But the problem, the problem all began with who?" Apparently with the woman who dared appear in public in supposedly immodest apparel.

I have no objection at all to attractive young women publicly displaying their beauty and sexuality. As the Sheik suggested, doing so is a form a power - but if women sometimes revel in that small exercise of sexual power then good for them. Let them strut their stuff, and I hope it brings them pleasure. I have no sympathy at all for the puritanical mind-set that wishes to censure them - and let's be clear, there is no excuse whatsoever for those men who react with violence. The "she asked for it" defence won't wash.

Most men can take some quiet pleasure of their own in women's acts of sexual display, without feeling any impulses to violence. Those few who commit violent acts of rape deserve no mercy at all. Lock them up, and throw away the key.

Danger, irrationalists at work

As I have frequently argued here and elsewhere, there is no rational basis for opposition to research on early embryos or therapeutic cloning. However, the irrationalists have been hard at work organising a campaign of political protest at the possibility of relaxation in Australia's current draconian legislation.

This is the position we now find ourselves in as a society: we seem to be forgetting the useful Millian criterion that people should be prevented from actions only when they will actually cause harm to others (I am prepared to extend "others" to non-human animals for some purposes but not to an insentient blob of cells). Policy makers are paying too much attention to every supposedly "ethical" claim that comes along, however much it may involve infringments of our liberty or harms to our welfare.

Second Life growing fast

Call it a game, call it a communications platform, call it what you will. Whatever you call it, the on-line virtual universe known as Second Life, or SL, is growing fast, supported by intense media interest, including a sympathetic tour-guide-style article by Wired Magazine last week, not to mention coverage in Playboy.

On 18 October, the number of SL "residents" reached one million. As I write less than a week later, it is just touching 1.1 million. This is still a lot less than the biggest massively multiple on-line role-playing games, such as World of Warcraft, but it is rapid growth indeed, and more importantly SL is something quite different: a universe in which you can appear pretty much as yourself, or some kind of idealised or otherwise modified version of yourself, or in any other form you like (of whatever age, sex, species, or planetary origin). You can role-play in a myriad of different ways, or you can simply prowl around the highroads, gardens, beaches, shopping malls, and back alleys of SL like a high-tech tourist, interacting pretty much as the real you (my own modus operandi, though I don't actually advertise my real-life name). It is endlessly adaptable for business and conferencing, as well as for an infinite number of games, or simply as a very fancy chat-room with colour, sound, and motion. In fact, it's whatever you want to make of it.

Actually - and here, I dare say, is a reality check - SL has experienced plenty of problems in sustaining its performance in the face of such a rate of growth plus the attacks of malicious hackers. Also, it is still quite primitive compared to the richly immersive virtual realities imagined in cyberpunk-style science fiction. There's a long way to go.

Nonetheless, SL in its current form is surely the precursor to more convincingly immersive forms of VR that will increasingly become available as computer power continues to grow exponentially, and as modern communications media converge. It's difficult to avoid the conclusion that highly convincing interaction in virtual reality universes will become commonplace over the next decade or so, as has already happened with the internet. We, the technologically rich, are likely to experience the impression of continuity between our interactions with others in the network of virtual realities - the emerging "metaverse" if you will - and those in our forreal, flesh-and-blood reality. Again, the ubiquity of e-mail and the World Wide Web provides a model of how quickly and comprehensively things can change.

The opportunities and the problems are endless. This new phase of integration with our technological products won't come without costs, but it is still exciting. All being well, I'll live long enough to see how it all works out through the first half of the twenty-first century, and I'm damn glad to be living at a time of such momentous change.