This video was prompted by the 60 Minutes segment on conspiracy theories (in particular those relating to COVID19) on June 7th 2020, however I primarily use this as an example of how the media misrepresents science through a number of methods.
Balance as Bias refers to a paper from 2004 that talks about how mainstream media’s habit of trying to be ‘balanced’ in their reporting actually leads to bias in the public perception of climate change. I argue that this concept can be applied more generally to all science.
I just finished watching Parasyte: The Maxim (2014 – based on the manga from 1988) and really enjoyed it. I was struck throughout the 24 episode series (available on Netflix) by the quotes and themes that could reasonably be described as pro-vegan or pro-environmentalism. At the very least, it seems to draw attention to the hypocrisies of caring about humans while consuming non-humans or damaging the environment.
I want to just talk a little about some of the quotes and themes, but naturally spoilers will follow aplenty from here. Fair warning.
The general concept is that some parasites have taken up residence in the brains of humans (and occasionally non-humans) in the present-ish day world, completely taking over their body. The human brain is gone, replaced with a parasite brain which, despite starting with no knowledge, is quickly able to learn how to function in society and blend in. They eat other humans to survive.
The main character, Shinichi Izumi, by fluke and quick thinking, is able to stop a parasite from getting to his brain, and it instead takes over his arm. As a result, he retains control of his brain, but the parasite (who Shinichi calls Migi, which translates to ‘right hand’) is able to take over his arm at will as seen below.
To cut a great and long story short, other parasites try to kill Shinichi, who eventually decides to take it on himself to kill them to protect humanity. Migi doesn’t feel loyalty to anyone except themselves, and perhaps Shinichi, as they will die if Shinichi does. Throughout the series, Migi and others point out the hypocrisy of Shinichi wanting to protect humanity from the parasites despite humanity engaging in the large scale harm of non-humans.
The mysterious and gruesome killings of humans become known as the ‘mincemeat murders’. In one scene, Shinichi is thinking about the murders when he sees someone throw a half-eaten hamburger in the trash (how’s that for symbolism).
I’ll share some quotes from the anime below which highlight what I’m thinking about.
“Such a shallow breed. They grind cows and pigs into feed, and then act so surprised when it happens to them.”
“Shinichi, upon researching the concept of demons, I believe that, among all life, humans are the closest thing to it. Although humans kill and eat a wide variety of life forms, my kind eat merely one or two kinds at most. We are quite frugal in comparison.”
“You sacrifice other lives so that your own live can continue. That is how animals live. Humans are one-of-a kind creatures that commit suicide.”
“If you have the right to live, so do we. Granted, I believe rights are a concept unique to the human species.”
“In comparison, humans are the true parasitic vermin infesting this planet.”
“There may be no other life forms that are truly a “friend” to man. Still, even if we can’t comprehend them, they are, without a doubt, neighbors deserving of our respect. We protect other species because humans themselves are lonely creatures. We protect the environment because humans themselves don’t want to go extinct. What drives us is simply self-gratification. But I think that’s fine, and that it’s really all there is to it. There’s no point in despising humans by human standards. That’s right. So in the end, it’s hypocritical for us to love Earth without loving ourselves.”
Shinichi saving a cat from three youths who buried it up to its head in sand and were throwing rocks at it.
To conclude, I want to talk about the speech given by a local mayor Takeshi Hirokawa, shortly before he is killed. He was elected during the series on an environmental platform, and the viewer is lead to believe that he is a parasite. He works closely with other parasites, and uses his power as mayor to set up locations around the city that the parasites can safely and secretly feed on humans.
In the end, during a police/military operation which leads to the deaths of many parasites in the city, Hirokawa is cornered in the council chambers. Before being gunned down, he gives this speech [dubbed video version here if you prefer].
“When it comes to the art of death, every species on Earth pales in comparison to that of the human race. Yet as I look at the fine instruments you hold [semi-automatic shotguns] I feel they could be put to a far greater purpose. Such implements of force can be used not for simple eradication, but rather the protection of the balance of our very existence.
That’s right, to purge those who offer nothing to our community. Because when put to task, all of us must admit an obvious truth. That not everyone in our vast population deserves to be part of our family. Instead they attack our values. They attack our ecosystem in a crime of arrogant apathy far greater than that of crude genocide.
Yet hope is here. It’s staring you in the face. It may be different and seem frightening, but you will come to cherish it. The time has come that we must hold our own predators in high regard, and in fact protect them. And the most fascinating thing is that these predators will ultimately allow us to grow stronger and more powerful. They are our saviours, our masters, and they will restore the balance that we could not.
Not long ago, someone on Earth had a passing thought. All life is sacred and must therefore be protected.“
“Who do you think you are you monster?” [a soldier]
“This is why I cannot abide my own kind. If defiance is truly your intention, do not pretend to act otherwise. Even environmental conservation is skewed in favour of our own hubris. A few point most refuse to acknowledge. We must consider all life on Earth, not just the prosperity of a single species. That presumes your own rule over creation. Humans repeatedly claim they’re on the side of justice, and what greater justice is there than natural selection?
The human race has been inhabited, and relinquished of the sacred duty by preserving the balance of life on Earth, thus exposing you as nothing but parasites infesting this planet. It’s you, you are the infection.“
In short, Hirokawa makes the case that parasites killing some humans would actually be good for life on Earth in general. The quote “Not long ago, someone on Earth had a passing thought. All life is sacred and must therefore be protected.” is repeated several times throughout the series. While we never find out, it seems to suggest that the parasites were created by humans in the first place, possibly as a solution to humanity’s destruction.
Sounds a bit like a Thanos – killing to benefit the greater good. How utilitarian!
I don’t ever want to have a child. I haven’t been private about this, but I haven’t really been public either. I talked about why I don’t want to have children, and why I think it would be unethical for me to have a child.
There is a lot happening right now. I’ve thought about commenting on it, but I’m a believer in forming opinions slowly with evidence rather than emotion (for a discussion of why, see my footnote – if this concerns you already, I strongly urge you to read it*). Having said that, I think I’m ready to share some thoughts, though I of course reserve the right to change my mind with new information. This is a long post, but I think the world is complex and nothing less would accurately describe my views.
I like to try and make the strongest case possible for both sides of argument (see steelmanning). I think this is just good practice, but it can sometimes get me in trouble, since I end up arguing in part against both sides of a story, even the side that I actually agree with. Oh well.
First, it would be remiss of me to start without a direct statement on the cause of the protests in USA. I believe that suffering and loss of life are tragic, and so I was naturally horrified to hear about the death of George Floyd. As best I can tell from what I’ve seen, his death was unnecessary and a gross breach of police conduct. I’m not an expert in policing, but I can feel relatively confident at this point in saying that the police seriously fucked up. Regardless of whether or not Floyd had committed a crime or had a valid reason for being detained, the response was not warranted.
Black lives matter, and I’ll try my best to do my part to create a better world for African Americans.
I know people desperately want a solution to what is happening (myself included), but the world is extremely complicated, and a solution is unlikely to be simple. There are many examples of actions taken that sound great and have the best intentions, but end up creating more harm than good. Could that be happening now? Maybe. It would be epistemically dishonest of me to pretend to have an answer to that. For what it’s worth, I’m strongly pro-non-human rights but still think there is a chance that some action ‘for the animals’ could result in more animal suffering.
I also refuse to propose a solution. This may warrant some criticism (“You say that what people are doing might not be the best way to go about it, yet you don’t even have a solution? Hypocrite!”), but I want to push back on the culture of people who aren’t domain experts claiming to have a simple solution to a complex problem.
And yet, I have a view about the solution for many things unrelated to my core expertise. Usually I arrive at these views after reading and thinking about the issue for a while. I haven’t done this for this particular issue. Maybe I should be spending more time doing this. I can’t argue with that, but I won’t propose a solution until I do.
In particular, the counter-productivity of looting in the US has been talked about a lot. This is something you could write an entire journal paper on. I won’t say much on it except to say that there are a lot of competing views. A couple of interesting things come to mind – the Boston Tea Party involved the destruction of British property by dissatisfied American colonists. To say that destruction of property is always bad as a form of protest, you’d have to accept that the Boston Tea Party was too (see the Tweets below that have been making the rounds).
Some of the looters may be doing it opportunistically, and some may be doing it as protest. But just as I accept that well intended actions don’t always have good consequences, I accept that the looting doesn’t necessarily have bad consequences. I don’t claim to have the answer, though I do note that supporters of the protests remain divided on the looting and property destruction itself.
Some are criticising those who are protesting for being hypocritical about COVID-19. Some people were seemingly concerned a few weeks ago enough to criticise those who protested about the lockdown restrictions, but think that these protests are worth the risk.
This is a pet hate of mine. Often (not always), I find that when someone disagrees with the methodology of a protest or civil disobedience, what they actually mean is that they disagree with that method being used for that thing because they disagree with the thing being advocated for. E.g. an animal rights protest in Melbourne last year was criticised for blocking traffic, yet a union protest in the same week which also blocked traffic was celebrated (broadly speaking). You just need to look at the text and headlines of the ABC News articles on both to see this discrepancy.
I like Venn diagrams like the one below because they remind us that we can hold numerous different views at the same time. This might seem obvious, but my impression is that some people will naturally trend towards agreeing with all of the propositions a particular side makes. We don’t have to, we can choose.
I’d add one more circle to this Venn diagram for now, which is ‘concern about a second wave of SARS-Cov2 is warranted’. Again, this might seem obvious, but some seem to be framing it as ‘you can only pick one’. Probably a lot of the protesters hold all five of these circles, but have decided, either consciously or subconsciously, that the risk of spreading SARS-Cov2 is worth the payoff of achieving change through the protests. It’s important to acknowledge that COVID-19 will disproportionately affect black neighbourhoods for a variety of reasons. This isn’t an argument in itself, but an important point that I don’t know people are considering enough.
I would encourage anyone who chooses to protest (for anything) to socially distance where possible while protesting (I know this is just impractical most of the time), wear a mask as a matter of priority, not protest if they are sick, and self-isolate for two weeks after the protest if possible.
For a specific example of things being complicated, I want to mention ‘Blackout Tuesday’, where people posted black squares on social media this week. This was intended as a show of solidarity and support of BLM, but there have been concerns from some in the BLM community that it had been drowning out live information (e.g. the #BlackLivesMatter and #BLM feeds) about the protests and what was happening on the ground, which was a life line for activists. Once again, no simple answer.
I hope that the systemic issues that are being questioned now do not get forgotten in the next media cycle. I hope that SARS-Cov2 is not forgotten about in this media cycle. The world sucks all year round, so let’s make sure we are always fighting for a better one.
Have I missed something? Almost certainly. There are also other related topics which I intended to write about, but felt that including them here would be distracting. I’m happy to update my views and amend anything that needs amending (that’s largely why I’m writing this). I’m happy for people to comment here or reach out to me privately.
* In January 2019, there was a confrontation at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C., USA. There were groups of opposing political demonstrators at the site, and a video was released of a high school student wearing a Make America Great Again hat, seemingly taunting another man. The student was lambasted on social media, being called a racist and getting sent death threats.
Later footage revealed that the initial media coverage was inaccurate, and that the students had been antagonised by another group of protesters. Suddenly, the smirking, racist student was just a student smiling awkwardly after a man came up to him and started beating a drum in his face. Do I agree with all of the students’ views? No. But I don’t think that excuses criticising them for things they didn’t even do.
From the Wikipedia article on the incident: “The news media has been criticized for how it covered the incident, specifically for their initial reporting of the story based on various social media posts without fully investigating what occurred and subsequently fueling controversy and outrage over the incident.“
Videos and photos can be powerful, but they rarely constitute viable evidence in isolation. This is why I try not to make strong judgements based on a video and initial reporting, no matter how compelling they seem.
The North American Meat Institute responded to Jonathan Safran Foer’s ‘The End of Meat is Here’ piece in the New York Times, so I responded to the response.
In short, it had no references, and even made some points that had already been rebutted in the original piece by Safran Foer.
The Federal Court of Australia has ruled that the temporary ban on live export of farmed animals to Indonesia in 2011 was invalid, and the Federal Government is likely going to have to pay out damages to animal agriculture corporations.
I make no judgement on whether the court findings are valid (I’m not a lawyer), keeping in mind that I don’t think legality equals morality.
However, the use of the words ‘reckless’ and ‘capricious’ in the judgement about an action aimed at reducing suffering to non-humans makes it abundantly clear that the legal system is not built to protect the interests of anyone but humans.
It also sets a sad precedent. Future governments may well be less inclined to make legal change in the interests of non-humans if they think an animal agriculture company or industry representative group is going to sue them. Consider also what happened to Premier Mike Baird after the (ultimately temporary) ban on greyhound racing in NSW.
I don’t believe that an action will always have a positive effect simply because it is ‘for the animals’. There are many well-studied examples of well-intended programs causing more harm than good in human-focused interventions, and we need to be careful.
In this video I talked about how animal advocates can be as effective as possible – I believe the animals deserve no less.
I was interviewed by Ticker Sports about esports today, including my involvement as a League of Legends player for UNSW recently. It was a fun interview, and I got to talk a little about the past and future of esports, something I’m passionate about and enjoy a lot. You can watch the interview by clicking here and going to 21 minutes 12 seconds.
As a secondary reason for writing this post, I want to talk about how I ended up speaking about this. I don’t think I’m the most qualified or even most charismatic person to talk about this in Australia, and yet I was interviewed instead of a player or coach for an OPL team, or an esports journalist/analyst.
I use a website called Sourcebottle (I’m not sponsored, I swear), which puts both interviewers and interviewees in touch with each other. Anyone from journalists to blog writers can put in a request for someone to speak about a particular topic, and people like myself will get an alert based on some keywords they’ve entered.
I’ve been interviewed for several news articles and magazines in this way, and even ended up having a book chapter written about some of my work. It’s a great tool, and I’d highly recommend filling in a profile with some keywords if there are some issues you are knowledgeable/passionate about so you can get opportunities to talk about it with the media. There is a paid version of Sourcebottle which gives you some extra perks, but in my opinion it’s probably not worth it. The free version gives you what I described above.
Finally, the media alert I got wasn’t even directly esports related. They were looking to speak with someone involved in a sport that had not been severely affected by the Covid-19 lockdowns, and I figured esports might fit the bill. Turns out it did.
I read an article today that summarised a book titled Dark Skies: Space Expansionism, Planetary Geopolitics, and the Ends of Humanity by Daniel Deudney. The book (and the article) makes the case that we should be slowing down our expansion in to space. In particular, the article is commenting on the plans of both private and public entities to put humans on Mars. As a caveat, I haven’t yet read the book, though I intend to, and will likely do a longer post and video about it. But for now, I want to share some thoughts.
The article is quite critical of Elon Musk and SpaceX, mostly for their desire to put boots on Mars as soon as possible without thinking enough about the consequences, which include the possible weaponisation of space. Carl Sagan had long warned about the possible weaponisation of asteroids through the development of asteroid deflection technology (see also my take on this).
I’d like to add a concern of my own, relating to wild-animal suffering (please see this for an introduction to the concept). If you accept the premise that many wild animals and insects experience so much suffering that they have net negative lives, it would surely be bad to fill an entire new planet with them. And yet, that’s exactly what some people are proposing to do with Mars as part of or after a terraforming process. I’ve talked about this here. Given the enormous consequences, we should really stop and think about whether terraforming Mars is the right thing to do. Too many people in my field seem to assume it is definitely good to colonise and terraform Mars.
The article goes on to discuss some of Deudney’s critiques of some of the arguments people make for space colonisation, which includes ensuring the survival of humanity in the event of a catastrophe affecting Earth. I note that the article’s presentation of this case is rather strawmanned. They made it seem like people making this argument are only concerned about the death of our sun in several billion years, rather than the myriad of other X-risks such as artificial intelligence, pandemics, nuclear warfare, asteroid impacts and supervolcanoes, some of which could affect us tomorrow.
The article (and I can only assume the book also) seems to be making the case for slowing down space expansion, rather than halting it all together, which is a view I share myself.
The main thing I discuss in this video is a series of products being promoted by ‘Juicing with Nadia K’, which claim to help protect people from the effects of 5G. To be immediately clear – 5G is not harmful, and I think this is a scam. I have reported it to the ACCC. Having said that, I thought we could have some fun and break down the claims Nadia is making, and look at a few other examples of recent pseudoscience.
