We should never have had a referendum on the Alternative Vote in the UK. We should just have had the Alternative Vote, because it is a fact that AV is better that the current system.
That statement is bound to make some people angry. It will sound extremely arrogant. It is there to raise a point about the nature of the UK government. Bear with me.
We have had very few referendums in the UK's history, and these have all been on constitutional issues, but a referendum could theoretically be held regarding any point of policy. We could, for example, have had a referendum on the current government's austerity measures, on student tuition fees, on changes to the NHS, on reform of the House of Lords, etc. We have never been offered a referendum on such matters, yet on 5th May a referendum was held on whether to adopt the Alternative Vote system for general elections.
I am going to argue that all of my examples above are good subjects for a referendum, because they are matters of opinion, and that we should press the UK government for more referendums on such matters. Instead, we were asked a question about a logically provable fact because the government knew they could manipulate us to get the result they wanted and serve their own political ends.
Facts vs Opinions
There is a big difference between a fact and an opinion. A fact can be proven by observation or experiment, whereas an opinion is formed in the absence of proof.
Of course, it is not nearly that simple.
For starters, when we can't prove something, we might call our best guess an opinion. This immediately turns my first, black and white description into a whole smear of different greys: the dark grey of guesswork; the mid grey of partial knowledge; the light grey of expert opinion; the near white of well proven theories like 'the sun will come up tomorrow'.
To confuse matters, no fact can ever be 100% proven. There is always an element of doubt. This means what we call a fact is only a fact for as long as our best evidence holds. For example, it used to be a known fact that the world was flat. Then somebody sailed around it.
On top of that, there are all the things we cannot disprove. I cannot prove there are no unicorns. Actually, I find it quite likely that there could be unicorns lurking somewhere in the forests, it's just we've never seen them. Until somebody finds a unicorn, however, most of us operate on the assumption that there are none.
Does that mean that all facts and opinions are equal? Are the shape of the world and the existence of unicorns opinions, like my opinions on politics and sprouts? Not quite. The key difference is that the truth of these matters is out there somewhere: there is an answer. If I believed the world was flat, I would be wrong. I don't know about unicorns, but either they are real, or not. The truth is not an opinion.
Opinions are most useful when we cannot prove what is the best course of action, but still have to make a decision. Lacking real knowledge, we fall back on subjective qualities: instinct, experience, ethics, ideology. Each person's subjective view will be different, and will guide them in different ways.
Why we want more referendums
Now, when we are talking about politics, we are deciding what is good for an extremely complex system which nobody understands. This means, in most cases, the best course of action is down to opinion. The purpose of democracy is to ensure that the opinions of the whole population are taken into account, and a referendum is the purest form of democracy: every voter is asked their opinion on a specific issue.
This being the case, if we believe in democracy, we should press for more referendums on key matters of opinion. It is too easy for a cabinet member to put their own ideology, or their own political gain, above the will of the people. This is only too evident in UK politics, where a mostly centre-left population is dominated by right wing governments. Right wing ideologies, like the belief that the free market will solve every problem, would be rejected by a majority in the UK, which is precisely why the government has no interest in holding a referendum on any such issue.
Our government despises democracy
I make my final point about the Alternative Vote not to exhume the corpse of electoral reform but to highlight the arrogance of a government which sees its role not as serving the needs of the country but as manipulating the vote by any means necessary to achieve its own ends.
You see, there is another kind of truth: logical truth. An argument is logically valid when the basic starting point leads undeniably to its conclusion, so you can know it is true no matter what situation it is applied to. An example would be "all red buses are red". You could also say "all red things are red". You could even say "all things of a colour are that colour": always true, no matter what things and what colour you are talking about.
Although the details are way beyond the scope of this post, there are ways to analyse voting systems to prove that one system of voting is more democratic than another. In some cases, it is not clear; however in the case of AV and First Past The Post, there is no contest: AV is a more democratic system. If you support democracy, it is logically true that you should support AV.
We could therefore logically expect a government which believes in democracy to switch to AV without question. Arguments around the fringes (such as, is AV too complex for people to understand) can be proven out with trial runs. There is no need for a referendum, because it is not a matter of opinion.
The only reason we held a referendum at all was to put the kibosh on the Lib Dems' demands for electoral reform. The Tories benefit massively from the current system, but they had to address the issue for the sake of the coalition. They knew they could put out lies and disinformation to discredit AV, and it would stand no chance of a 'yes' vote. Once they had their 'no', it would put an end to the discussion.
Their gamble paid off, and their arrogance and disdain for both the electorate and the democratic process were vindicated.
36% of people are getting what they deserve. The rest of us deserve better.
Ranting humanist.
Monday, 13 June 2011
Monday, 2 May 2011
The menace of multiculturalism
Words are such a problem. In February, The Prime Minister made a speech describing the failure of multiculturalism. The speaker being David Cameron, I naturally assumed whatever he was saying would be odious, short sighted and wrong, and I wasn't far off the mark. However, I was surprised to find that on the point about multiculturalism, the National Secular Society agreed with Mr Cameron.
My surprise hinged upon my understanding of the word multiculturalism. You see, when I say "I live in a multicultural society", I mean that every day I encounter people with a broad range of skin colours, faiths, social backgrounds and behaviours, which may or may not originate in one part of the world or another, and - importantly - those differences don't really matter: people are people. I naïvely thought multiculturalism was kinda the opposite of racism.
From a political point of view, that is not the case at all. Multiculturalism is originally a racist, right wing idea: we have our culture and they have theirs, and if we keep 'em seperate it'll be easier to send 'em back where they came from. It is based on the prejudice that each person belongs to a fixed cultural group and each group should be treated seperately.
In the UK, multiculturalism is not so hard line but is nevertheless based upon discrimination between specific cultural groups. Johann Hari explains the problems of multiculturalism better than I could, but one example I can give is the pernicious notion of the faith school. The idea that a child belongs to a specific faith group and should be educated in a specific faith school is prejudiced, nonsensical and discriminatory, and can further segregate communities - if you doubt this, ask yourself why there is no such thing as a catholic fire station, which is allowed to discriminate in favour of catholic fires.
At its nicer, fluffier end, multiculturalism is an earnest attempt to address the needs of minority demographics. It is essential to acknowledge non-cultural minorities: the blind, or wheelchair users, for example. It would be reasonable to think that should extend to cultural minorities too. The problem comes when identifying our cultural group. We start to make assumptions, to label people and seperate them. When this becomes government policy, our laws and public institutions begin to discriminate based on these labels and drive wedges into the community. Hardly the way to promote tolerance and cohesion.
Mr Cameron is right: although this is a happily multicultural society, multiculturalism is the last thing we need. What we do need is called secularism. Secularism may originally relate to religion, but essentially it is about respecting and protecting each individual's right to their individual culture, and ensuring that the state is not biased or discriminatory towards any individual because of that culture. It is the very opposite of multiculturalism, which labels everyone according to some narrow definition and then purposefully discriminates between those labels.
In a country where so many cultures meet and mix, and statements of identity are never simple, secularism is surely the best way to ensure fair governance and intercultural understanding.
Postscript: the National Secular Society campaigns for secularism in the UK. I wish they were a bit less atheistic in tone because that obscures the aspect of secularism which protects freedom of religion: a campaign against religious privilege is not a campaign against religion; it is a campaign for fairness, for people of all faiths and none.
My surprise hinged upon my understanding of the word multiculturalism. You see, when I say "I live in a multicultural society", I mean that every day I encounter people with a broad range of skin colours, faiths, social backgrounds and behaviours, which may or may not originate in one part of the world or another, and - importantly - those differences don't really matter: people are people. I naïvely thought multiculturalism was kinda the opposite of racism.
From a political point of view, that is not the case at all. Multiculturalism is originally a racist, right wing idea: we have our culture and they have theirs, and if we keep 'em seperate it'll be easier to send 'em back where they came from. It is based on the prejudice that each person belongs to a fixed cultural group and each group should be treated seperately.
In the UK, multiculturalism is not so hard line but is nevertheless based upon discrimination between specific cultural groups. Johann Hari explains the problems of multiculturalism better than I could, but one example I can give is the pernicious notion of the faith school. The idea that a child belongs to a specific faith group and should be educated in a specific faith school is prejudiced, nonsensical and discriminatory, and can further segregate communities - if you doubt this, ask yourself why there is no such thing as a catholic fire station, which is allowed to discriminate in favour of catholic fires.
At its nicer, fluffier end, multiculturalism is an earnest attempt to address the needs of minority demographics. It is essential to acknowledge non-cultural minorities: the blind, or wheelchair users, for example. It would be reasonable to think that should extend to cultural minorities too. The problem comes when identifying our cultural group. We start to make assumptions, to label people and seperate them. When this becomes government policy, our laws and public institutions begin to discriminate based on these labels and drive wedges into the community. Hardly the way to promote tolerance and cohesion.
Mr Cameron is right: although this is a happily multicultural society, multiculturalism is the last thing we need. What we do need is called secularism. Secularism may originally relate to religion, but essentially it is about respecting and protecting each individual's right to their individual culture, and ensuring that the state is not biased or discriminatory towards any individual because of that culture. It is the very opposite of multiculturalism, which labels everyone according to some narrow definition and then purposefully discriminates between those labels.
In a country where so many cultures meet and mix, and statements of identity are never simple, secularism is surely the best way to ensure fair governance and intercultural understanding.
Postscript: the National Secular Society campaigns for secularism in the UK. I wish they were a bit less atheistic in tone because that obscures the aspect of secularism which protects freedom of religion: a campaign against religious privilege is not a campaign against religion; it is a campaign for fairness, for people of all faiths and none.
Tuesday, 15 February 2011
Videogames or Sewage?
In response to IGN article 'Stacking Up Facebook Games', 1st Feb 2011 suggesting that social networking games make more money than most traditional videogames.
What makes more money: Tom Clancy or Hello Magazine? McDonalds or Heston Blumenthal? Videogames or sewage processing?
Social networking games are all the rage. Analysts, like the writer at IGN, are keen to make a comparison to traditional games, and it does indeed seem that social networking games, generating Monthly Active Users figures with many, many enviable digits, are going to be very profitable to those who can dominate that space; perhaps much more profitable than traditional games.
But what should the industry do with this information? Should developers all start to make social networking games, or at least include more social networking features, if that's where the biggest profit lies?
Change the context. If sewage processing makes more money than videogames, should games developers switch to sewage, or start to include more of the features of sewage in their games? Or, vice versa, if videogames make more money, should our sewage plants all become game developers and not bother treating sewage any more?
Far from being metaphorical sewage, the best social networking games are really good. They are creatively designed, extensively tested and honed, beautifully presented and clearly quite captivating to their players. I cannot criticise them for their content, although they are not the kind of game which interests me.
Nevertheless, I believe the success of social networking games to be bad for videogames in general. The problem arises because the good qualities I list above are not the reason for the games' success: the real reason is cynical user manipulation. Social networking games operate by engendering three behaviours in the players: (1) keep playing; (2) encourage your friends to play; (3) give us money. Every element of the game has to be engineered to optimise these behaviours, and whilst this does not necessarily preclude the creation of cultural value, it doesn't exactly encourage it. Citizen Kane doesn't compel you to watch it every day, drip feeding its story to a frenzy of mouse clicks. Hamlet doesn't stop mid-soliloquy until your friends also come to the theatre. The Mona Lisa doesn't charge you to upgrade her smile.
Social networking games are here to stay, at least for a while, because whether or not they are of cultural merit, they can be highly profitable. There is nothing wrong with profit - if it don't make dollars, it don't make sense - but there is more to life than the bottom line of a spreadsheet. If profit is our only aim, we may as well work with sewage.
What makes more money: Tom Clancy or Hello Magazine? McDonalds or Heston Blumenthal? Videogames or sewage processing?
Social networking games are all the rage. Analysts, like the writer at IGN, are keen to make a comparison to traditional games, and it does indeed seem that social networking games, generating Monthly Active Users figures with many, many enviable digits, are going to be very profitable to those who can dominate that space; perhaps much more profitable than traditional games.
But what should the industry do with this information? Should developers all start to make social networking games, or at least include more social networking features, if that's where the biggest profit lies?
Change the context. If sewage processing makes more money than videogames, should games developers switch to sewage, or start to include more of the features of sewage in their games? Or, vice versa, if videogames make more money, should our sewage plants all become game developers and not bother treating sewage any more?
Far from being metaphorical sewage, the best social networking games are really good. They are creatively designed, extensively tested and honed, beautifully presented and clearly quite captivating to their players. I cannot criticise them for their content, although they are not the kind of game which interests me.
Nevertheless, I believe the success of social networking games to be bad for videogames in general. The problem arises because the good qualities I list above are not the reason for the games' success: the real reason is cynical user manipulation. Social networking games operate by engendering three behaviours in the players: (1) keep playing; (2) encourage your friends to play; (3) give us money. Every element of the game has to be engineered to optimise these behaviours, and whilst this does not necessarily preclude the creation of cultural value, it doesn't exactly encourage it. Citizen Kane doesn't compel you to watch it every day, drip feeding its story to a frenzy of mouse clicks. Hamlet doesn't stop mid-soliloquy until your friends also come to the theatre. The Mona Lisa doesn't charge you to upgrade her smile.
Social networking games are here to stay, at least for a while, because whether or not they are of cultural merit, they can be highly profitable. There is nothing wrong with profit - if it don't make dollars, it don't make sense - but there is more to life than the bottom line of a spreadsheet. If profit is our only aim, we may as well work with sewage.
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