Friday, March 19, 2010

“Philosophy of science: Must do better (Guardian Unlimited)” plus 3 more

“Philosophy of science: Must do better (Guardian Unlimited)” plus 3 more

Philosophy of science: Must do better (Guardian Unlimited)

Posted: 18 Mar 2010 07:58 PM PDT

Drought in Namib-Naukluft Park, Namibia

The openess and rigour of the scientific process are vital when the results affect us all. Photograph: Ron Watts/Corbis

I strive to retain respect for philosophy and philosophers, really I do. Some of my best friends are philosophers. I would hate to dismiss a whole area of intellectual endeavour as a sterile playground for clever people creating and demolishing pointless academic fashions.

But you can tell I am struggling hard right now, and it is all Nicholas Maxwell's fault. His entry into the heated debate on climate science rained blow after blow on my patience. I will resist, and will not damn all philosophy. But I do want to respond to his piece, since the debate he stumbled into is real and important.

On communication: There is clearly a problem with the public perception of science. The criticism that Maxwell makes about too much "specialised gobbledygook" may be hilarious, coming from a philospher, but it is a fair criticism in some contexts. Science really can be complex and difficult (sorry Nicholas). Jargon is a short-hand to improve communication between experts which quickly becomes an obstacle if used outside a sub-field.

More misleadingly, Maxwell accuses scientists of dishonestly claiming that science is a search for truth. He starts by misrepresenting physics:

"At present most of them [scientists] take for granted the view that the intellectual aim of science is to acquire knowledge of truth, the basic method being to assess, impartially, claims to knowledge with respect to evidence – nothing being accepted permanently as a part of scientific knowledge independently of evidence. But this is nonsense. Physics only ever accepts theories that are unified – that attribute the same laws to all the phenomena to which the theory in question applies – even though many empirically more successful disunified rivals can always be concocted."

As far as I can tell his claim is that in trying to find simple theories covering the maximum amount of data, we somehow assume that such theories exist, and discard "more successful" disunified theories. In his philosophical way I think he is saying that if you have 100 data points and draw a line through them freehand, you can go through all the points. Which is true, but a worthless observation since playing join-the-dots with data doesn't tell you anything. You only gain understanding when you find a line that can explain and predict where the dots should be.

Maxwell then leaps onward to damn all science according to his inaccurate characterisation of physics. His false impression of physics might be forgiven on the basis that perhaps he read one too many pop science books about "theories of everything". But to stretch this to cover chemistry, biology and climate science is ridiculous. While there are underlying models in many areas of these sciences, they are hugely empirical. The complex systems they deal with are in many cases impossible to predict from first principles. The models used often rely on "rules of thumb" drawn from observation of the whole system, as well as basic physical laws.

Science is a form of systematised pragmatism: it finds out what works, and in the process we increase our understanding of the universe in which we live. I have no objection to philosophers watching, and trying to understand and improve the processes. It might even work. But they really ought to (and often do) have an understanding of what they are watching.

Science often falls short of its ideals, and the climate debate has exposed some shortcomings. Science is done by people, who need grants, who have professional rivalries, limited time, and passionately held beliefs. All these things can prevent us from finding out what works. This is why the empiricism and pragmatism of science are vital, and why when scientific results affect us all, and speak against powerful political and financial interests, the openness and rigour of the process become ever more important.

This is worth discussing, and I sincerely hope philosophers of science can do better than Maxwell in contributing to a debate of huge significance for the future of our species.

Jon Butterworth is a member of the High Energy Physics Group at University College London

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How to Create a Company Philosophy (Inc Magazine)

Posted: 18 Mar 2010 01:49 PM PDT

As head of a small business, your values bleed into the company culture whether you intend them to or not. Here's how to mindfully craft a company philosophy.

Any company can sell Product X or provide Service Y, but what differentiates you from everyone else in your field is your company philosophy. A company's philosophy is a distillation of its culture or ambience into a group of core values that inform all aspects of its business practices. Having a strong company philosophy is a good way to guide your employees at decision-making crossroads, but it can also be a strong branding tool, and generally make your workplace more congenial.

For example, Tony Hsieh, Zappos' CEO and a respected culture crafter, sometimes tells the story of a customer service representative who got a call from a woman whose husband had died in a car accident after she had ordered boots for him from Zappos. The day after the call, the widow received flowers that the rep had sent her on the company's dime without consulting a supervisor. At the funeral the widow related the experience to her friends and family.

So by fostering a culture in which employees can make such a call--the first of Zappos' 10 core values exhorts employees to go "above and beyond the average level of service to create an emotional impact on the receiver"--Hsieh walks away with a hat trick. His staff was able to be decisive when it counted; his brand gained a powerful addition to its narrative, plus a devoted customer; and the call center rep felt empowered by being granted such license.

How to Create a Company Philosophy: Keep it in Context

How does a company's philosophy relate to other values-oriented parts of your company such as your mission statement or your code of ethics? "In some ways these terms all overlap. They are attempting to create an identity for the company that distinguishes it in the marketplace," says David Ulrich, a business professor at the University of Michigan and co-founder of the RBL Group, a consultancy that advises businesses on human resources, leadership, and organization.

Not every company needs to have a mission statement, philosophy, and code of ethics but one example of a company that has all three is Google.

•    Mission statement: A mission statement should succinctly summarize what you do or what your aims are. Google's stated mission is "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."

•    Philosophy: A philosophy should flesh out the mission statement, which is pithy and almost sloganlike into core ideas or values that the company and its members hold dear and adhere to in their business dealings. Google's philosophy includes such principles as "fast is better than slow," democracy on the Web works," and "you can be serious without a suit."

•    Code of ethics: A code of ethics or code of conduct expands even further on the philosophy and the mission statement to deal with specific types of situations and behaviors. Google, for example, lays out its policies on, among other things, conflicts of interest, customer service, and confidentiality.

Ulrich continues, "There are dimensions of this identity: the philosophy being a set of principles that govern work, the mission statement about why we work, and code of ethics about our values in doing work. But they all try to position a company's identity in the minds of those inside and outside the company."

Dig Deeper: How Howard Schultz Put Starbucks' Derailed Culture Back on Track

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Less-is-more philosophy makes sense at Monmouth (Las Vegas Review-Journal)

Posted: 19 Mar 2010 03:06 AM PDT

This will allow Monmouth to offer on average $1 million a day in purse money this summer, making it the richest race meet in the United States. Further changes include a three-day race week and 12 races per card.

The ''less is more'' philosophy makes sense. The U.S. has a horse shortage. Horseplayers want to play fuller fields. Thus, combining quality and quantity should produce an outstanding product.

Industry experts have assumed this will negatively impact the competing Saratoga meet. I disagree. I think the tracks that will lose the most are in the Mid-Atlantic, such as Delaware, Penn National, Philadelphia and Pimlico. A short ship, for purses 50 percent or more higher, is enticing.

I will play a simulcast signal of such quality. I'll also volunteer this proposal to Monmouth: Offer a subsidy to us horseplayers. It's known that Atlantic City casinos are giving a $20 million subsidy to Monmouth for purses.

What I suggest is a reduction to 10 percent takeout in the straight pools, win, place and show. The takeout is currently 17 percent. The 7 percent difference is in essence a subsidy for horseplayers. Between higher returns to bettors and more handle because of an improved racing product, the Monmouth churn in straight pools should explode. The increased revenue will theoretically offset givebacks by the track and simulcast outlets.

Considering Monmouth is courageous enough to make this great experiment, why not include us players, too?

■ STILL A WINNER -- It is amazing that many racing fans are saying because Rachel Alexandra lost last week that she was not a deserving Horse of the Year. There is no connection between the award and the loss. In 2010, Rachel Alexandra was 8-for-8 wins. This year she is 0-for-1, that's all.

■ SOUTH POINT -- The Thursday South Point Six progressive carry-over was not won this week. The contest carry-over has grown to $11,370.

Richard Eng's horse racing column is published Friday in the Las Vegas Review-Journal. He can be reached at rich_eng@hotmail.com.

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Tea-party philosophy: a political-restoration movement (Seattle Times)

Posted: 18 Mar 2010 05:12 PM PDT

If you read the op-ed pages these days, you'd be forgiven for thinking that the GOP and the conservative movement have been taken over by know-nothing mobs, anti-intellectual demagogues and pitchfork-wielding bigots.

There's no omnibus label for this argument, but it's a giveaway that a person subscribes to it if he or she describes the "tea-party" movement as "tea baggers," an awfully telling bit of sophomoric condescension from the camp that affects the pose of being more high-minded.

The case against the tea-party movement is constantly evolving. Initially, they were written off as "astroturfers," faux populists paid by K Street lobbyists to provide damaging footage for Fox News' Obama coverage. Then, they were deemed racists who couldn't handle having a black president.

But now that the movement, or, more broadly, the Obama backlash is so widespread, it's chalked up to populist anti-elitism. New York Times columnist David Brooks and others argue that the tea-party movement is kith and kin of the 1960s New Left, because they share a "radically anti-conservative" hatred of "the system" and a desire to start over.

Brooks was seconding an article by Michael Lind in Salon, in which Lind argues that the right has become a "counterculture (that) refuses to acknowledge the legitimacy of the rules of the game that it has lost" (respect for rules is an ironic benchmark given the lengths the Democrats are going to pass ObamaCare in Congress). Whereas the Luddites and know-nothings once dropped out for the "Summer of Love," today's Luddites and know-nothings have signed up for the "Winter of Hate."

It's all so much nonsense. The Boston Tea Party would make a strange lodestar for an anti-American movement. The tea partyers certainly aren't "dropping out" of the system; if they were, we wouldn't be talking about them.

And they aren't reading Marxist tracts in a desire to "tear down the system" either. They're reading Thomas Paine, the founders and Friedrich Hayek in the perhaps naive hope that they'll be able to restore the principles that are supposed to be guiding the system. (To the extent they're reading radicals such as Saul Alinsky, it's because they've been told that's the best way to understand his disciple in the White House.)

Restoration and destruction are hardly synonymous terms or desires. And maybe that's a better label: a political-restoration movement, one that reflects our Constitution and the precepts of limited government.

The restorationists are neither anti-elitist nor anti-intellectual. William F. Buckley famously said that he would rather be governed by the first 2,000 names in the Boston phone book than the Harvard faculty, but few would dispute that the Latin-speaking harpsichord player who used summer and winter as verbs was anything but an elitist. Similarly, the restorationists have any number of hero intellectuals (from Buckley and Thomas Sowell to Hayek and Ayn Rand).

The "elite" the restorationists dislike is better understood as a "new class" (to borrow a phrase from the late Irving Kristol). The legendary economist Joseph Schumpeter predicted in 1942 that capitalism couldn't survive because capitalist prosperity would feed a new intellectual caste that would declare war on the bourgeois values and institutions that generate prosperity in the first place. When you hear that conservatives are anti-elitist, you should think they're really anti-new class.

Conservatives see this new class of managers, meddlers, planners and scolds as a kind of would-be secular aristocracy empowered to declare war on traditional arrangements and make other decisions "for your own good."

And that's why Obama backlash is part of the culture war. Defenders of ObamaCare, cap-and-trade and the rest of the Democratic agenda insist that they're merely applying the principles of good governance and the lessons of sound, sober-minded policymaking. No doubt there's some truth to that, at least in terms of their motives. But from a broader perspective, it is obvious that theirs is a cultural agenda as well.

The quest for single-payer health care is not primarily grounded in good economics nor in good politics but in a heartfelt ideological desire for "social justice." The constant debate over whether the "European model" is better than ours often sounds like an empirical debate, but at its core it's a cultural and philosophical argument that stretches back more than a century.

The restorationists reside on one side of that debate, while the Obama administration and the bulk of the progressive establishment reside on the other. And that debate is far from over.

2010 Tribune Media Services

Jonah Goldberg is an editor-at-large of National Review Online and a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. His e-mail address is JonahsColumn@aol.com.

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