Problems in funding biological conservation research

REPLY TO: 20 Jul 2024: https://www.zoology.ubc.ca/~krebs/ecological_rants/problems-in-funding-biological-conservation-research/

I am neither a good ecologist nor a good environmentalist. But this is about research funding and conservation, so bear with me.

My wife and I enjoy walks around Deer Lake. If somebody were to ask me "Why are there so many mallards but so few wood ducks?", all I could do is some handwaving. It's survival and reproduction, it's the niche, it's all very complicated. I know, I know. Coexistence is one result of the Lotka-Volterra competition model (1), but to ask Platt's famous question (2): "But [Madam or] Sir, what experiment would disprove your hypothesis?" Causality is hard to establish in the historical sciences (3).

I am also not sure about conservation. As I have asked before (4): Why is biodiversity worth protecting? More than that. When I see the family-tent-sized rubber sheets rolled out around Deer Lake to combat the invasion of the yellow flag iris, I wonder how well these rubber sheets work. Looking at the sizeable populations next to the rubber sheets, my response is: Not well. 

Of course, you may say I am an idiot, and indeed I know very little. But if we cannot come up with good explanations for the abundance and the distribution of organisms, if the only reasons for protecting biodiversity we can name are vague notions of ecosystem stability and aesthetics, if the outcomes of our conservation efforts are uncertain at best and pathetic at worst, and if the timescales governing our objects of interest is decades to centuries, it is half a miracle that we do get funding at all.  

The question is this: How can we convince the average citizen that ecological research is important? (5)

I am not sure if education is the answer. I teach ecology and evolution at a fourth-rate university. I do have students who think that humans are the cause for the extinction of dinosaurs, a belief that would have gotten me thrown out of middle school. And a couple of months ago, I visited the Beaty Biodiversity Museum at U.B.C. with four questions in mind (4): How much biodiversity is out there? Why are there so many species, or why are there so few? Why is biodiversity worth protecting? How should we manage biodiversity? The only question that was somewhat answered is the first.

But maybe I am expecting too much from us humans. 

(An afterthought: When I was a postdoc at U.B.C. in the late 1990s, I dreamt of an independent research institute for ecology (6), where researchers could focus on hypotheses and evidence. I even imagined the funding. Not from the public, because it requires the writing of grant proposals that may not get funded and the publishing of papers that nobody reads. Not from "philanthropists", because it may require sycophancy, compromise, and possibly hypocrisy (7). The funding I envisioned was achieved through -- hold on to your seats -- sports betting. If we are as good at data analysis as we think we are, this should be a piece of cake. I even trained an artificial neural network on about a thousand baseball games. The trouble was that it never converged.)

NOTES AND REFERENCES

(1) C. J. Krebs (2009), Ecology (Sixth Edition).

(2) J. R. Platt (1964), Strong Inference. Science 146: 347 - 353.

(3) My comment on https://www.zoology.ubc.ca/~krebs/ecological_rants/the-two-ecologies/.

(4) My comment on https://www.zoology.ubc.ca/~krebs/ecological_rants/biodiversity-science/.

(5) If the average citizen is not convinced, the average politician will not act. That said, it is still a mystery to me how the physicists get their particle accelerators or the astronomers their space telescopes. 

(6) What the Institute for Advanced Study used to be to mathematics, the Santa Fe Institute to complex adaptive systems, the Oregon Research Institute to psychology.

(7) Who would you NOT accept money from? 

The calculator and artificial intelligence

A group of university administrators has made the following foolish argument (1).

OBSERVATIONS

O1: The introduction of the calculator in the classroom was opposed by many who predicted a decline in academic standards. 

O2: The introduction of the calculator in the classroom DID NOT result in a decline in academic standards. 

O3: The introduction of A.I. in the classroom is opposed by many who predict a decline in academic standards.

ASSUMPTION

A1: The introduction of A.I. in the classroom IS equivalent to the introduction of the calculator in the classroom.

CONCLUSION

C1: The introduction of A.I. in the classroom WILL NOT result in a decline in academic standards.

Here are my objections.

ON O2

The introduction of the calculator DID result in a decline in academic standards.

Perform the following long division by hand: 123456 ÷ 789. 

Did you find it easy? No? Why then should students be exposed to this avoidable tedium?

Because long division does train the mind NOT ONLY in long division. It also teaches students to break a big unsolvable problem into smaller solvable ones. And it exercises the mind in the consistent application of a simple set of rules, a procedure, an algorithm. And it teaches students perseverance and resilience. 

Not exactly irrelevant transferable skills and traits in life and in the workplace. 

ON A1

The introduction of A.I. in the classroom IS NOT equivalent to the introduction of the calculator.

Calculators are primitive tools. They are about arithmetic, the processing of numbers. Calculators are not smarter than humans, they are just faster. 

Of course, mathematics also deals in algebra and calculus, the processing of variables and equations, respectively. We have invented tools to make us faster and more accurate in those areas as well (2). But using these tools requires knowledge about what you are doing. 

Even using the calculator: What exactly is it that you want to calculate? 

Conversely, much of today's "A.I." is based on Large Language Models, artificial neural networks that process complex symbols. These provide easy access to products of analysis and synthesis. Using them doesn't require the discipline of acquiring knowledge. An idiot can use ChatGPT and look smart (3). 

ON C1

Prompted with the observations (O1, O2, O3), the assumption (A1), and the conclusion (C1), the ChatGTP artificial neural network responded (4): 

"The key to this conclusion lies in the assumption that the introduction of A.I. is fundamentally similar to the introduction of calculators in terms of the context and scope of use. If this premise holds true, then the positive outcome from calculators can be reasonably extended to A.I., supporting the conclusion that the impact on academic standards will not be adverse."

Not bad. A machine displaying more intellectual rigour than the authors of the article. (And yes, I see the irony here: Had the authors used ChatGTP, they could have made a stronger argument.) Still, I am somewhat disappointed. I expected the machine to have more of an agenda. 

NOTES AND REFERENCES

(1) M. M. Crow, N. K. Mayberry, T. Mitchell, and D. Anderson (2024), AI Can Transform the Classroom Just Like the Calculator. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ai-can-transform-the-classroom-just-like-the-calculator/ (Accessed: 24 Apr 2024).

(2) E.g. Mathematica, Maple. 

(3) You want to give a presentation on say 17th century French literature? Just sign up to ChatGPT and enter the following prompt: "Can you provide me with the text for ten PowerPoint slides on 17th century French literature?" Hey presto! 

(4) ChatGTP 3.5 (Prompted: 25 Apr 2024). ChatGTP gave a variety of responses to the same prompt. All consistent with each other. 

Biodiversity science

REPLY TO: 28 Feb 2024: https://www.zoology.ubc.ca/~krebs/ecological_rants/biodiversity-science/

(I know, I know, too long again. I always seem to drag myself into a swamp of thoughts.)

How much biodiversity is out there?

Why are there so many species (1), or why are there so few (2)?

Why is biodiversity worth protecting?

How should we manage biodiversity?

These are the questions of biodiversity science, of course, but I am afraid that we will fail at the first one. Answering how much biodiversity is out there does require taxonomists.

It is not a secret that around the time of the Watson and Crick paper in 1953 (3), a chasm opened in biology, a chasm between molecular biology and organismic biology. Molecular biology received faculty positions, research funding, research castles, and journals (4). Organismic biology received a kick in the groin. 

In their classic paper from 1979 -- 1979!! -- Gould and Lewontin quote Rupert Riedl (5): 

"[T]he whole of the huge and profound thought collected in the field of morphology, from Goethe to Remane, has virtually been cut off from modern biology. It is not taught in most American universities. Even the teachers who could teach it have disappeared."

(I received my undergraduate training under Rupert Riedl at the University of Vienna. A lot of courses in morphology and comparative anatomy, a lot of Linnean tables and classification keys, nothing on cladistics, very little biochemistry. But even as zoologists we had to be able to identify at least 125 plant species (6).)

The situation wasn't helped when in 1988 Nobel laureate Luis Alvarez disparaged the scientists who try to understand species (7): 

"I don't like to say bad things about paleontologists, but they're really not very good scientists. They're more like stamp collectors.'' 

Except, of course, Alvarez did say a lot of "bad things" about other scientists. 

Taxonomists used to be respected as collectors of historical evidence to test hypotheses on the origins of species, disparity in body plans, biodiversity, variation within species, and, more recently, invasive species (8). There is no comfort in the irony that the profession that can tell us whether a species is going extinct is going extinct itself.

Maybe I don't know enough, or maybe my judgement is too harsh. I am wondering, Charley, how do you see recruitment and training in biodiversity science?

NOTES AND REFERENCES

(1) G. E. Hutchinson (1959), Homage to Santa Rosalia or Why Are There So Many Kinds of Animals. The American Naturalist 93(870): 145 - 159

(2) J. Felsenstein (1981), Skepticism Towards Santa Rosalia, or Why Are There So Few Kinds of Animals. Evolution 35:124 - 138

(3) J. D. Watson and F. H. C. Crick (1953), Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids. Nature 171: 737 - 738

(4) Have a look: https://www.nature.com/siteindex#journals-N (Accessed: 7 Mar 2024). How many Nature journals cover molecular biology, how many organismic biology?

(5) S. J. Gould and R. C. Lewontin (1979), The spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian paradigm: a critique of the adaptationist programme. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 205: 581 - 597

(6) Of course, there are some good identification apps out there (e.g. Pl@ntNet for plants, Merlin for birds), but they are for hobbyists. Besides, who is going to produce the data required to train the artificial neural networks? 

(7) M. W. Browne (1988), The Debate Over Dinosaur Extinctions Takes an Unusually Rancorous Turn. The New York Times (19 Jan 1988): C1 + C4, 

(8) Currently there are 110 known invasive species in British Columbia alone. See: https://bcinvasives.ca/ (Accessed: 7 Mar 2024).

Higher education: The things we do and fail to do

The original title of my article was "Higher education: The things we do and fail to do". The editors changed it to "Preparing good citizens and workers means treating students as adults", which is lame.

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/blog/preparing-good-citizens-and-workers-means-treating-students-adults 

What to read in the ecological literature

REPLY TO: 23 Jan 2024: https://www.zoology.ubc.ca/~krebs/ecological_rants/on-what-to-read-in-the-ecological-literature/

Three thoughts, but a caveat first. 

"In our times, we would only publish when we felt we had something to say. Today, if you don’t have anything to say, you do that in at least two or three papers." Dennis Chitty said that (1). That was in 1996, when Chitty was 84 years old, and I was 31. I have lived by his standards ever since. 

I never had much to say, and even fewer things that hadn't been said before.  (I remember one time I discovered something interesting about probabilities, and it turned out to be Bayes's theorem (2). About 250 years too late.) Consequently, I never believed that reckless publishing would move society forward. 

And yes, as was pointed out to me frequently: "Publication is the currency of our success." (3)

1: During my grammar school years and undergraduate studies, I wish my teachers had taken the time to expose me to the original books rather than some child's play version of them. Euklid, Newton, Darwin, and Einstein, come to mind.

2: During my Ph.D. years, I rated every book and paper I read. It turned out that about 90% of the books I read were worth my time and 90% of the papers were not. So, I focused on books and classic papers (4). But even here I wish I had had better guidance (5).

3: There is normal science and there are scientific revolutions (6). During periods of normal science, scientists work within a framework of beliefs and accumulate facts that strengthen the framework. Who is challenging the frameworks today?

And of course, there is the story of the newly hired professor at U.B.C. who only reads the abstracts, because reading doesn't get you tenure or grants, writing does.

NOTES AND REFERENCES

(1) D. Chitty (1996), pers. comm.

(2) T. Bayes (1763), An Essay towards solving a Problem in the Doctrine of Chances.

(3) L. M. Ward (2003, 2004, 2005, 2006), pers. comm.

(4) F. Courchamp and C. J. A. Bradshaw (2018), 100 articles every ecologist should read. Nature Ecology and Evolution 2: 395 - 401. This publication lists only six papers that were published after 2000.  

(5) It was years after I completed my Ph.D. in 1998 that I discovered: E.g. T. C. Chamberlin (1890), The Method of Multiple Working Hypotheses; A. Szent-Györgyi (1960), Introduction to a Submolecular Biology; J. R. Platt (1964), Strong Inference. 

(6) T.S. Kuhn (1970), The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Second edition. 

The two ecologies

REPLY TO: 11 May 2023: https://www.zoology.ubc.ca/~krebs/ecological_rants/the-two-ecologies/

[This got a little longer than intended. Forgive me, Charley.]

"A dominant disposition to find out what is, should precede and crowd aside the question, commendable at a later stage, "How came this so?" First full facts, then interpretations." (1)

"It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist the facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts." (2)

All my professional life, I have tried to make sense of how we humans acquire knowledge. The trouble is that we have only limited direct access to observable phenomena and no direct access to the causes that cause the observable phenomena (3). By necessity: Facts first, causes later.

Consequently, reading The Two Ecologies, the two questions came to mind:

1: Is the existence of two varieties of ecology a fact?

I do not know the literature as well as you do, Charley, not by a very, very long shot. (I doubt I know anybody else who could cite a recent philosophical paper published in Portuguese.) But from what I have seen over the last quarter of a century, I agree with you but would go one step further: There are three ecologies: Scientific ecology, natural history ecology, and bleeding hearts ecology.

2: What working hypotheses can explain the emergence of these varieties of ecology and the divergence of character?

Unsurprisingly, this question is trickier, not least because we cannot conduct proper experiments and are left with only the methods of historical science (4). I won’t get into proximate causes and ultimate causes, necessary causes and sufficient causes, et cetera, but I give it a shot.

WORKING HYPOTHESIS #1: From scientific ecology to natural history ecology.

Establishing facts is hard work. (In the boreal forest ecosystem, some mammal species show population cycles.) Establishing causes is A LOT MORE hard work. (What are the causes for the population cycles?)

As Levins and Lewontin wrote in 1985(!): "The harder problems are not tackled, if for no other reason than that brilliant scientific careers are not built on persistent failure." (5)

Or Chitty in 1996: "In our times, we would only publish when we felt we had something to say. Today, if you don’t have anything to say, you do that in at least two or three papers." (6)

Not reading, writing gets you tenure. (And possibly ingratiating yourself to the right people.)

WORKING HYPOTHESIS #2: From scientific ecology to bleeding hearts ecology.

Ecology has a recruitment problem. Who wants to go into ecology? With the exception of my wife, I know nobody outside the subject area who could give me a satisfactory definition of ecology.

If you are good with numbers, you go into math or AI. If you are fascinated with biology, you go into biomedical engineering. Who's left? The bleeding hearts. Climate change, composting and recycling, save the whales.

WORKING HYPOTHESIS #3: The decline of academia.

In the 1990s, universities shifted from being cultural institutions to being big businesses (7). Most of the faculty members today have never experienced any other condition. Every generation suffers from what Daniel Pauly correctly identified as shifting baseline syndrome (8).

"The difficulty is that disproof is a hard doctrine. If you have a hypothesis and I have another hypothesis, evidently one of them must be eliminated. The scientist seems to have no choice but to be either soft-headed or disputatious." (9)

Disputatiousness seems to have disappeared, agreeableness and groupthink are ubiquitous. Not an intellectual foe, a friend you must hire. (He or she may put your name on his or her publications.)

NOTES AND REFERENCES

(1) T. C. Chamberlin (1890), The Method of Multiple Working Hypotheses. Reprinted: Science 148: 754 - 759.

(2) Sherlock Holmes to Dr. Watson in A. C. Doyle (1892), A Scandal in Bohemia.

(3) M. Baumann (in prep.), The Elements of Truth.

(4) S. J. Gould (1989), Wonderful Life.

(5) R. Levins and R. Lewontin (1985), The Dialectical Biologist.

(6) D. Chittty (1996, pers. comm).

(7) F. Furedi (2004), Where have all the intellectuals gone?

(8) D. Pauly (1995), Anecdotes and the shifting baseline syndrome. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 10: 430.

(9) J. R. Platt (1964), Strong Inference. Science 146: 347 - 353

Belief versus Evidence

REPLY TO: 7 Feb 2023: https://www.zoology.ubc.ca/~krebs/ecological_rants/belief-vs-evidence/

If we assume two things …

Assumption 1: Knowing facts increases fitness -- survival and reproduction, "success".

This seems reasonable. Imagine the life expectancy of zebras that believe "There is a tree with a leopard tail." rather than "There is a leopard lurking behind the tree.".

Assumption 2: The function of higher education is two-fold: First, the development of competent citizens. Second, the training of a skilled workforce.

This also seems reasonable. What else are we doing?

Consequently, the distinction between fact and fantasy must be of vital importance in higher education.

It is not. I am somewhat old now, but in the 70 university courses I took in my younger more vulnerable years, not a single one formally dealt with this problem. And from my informal observations I must say that most people are rather confused about the distinction between facts, beliefs, preferences, and opinions.

I teach introductory biology and introductory ecology at an unnamed university. The formal distinction between facts, beliefs, preferences, and opinions is the first thing I teach the students. At the end of the semester, most of them have forgotten already.

On M.B.A. programs

A couple of days ago, I was sitting in the faculty lounge at the place where I work, having my lunch, minding my own business. That's when I overhear the following conversation between two faculty members in the M.B.A. program.

Faculty #1: I just planted a cedar tree in my garden. I hope it will stay alive.

Faculty #2: Do you talk to your tree?

Faculty #1: What do you mean?

Faculty #2: Have you not heard about the famous rice experiment (1)?

Faculty #1: No, what's that?

Faculty #2: A researcher in Japan had three jars tin which he grew rice. He talked very nicely to the first jar. He was neutral to the second. And he frowned at the third.

Faculty #1: What happened?

Faculty #2: The rice in the first jar grew very quickly. The rice in the second jar grew normally. And the rice in the third jar got mouldy.

Faculty #1: Really?

Faculty #2: You see, it's the positive energy from humans that helps the rice grow.

Faculty #1: I certainly will talk to my cedar tree at home. And I will also use the rice experiment to start today's class. You know, if students want to open an agri-business, they should know these things.

For their M.B.A. courses, this university likes to hire "business people with experience".

There was another faculty member in the M.B.A. program who told me that before teaching business ethics, he never even cracked open an ethics book. To be fair, I am not an expert in business ethics. Maybe basic knowledge about philosophy is not required to teach business ethics. After all, the university is charging students $2,000 for courses given by laypeople who read the textbook a week before they did.

NOTES AND REFERENCES

(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masaru_Emoto

Socrates on CoViD

The original title of my article was "Socrates on CoViD". The editors changed it to "The Pandemos".

https://philosophynow.org/issues/151/The_Pandemos

It is really a dialogue on thinking -- I could have picked any hard problem humankind is faced with, from climate change to the Downtown Eastside. Maybe the way to deal with corruption, injustice, and stupidity is this: One clown at a time.

How I am

"How are you?" somebody recently asked me. It is a perfunctory question, of course, and what is expected is a perfunctory answer: "Thank you, I am fine."

But life is more complicated than this, more layered, and so I started thinking about it.

On a personal level, I couldn't be happier -- or luckier, because I am not sure that I deserve what I have got. I have a lovely wife. We are both healthy as far as anyone can know. We own a nice little apartment in a decent neighbourhood. We can afford to travel once a year. We enjoy the same things: A walk in the park, a good discussion, a nice dinner, a good bottle of wine, sex, foreign films, reading. Yes, we are getting older, but that's life. And yes, a warm relationship with my two daughters would be nice, but that's life too.

The career level is next. In my younger and more vulnerable years, I had the privilege of a good education -- although how good it was, I didn't know until much later. An Austrian grammar school, the University of Vienna, the University of British Columbia. I did hope for a faculty position at a research university, but it never came. It was my own fault, really. I am not an agreeable person, and I didn't think that agreeableness was a necessary or even useful characteristic for an academic (1).

I now make a living teaching ecology and evolution to some uninterested students at a fourth-rate university. Why do I love it? Because I spent a lost decade as a mid-level university bureaucrat at a fourth-rate university. The only thing missing in my professional life today is good discussions with smart people. (But maybe the days of the smart people are over.) That and benefits would be nice.

Which brings me to the last level, the human level. The war in Ukraine, starving people in Afghanistan, thug nations, CoViD, climate change, the fall of democracy, continued class privilege, plastic pollution, the effects of social media, the decline of education, real estate speculation -- I am sure I am forgetting a few things.

These problems are infuriating, not because "somebody" should solve them, but because some of them cannot be solved until people change. And we won't change. As Hemingway said in my favourite book (2): "The only thing that could spoil a day was people[.]"

People who insist on being heard but refuse to listen. Absolute democrats who forget that the average person is an idiot. Pseudo democrats for whom democracy means holding power by any means. People who confuse facts and opinions. People who insist on diversity but are offended by any opinion but their own. Antivaxxers who demand a rabies vaccine when bitten by a dog. Pro-lifers who love every embryo unless it turns out to be gay or Muslim. Monster truck drivers whose transportation needs are indistinguishable from those of SmartCar drivers. People who demand government action but start complaining as soon as the government does act. Bullies who cry foul as soon as someone is hitting back. People who drive to the U.S. to buy gas or milk. Tax evaders. People who think that money is more important than principles. 

I know that it is not the goal of humankind to spoil my day. But if it were, humanity would be rather successful at it.

But other than that: Thank you, I am fine. 

NOTES AND REFERENCES

(1) "The difficulty is that disproof is a hard doctrine. If you have a hypothesis and I have another hypothesis, evidently one of them must be eliminated. The scientist seems to have no choice but to be either soft-headed or disputatious." J. R. Platt (1964), Strong Inference. Science 146: 347 - 353.

(2) E. Hemingway (1964), A Moveable Feast.

National Indigenous Peoples Day

21 June is National Indigenous Peoples Day.

As an immigrant to this country, I have always been appalled by the often blatant discrimination and always dumb prejudice against our Indigenous neighbours (1). As an academic, I have always been infuriated by the complicity and the hypocrisy of Canadian universities.

The wilful blindness towards "Truth and Reconciliation", like the Germans running the Nuremberg trials. The traditional land acknowledgements that sound like dishwasher warranties read by Prince Charles. The patronizing adoption of Indigenous rituals. The mindless "Indigenization" workshops with not a single Indigenous person in attendance.

Imagine if we actually did something meaningful to stand up for our Indigenous neighbours.

NOTES AND REFERENCES

(1) https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/video-shows-wrongful-detainment-of-indigenous-man-granddaughter-outside-vancouver-bank (Accessed: 17 Jun 2021)

In defence of government

Start with a particle so small that 100 million of them fit on the head of a pin. Each of these particles can replicate inside the human body, disable you, kill you. Each of them can mutate and become nastier. A lot nastier. 

Add to this an array of professional politicians, administrative bureaucrats, health officers, statisticians, ecological modellers, epidemiologists, vaccination experts, drug regulators, welfare economists, financial experts, experts on trade agreements, on constitutional law, on law enforcement, ... This is your government. All imperfect people, all with imperfect information.

Add their constituents -- children, students, senior citizens, citizens informed, half-informed, misinformed, disinformed, people who fell ill, people who lost family or friends, ... Throw in different interest groups -- ethnic communities, congregations, small business associations, the nurses' union, the teachers' union, First Nations, doctors' associations, ... 

Add actors from areas that are suffering economically -- face-to-face retail, restaurants, the travel industry, tourism, oil and gas, sports, concerts, theatres, ... Add actors from areas that are benefitting -- pharma big and small, e-commerce, streaming services, food delivery, hot-tub installers, ... Be sure to add some actors who are uncertain where they stand -- banks who suddenly see no need for expensive downtown office towers, credit card companies who see an explosion in credit card usage, universities who can operate at lower cost using blended course contents delivery, ... 

Don't forget to add a few anarchists and archconseratives who share in their delusion that the best government is no government, some anti-vaxxers who think that the government is out to get them, some loud pundits trying to make a name for themselves, and a few people who are simply nasty for no particular reason.

Now, consider the demands on the government to fulfil the varied goals of all the different stakeholders. Consider that government actions are always limited. Consider that outcomes are always uncertain. Consider that indicators are often ambiguous. Consider that data are always incomplete and often inconsistent. Consider that no government action occurs in isolation.

Hey presto! The CoViD crisis.

I don't know where people like Dr. Henry and Mr. Horgan find the strength to get out of bed in the morning. But I for one thank them that they do.

(After I had finished my article, my wife and I had a discussion over dinner what it is that you can demand from your government. That they be honest with us and that they give it their best effort towards the public good, not less, not more. In Canada, we sometimes forget how lucky we have been. Think anything Trump, think Brazil, Russia, India, and China, think W.M.D.s in Iraq, think Iran-Contra, think Chernobyl, ...)

The price of your soul

The Faustian bargain. Yes, you can put a monetary value to it. Here is the thought experiment.

1: Think of the evilest person that comes to mind -- Hitler, Stalin, Mao, more contemporary equivalents.

2: Imagine this person approaches you at a meeting. He hands you a suitcase with the words: "Here is a present for you. Money. You can use it for personal purchases -- properties, cars, yachts, ... You cannot use it for charity or for political purposes -- saving children from poverty, supporting democracy, equality, ..."

3: What is the lowest amount of money that you would accept -- any amount, $10, $1,600, $9 million, ...?

4: Hey presto! That is the price of your soul.

Does your soul have a price? Does the price vary over time? If the price is made public, does it change?

On lunatics

Lunatics are gaining legitimacy. And here is my hypothesis.

In the past, if there was 1 lunatic in 1,000 people, lunatics had great difficulty finding each other. Today, thank you very much social media, lunatics can easily form groups.

Lunatics form groups. Groups shout louder. Loudness attracts publicity. Publicity legitimates lunacy.

We cannot control lunacy, or the forming of groups, or the shouting for that matter. The question is: Can we control publicity?

Unfortunately, in the evolution of democratic society, we have reached a stage where ignoring an opinion is considered an undemocratic act. Consequently, we patiently listen to even the most lunatic ideas, ideas that not only lack evidence but that often go against massive evidence to the contrary.

This practice has had dire consequences: The reinforcement of the lunatic's confidence that his conviction represents a legitimate position. The conclusion by the underinformed that facts are fewer and less certain than they in fact are. The folly to take the lunatic's confidence as a measure of the strength of his claims. The abuse of our good will by people with nefarious agendas. The catering of desperate politicians to lunatic superminorities. The adoption of the fear-and-anger business model in the media. The readiness of governments to disinform their own citizens and those of foreign nations. ...

And so, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, 9 - 11 conspiracies, birtherism. And so, holocaust denial, climate change denial, mass shooting denial, CoViD denial. And so, QAnon, the "stolen" 2020 U.S. election, anti-vaccine delusion.

But here is the thing: NOT ALL TRUTH PROPOSITIONS ARE EQUALLY PROBABLE.

And, yes, I am shouting this.

Would we give television time or newspaper space to someone who claims electricity does not work, or antibiotics, or bridges across rivers? To someone who believes water, or food, or gravity are social constructs? (Admittedly, the number of gravity deniers must be small, not because the evidence is literally just a stone's throw away, but because their lives must be so short.)

Yes, I do realize the irony of dedicating a couple of hundred words to lunatics. But let us just stop giving intellectual space to the perpetual re-examination of lunatic ideas. And let us use it to solve actual problems.

Now, about the U.F.O. that landed on my hiking boot ...

Almost nothing you know ...

Almost nothing you know or believe about the world is based on your own experience. Almost everything you know or believe about the world you know on trust.

https://philosophynow.org/issues/142/Elements_of_Truth

On fairy tales

Last weekend my wife and I had a discussion about fairy tales. We came to the conclusion that it would be a strange child indeed that sided with the witch in Hansel and Gretel, or the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood, or Rumpelstiltskin. And yet by the time we reach adulthood, many of us have turned into nasty kings or evil queens, or at least vote for them.

What is it that changes the ethics of a child into the ethics of an adult? Is our education system failing us? Is it all caused by ill-conceived reward structures in our society? Is there something fundamentally wrong with us human beings?

Deconstructing the new workplace

In 2014, Jacob Morgan painted a naive optimism into a pictograph he called THE EVOLUTION OF THE EMPLOYEE. By 2018, university administrators were mindlessly adopting his ideas, acting as if humanity had no choice in its fate and universities had nothing to do with it. Consequently, I amended Morgan's graphic. 

Why am I alerting you to this?

Because CoViD-19 has accelerated changes in the workplace. Many executives have recently figured out that maintaining corporate towers, office buildings, and lecture halls does cut into profits. (Bewildering, I know.) And they have started to move. 

My advice is trite: Be careful what you wish for, be wise what you ask for.

Selection criteria in the labour market

Apart from the quality of your education and the quality of your experience the following categories may apply.

SUBJECT KNOWLEDGE

Terminology

Information

Concepts

Methodology

TRANSFERABLE COGNITIVE SKILLS

Intelligence: Analytical, synthetic, creative (innovation, authenticity), practical (transferability from theory into practice)

Learning ability: Mastery, retention, transferability, potential

Literacy: Reading comprehension, writing ability (clarity, conciseness)

Communication: Listening, questioning, expressing ideas (clarity, conciseness, confidence), presenting

Numeracy: Evaluation comprehension, calculating, modelling

Critical thinking: Curiosity, inquisitiveness, causality, scepticism

Independent judgement: Ethics, work ethics, understanding of hierarchies, sensitivity

Problem solving: Abstraction, resourcefulness

Management skills: Goal setting, forecasting, planning, co-ordination, decision making, resource acquisition, resource control

Technology use

TRANSFERABLE BEHAVIOURAL TRAITS

Ability to work with others: Respect, interpersonal skills, relationship building, collaboration skills, adaptability/flexibility, restraint, civility/courtesy/good manners

Self-reflection

Discipline/Self-control

Determination/Diligence/Grit/Perseverance/Persistence

Integrity: Honesty, reliability, attitude/commitment, sense of responsibility, confidentiality

Reliability: Punctuality, attendance, initiative/motivation,

Resilience

Ability to work alone

Diligence: Quality of work produced, volume of work produced

Confidence: Courage, decision making, seriousness, sense of humour

LEADERSHIP SKILLS

Respect

Sense of justice

Direction/Guidance

Training

Delegation

Motivation of others

Conflict management 

Management skills: Goal setting, forecasting, planning, co-ordination, decision making, resource acquisition, resource control

Technology use

Leadership: Nature red in tooth and claw

I am a zoologist by training, and as such my expertise lies in animal behaviour and system dynamics. I know little about the psychology of leadership, except for a couple of decades of informal observation. That's why two weeks ago I asked this question on LinkedIn:

Given that LinkedIn is so rich in leadership wisdoms -- some good, many trite -- tell me, why is the world so poor in good leaders?

The results are disappointing. In spite of 175 or so views, few tried to answer my question. But then many employees are LinkedIn with their bosses and may therefore be reluctant to attract attention to themselves (1).

In any case, I myself must give the question a shot.

PROPOSITION #1: I AM WRONG.

This is the null hypothesis, if you will, and it is always a possibility: There is nothing interesting going on, the world is in fact not poor but rich in good leaders. And it is just I who wouldn't recognize good leadership if it hit me in the face.

But why then would the world be so rich in leadership advice (2)? If good leadership is a ubiquitous phenomenon, why are people spending time writing books, developing courses, or designing websites about it. We usually don't spend intellectual effort on things that are trivial (3).

That said, one human's dream is another human's nightmare.

PROPOSITION #2: BAD LEADERS DON'T LEARN.

I have yet to meet the bad leader who doesn't think she/he is a good leader. And if you think you are a good at something, you wouldn't pick up a book or take a course to teach you the basics. There are two forces at play, both revealed in a study by Kruger and Dunning in 1999 (4).

First: "[T]hose with limited knowledge in a domain suffer a dual burden: Not only do they reach mistaken conclusions and make regrettable errors, but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it."

Second: "[O]ne would have thought negative feedback would have been inevitable at some point in their academic career. So why had they not learned? One reason is that people seldom receive negative feedback about their skills and abilities from others in everyday life[.]"

Promotion may lead to the delusion of infallibility. True information rarely makes it up the chain of command. How many people do you know who told their bosses that they are morons, or monsters, or marionettes?

PROPOSITION #3: GOOD LEADERSHIP IS HARD.

What is good leadership, anyway? My incomplete list is this, but make your own: 

A good leader is competent and diligent in work and judgement.

A good leader is confident, self-reflective, and humble.

A good leader is honest and transparent.

A good leader is open to criticism and ideas.

A good leader is aware what is going on in the organization.

A good leader gives credit and takes blame.

A good leader is kind, and tough, and fair, and can laugh about herself/himself.

A good leader builds workplaces "where standards are high and fear is low" (5).

A good leader knows her/his subordinates and protects them when necessary.

...

Nobody is perfect, and that is all right. It takes talent, and education, and experience to get better at leadership. None of this matters, however, if your behaviour is not genuine.

And one thing is certain: If your natural inclination is to be selfish or lazy, to lie and to hide things, to be nasty or disinterested, leadership is not for you.

PROPOSITION #4: LEADERSHIP -- NATURE RED IN TOOTH AND CLAW

The question is this: How do so many bad leaders reach and maintain their positions?

This is a problem of natural selection, or rather unnatural selection: The character traits that cause people to move up the hierarchy may be very different from the character traits that make people good leaders (6).

I will leave it to you to explore which character traits and professional skills lead to promotion at your organization -- competence/sycophancy, humility/arrogance, honesty/pretence/scheming, realism/unbridled optimism, et cetera.

It may be argued that it is half a miracle that a few good people make it to the top. Not necessarily. Good leaders will hire good people and sack bad ones. Bad leaders will hire bad people and lose good ones (7). Consequently, we should expect to see in nature two extremes, meritocracies and kakistocracies.

Does that mean that we may be condemned to suffer bad leaders (8). I am not sure. Whether they like it or not, leaders usually feel obliged to agree that leaders should be held to the highest standards.

Let's start holding our leaders to the highest standards. Accountability should scare at least the worst people.

NOTES AND REFERENCES

(1) I believe it is fair to say that in the history of humankind people were usually shot for the questions they asked, not for the answers they gave. Still, silence is golden.

(2) As of 17 Jan 2019, amazon.com lists over 60,000 books for "leadership", there are an unbelievable 23,853 groups on LinkedIn that contain the word "leadership", and a Google search on "good leadership" returned "About 4,560,000 results".

(3) One should never underestimate the capacity of universities to develop programs in about anything. As Robert A. Heinlein has his protagonist say in his 1961 novel: "But when they began handing out doctorates in comparative folk dancing and advanced flyfishing, I became too stinkin' proud to use the title. I won't touch watered whiskey and take no pride in watered down degrees." 1961, Ladies and Gentlemen, 1961.

(4) J. Kruger and D. Dunning (1999), Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 77(6): 1121 - 1134.

(5) "Ethical leadership … is about building workplaces where standards are high and fear is low." J. Comey (2018), A Higher Loyalty: xi.

(6) "But what we need is that the only men to get power should be men who do not love it[.]" Plato (ca. 375 B.C.E.), The Republic: The Simile of the Cave: 521b.

(7) It is the privilege of leaders to hire their subordinates. But we can also imagine a world where the workforce elects their leader. In fact, that is what we are doing in representative democracies.

(8) Is it better to have a bad leader or none at all? With the emergence of new hierarchies where everybody is a leader and few do the actual work, something to think about.

 

When 2 + 2 = 5

Imagine you have to score student performance in a Grade 10 algebra test (1). Looking at one student's step-by-step calculations you discover that at one step she calculated that 2 + 2 = 5. Obviously, for a Grade 10 student this is a very basic arithmetic mistake.

Now, because this is a very basic mistake, would you dock more or fewer points for it than for an advanced mistake? Why? Why not? Would you dock more points if the algebra problem were framed in terms of serious consequences (2)? Would you dock "a good student" the same number of points as you would "a bad student"? Would you dock a female student the same number as a male student, a white student the same number as a black student?

How about a mediocre male student who protests every self-perceived act of injustice inflicted upon him? Would you deduct the same number of points from his test as from a mediocre meek female?

Making performance judgements on math problems is relatively easy (3). Consider judgements on more important things. All other things being equal: In an election, do you interpret dishonesty or stupidity in "your candidate" with the same gravity as you do for a rival candidate? In a job competition, do you judge experiences and accomplishments of a local candidate with the same rigour as those of an outside candidate. In court, do call for the same sentence for an offender born in Switzerland as you do for an offender born in Nigeria?

It is hard work to develop and stick by good rules of judgement. And it is easy to dress up prejudice in a mantle of objectivity (4).

My favourite example comes from an Israeli parole board where cases were randomly assigned to judges, and yet the proportion of decisions in favour of the prisoners declined in the course of the sessions and reached a minimum just before the scheduled breaks (5).

Of course, the first step towards improved judgement is a correct judgement of our judgement apparatus. Unfortunately, we aren't good at that either. Consequently, as a family member, as a good friend, as a professional, as a citizen, what are your obligations to alert someone to their faulty judgement?

NOTES AND REFERENCES

(1) For example: Solve the following equation for x: -2 * (x + 2) + 2 * (-x + 2) + 2 * (2 + 2) = 0

(2) Say: "Determine the amount x (in millilitres) of midazolam that can be safely administered in preoperative sedation." "Calculate the number of battalions required to secure the border."

(3) Given these axioms and these rules and these particulars, these results must follow.

(4) "My decision sexist? Oh god, far from it. His publication record just wasn't as impressive." "My decision racist? It couldn't be further from the truth. She just wasn't a good team-fit." "My decision age-ist? Oh my god, never. His coding skills just weren't up to par."

(5) Danzinger et al. (2011), Extraneous factors in judicial decisions: www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1018033108 (Accessed: 5 Jul 2018)

How complacency is failing Canadian university students

The original title of my article was "How complacency is failing Canadian university students ". The editors changed it to "We need to seriously rethink the concept of final exams", which misses the point.

http://www.universityaffairs.ca/opinion/in-my-opinion/need-seriously-rethink-concept-final-exams/  

The fish that were there (but didn't exist)

In 2001 and 2002 I was a postdoctoral fellow with AquaNet, one of the Networks of Centres of Excellence. AquaNet sponsored "39 research projects devoted to improving the country's aquaculture industry" (1). It's Board of Directors consisted of partners from academia, government, and industry.

For us at the University of British Columbia the question was this: When Atlantic salmon escape from B.C. fish farms, what are the chances that they establish viable populations on the Pacific coast? This question can be broken down into chances of breeding success, of juvenile survival, and of adult survival. I explored the question whether juvenile Pacific salmon and juvenile Atlantic salmon show different susceptibilities to predators.

For my experiments, I had to simulate a small creek in the laboratory. I set up three experimental arenas, large oval channels filled with water about 60 cm deep, pebbles and rocks of various sizes on the bottom. In April, I stocked each tank with 20 juvenile Pacific salmon and 20 juvenile Atlantic salmon, all about 30 mm long. I also stocked two of the tanks with two predators each, two adult steelhead trout of about 50 cm.

Twice a week I went into the lab, fished out all the juveniles from the experimental arenas, measured their length, weighed them, put them back, and restocked those juveniles that had been eaten by the steelheads, or gone missing otherwise.

The experiments did not go well. Yes, steelheads ate juvenile Atlantics slightly more frequently than Pacifics, but they didn't eat them frequently enough to infer a statistically significant difference (2).

In early July I abandoned the experiments. I left the experimental arenas intact, however, and informed the laboratory staff to feel free and help themselves to the steelheads for their summer barbeques.

When I returned in early October (3) to clear the arenas I was surprised to see that in one arena eleven juvenile salmon had survived and grown in length to about 12 to 14 cm. Nine of them were Pacifics, two were Atlantics.

That's when it struck me.

I immediately made my way to the principal investigator. He also directed experiments investigating spawning ground competition and food competition. The Pacifics had always won against the Atlantics.

"We have looked at the problem the wrong way," I said. "The issue is not how well the average Atlantic performs against the average Pacific, but how well the fittest Atlantics perform against the unfittest surviving Pacifics. The problem of invasive species is not an ecological problem. It is an evolutionary one."

The principal investigator looked at me for a while and then leaned forward at his desk.

"Michael," he said without menace. "We will have an AquaNet progress meeting before Christmas. Some of the directors will be there. What you have to understand is that nobody in AquaNet wants to hear any ideas that could shed a bad light on the aquaculture industry (4). Do you understand?"

I didn't.

You see, the purpose of Science is the pursuit of truth, not to serve political expediency. Yes, there are philosophical problems. Yes, we do have battles between schools of thought. Yes, causation is difficult to prove, and truth is always only provisional. But if you can't trust a scientist, who can you trust?

I went back to the lab that afternoon to dispose of the evidence. I sat down for a while and watched the two Atlantics swim around the pool. The denial of their existence had made me oddly fond of them.

I killed them with a bleeding heart. 

NOTES AND REFERENCES

(1) AquaNet ran from 1999 to 2006. It is interesting that although at the time AquaNet was quite a prestigious project, some fifteen years later it is hard to find any detailed information about it: http://www.nce-rce.gc.ca/Index_eng.asp (Accessed: 30 Mar 2017), http://www.nce-rce.gc.ca/_docs/reports/annual-annuel/Annual_Report_02-03_Rapport_Annuel-e.pdf (Accessed: 30 Mar 2017)

(2) Each adult steelhead trout ate one or two juvenile salmon per week. Before we decided on steelheads as a predator, we conducted preliminary experiments with cormorants. They were too efficient. It took four of them less than ten seconds to clear twenty juvenile Pacifics from a large holding tank.

(3) After the 9/11 attacks the cleaning of fish tanks was not a priority.

(4) To my knowledge there is no evidence that suggests the establishment of a viable Atlantic salmon population on the Pacific coast. But that does not mean that one day life will not find a way.

UPDATE, 6 APR 2017

In the meantime I have spoken to John Volpe from the University of Victoria(1). John is a specialist in Invasion Ecology. He and I first met during my time with AquaNet.

John told me that about a decade ago he had evidence "of multiple year classes of wild-reared Atlantics in multiple Van Island rivers. They were competitively equal to or superior to native juvenile salmonids and in some instances very numerous. Adults were prevalent in dozens of rivers."

He also told me that no work has been done since, and nobody really knows what the status quo is.

On the other hand a 2006 Fraser Institute publication, Fraser Alert, states: "Overall, the risk of escaped salmon detrimentally affecting wild stocks in BC is currently low." (2)

The question is this: Who do you trust? (3)

NOTES AND REFERENCES

(1) http://www.johnvolpe.ca/ (Accessed: 6 Apr 2017)

(2) https://www.fraserinstitute.org/sites/default/files/Escaped_Farmed_Salmon.pdf (Accessed: 6 Apr 2017). The Fraser Institute is a conservative "think tank". Fraser Alert is not a peer-reviewed publication. This paper was penned by a group of scientists from the University of British Columbia, the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research, and the University of Glasgow. One of the authors, Scott McKinley, was the Executive Scientific Director of AquaNet.

(3) The existence of viable Atlantic salmon populations on the Pacific coast is not a trivial matter, both ecologically and economically. It is curious that in a whole decade no work should have been done on this problem. Why would that be?

Why I write

Someone recently asked me why I write. It is a good question (1). 

In 1946 George Orwell wrote a short essay to answer it (2). He proposed "four great motives for writing" that exist in every writer -- sheer egoism, aesthetic enthusiasm, historical impulse, and political purpose. 

Where do I stand?

I am an only child and an introvert by nature and by nurture (3). Given a choice between being with people and being alone (with my lovely wife), I can think of no situation where I would choose people. Consequently, I have little need for external recognition, and that is what Orwell's "sheer egoism" really is (4). I also have no desire to tell other people what to think, to push a "political purpose".

Aesthetics, on the other hand, is important to me. Not necessarily phonetic aesthetics, but the aesthetics of a good story or a good argument (5). There is beauty in having formulated a thought in clear and concise language. An expression with no uncertain meaning, a sentence with no unnecessary words, a paragraph with no unnecessary sentences (6). 

I believe my strongest Orwellian motive by far is "historical impulse": I write to make sense of reality. I write to clarify my own thoughts to myself. I write to examine my own personality (7). But to be sure: Although writing brings me great joy, good writing is hard work, and even the most disciplined amongst us often fail (8). 

But if I am writing for myself, why do I publish?

Publishing, especially publishing with no editor and no peer review, enforces the discipline to be concise and to finish a thought. It also enforces intellectual rigour with no shortcuts in the argument. Moreover, because I mostly write on weekends and always post on Thursdays, publishing enforces a certain patience, which I have come to enjoy.  

My readers tell me that they like what they read. They say it makes them think. As an intellectual this pleases me, for I do want to make people think -- think before they speak, think before they act, think before they vote. 

Maybe, after all, I am not writing solely for myself. Maybe the absence of political purpose is a political purpose in itself.

NOTES AND REFERENCES

(1) I was a terrible writer until I was twenty, and a bad writer until I was forty. My school-day writings shall only be remembered by this abomination: "And they couldn't find his damned legs." I stole it from First Blood. The movie, not the book. My late apologies to Dr. Brunhilde Ulamec, my Grade 12 German teacher. 

(2) G. Orwell (1946), Why I write: http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300011h.html#part47 (Accessed: 27 Apr 2017)

(3) In a society that lacks civility as ours does, introversion is a form of retreat.

(4) Compare the pitiful number of clicks even my most popular writings receive to the number thumbs-ups of even the tritest piece from LinkedIn-fluencers. If ostentation is my goal, I have failed miserably. 

(5) The boldest first sentence I ever read in a novel comes from Anthony Burgess (1980), Earthly Powers: "It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me." The finest logical argument I ever read comes from Ludwig Wittgenstein (1922), Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (http://www.kfs.org/jonathan/witt/ten.html (Accessed: 27 Apr 2017)): Proposition "5.6 The limits of my language mean the limits of my world." 

(6) W. Shrunk Jr. and E. B. White (1979), The Elements of Style (Fourth Edition): Rule 17. Omit needless words.

(7) Socrates's words in Plato (ca. 399 B.C.E.), Apology: "[T]he unexamined life is not worth living."

(8) To paraphrase B. Pascal (1656): "I wrote you a long letter, because I didn't have time to write a short one." If I am writing a 500-word piece, and it doesn't take me at least two whole days, I am not working hard. 

The fish that weren't there

When my daughter Phoebe was in Grade 3 or 4, her class collaborated with a Grade 7 class in a project called Salmonids in the Classroom (1). The project was (and still is) supported by Fisheries and Oceans Canada, and the idea behind it is that raising salmon in the classroom will teach students a little bit about science, among other things.

Every school day a few Grade 3ers would walk over to the Grade 7ers and take a few scientific observations. And since I was working in Fisheries Oceanography at the time, one day I asked whether I could accompany Phoebe and her three classmates. 

So we walked over, each of them carrying a sheet with instructions. First, they had to measure the water temperature and write it down, which they all did. Then, they had to determine the pH of the water. Of course, none of the Grade 3ers, or the Grade 7ers for that matter, knew what a pH was, but they had learned how to use pH test strips for litmus testing and how to compare them to the colour chart, and they did it well.

Then they sat down in front of the fish tank and continued their assignment, which was this: In the space below, draw what you see. So, the three girls and one boy began to draw the little fish, which were supposed to be in the fry stage.

The problem was that there was not a single fish in the tank (2). 

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"We are drawing fish," Phoebe answered without even looking up.

"But you are supposed to draw what you see." 

"We know."

"But there are no fish in the tank."

"Believe me," Phoebe said. "We are supposed to draw little fish, and that's what we are doing."

"Aren't we supposed to draw fish?" the boy asked me.

"No," I said. "You are supposed to draw what you see."

After ten minutes the three girls (3) had finished drawing little fishes, and we returned to the Grade 3 classroom. All four of them handed their assignments to the teacher, and that was it.

Except that a few minutes later the boy was called to the teacher and was publicly reprimanded for having failed to complete the assignment. He didn't argue. He just stood there nodding in agreement to the admonition.

I walked over to the teacher and explained that there were no fish in the tank, and consequently all that they should have drawn was an empty fish tank.

A few questions came to my mind: Why did the girls draw fish that weren't there? Why didn't they listen to me? Why did the boy believe me? Why did the teacher jump to conclusions? Why didn't the boy defend himself? Why didn't the girls defend the boy? Why didn't the teacher reprimand the girls who had failed to complete the task correctly?

But there looms a larger questions: How often do you and I draw fish that aren't there?

NOTES AND REFERENCES

(1) http://www.salmonidsintheclassroom.ca/index.html (Accessed: 23 Mar 2017)

(2) Later I learned that the fish had been released two days earlier and nobody had bothered to inform Phoebe's class.

(3) When I wrote this, I realized how much I resent the fact that it was the boy who was disobedient and not one of the girls. 

Budget Day or The Tale of the Villagers and the Pie

Every year on her birthday, the queen would send a royal pie to every village in the country. It wasn't a big pie. It wasn't a fancy pie. And it didn't even look royal. 

Every year the villagers would gather on the village green, and every year the mayor cut the royal pie so that everyone could enjoy their fair piece.

And so she proceeded to hand a piece to the baker.

"Hold on," said the baker. "That's a rather small piece. I am the baker. I bake bread for the village. And without bread the villagers would all starve. I deserve a bigger piece of pie."

"You're right," said the mayor. And she proceeded to hand the piece to the cobbler.

"Hold on," said the cobbler. "That's a rather small piece. I am the cobbler. I make the shoes for the village. And without shoes the villagers could not go about their business. I deserve a bigger piece of pie."

"You're right," said the mayor again. And she proceeded to hand the piece to the doctor.

"Hold on," said the doctor. "That's a rather small piece. I am the doctor. I take care of the sick in the village. And without my care the sick would die. I deserve a bigger piece of pie."

And on and on it went. The butcher, the grocer, the blacksmith, the farmer, the teacher, the barber, the soldier, the tailor, the lawyer, the sailor, the banker, the builder, nobody wanted to take the piece.

"That's enough!" cried the mayor. "Everybody wants a bigger piece of the pie. But if any one of you gets a bigger piece that means that somebody else must get a smaller one."

"Mayor!!" the villagers cried in unison. "You should have gotten us a bigger pie. And since you didn't do your job, you should get the smaller piece."

"Hold on," interrupted the bookkeeper. "We had the same situation last year."

"Aha!!" the villagers cried again in unison. "And then what did we do?"

The bookkeeper studied his notes and said: "The philosopher told us that we are all selfish, and that the mayor's job is to distribute the pie fairly amongst the villagers, just as it is the queen's job is to distribute the pies fairly amongst the mayors."

"It all doesn't look fair to me!!" cried the villagers a third time in unison. "Let's ask the philosopher again."

"The philosopher?" said the mayor. "We cut his piece of pie last year. He doesn't live here anymore."  

Why education has lost its mind

The original title of my article was "Why education has lost its mind (and soul)". The editors changed it to "What education is (or should be) all about", which is excruciating.

https://www.pressreader.com/canada/vancouver-sun/20070913/281797099614906