: Punishment and Reform @ the Royal Society

1. It's surprising he's not so distant from the public, I was less than 3m away from him.
2. His speech was so well prewritten so tighly spindoctor controlled
3. I didn't ask a question, but I should have : Surely 150 years ago John Howard proved punishment doesn't work cos bad people don't think in the same way as good people : Just Forget Punishment Yes we need to reform to protect society, but surely a lot of resources are wasted on punishment ? after all it only appeals to retribution if we could reform with punishment that would be a great thing.. if you can teach a cat not to steal the milk it's better than just punishing it ... I know he wouldn't answer this anyway as such "soft" thinking is not popular with the public ?
- Secondly - In 100 years time will the justice system be fundamentally the same : trial by jury, adverserial system etc ?
- I think there is a scope for philosophy of law and move on to a much more efficient stage in the same way that the present system is better than "trial by ordeal" ..something better than12 jury men, something better than innocent to proven guilty something other than the hard line guilty or not guilty.

- One thing he did mention is : some magistrates supervising a sentence - and with a varying sentence : surely changing a sentence after sentencing isn't that against fundamentals ?

- Another multitasking experiment number memory task and color word game

- Lunchtime Lecture at Gresham's College : Protecting London - What lessons were learnt, and how do they show themselves in today's modern London? - better than expected : fire prevention before was useless, Fire insurance companies started, thatch was forbidden and eventually the reality meant auniversal service was needed.

- Royal Institution Museum .. not finished could be much better. The lecture theatre is very steep and impressive.

- Monday : Went to the Comedy club in Stratford. The comics weren't great, but they were better than most recent comics at least they had some jokes .. but the audience had an attitude problem.

- Tue : Lecture : Darwin, Microbes and the Increasing Incidence of Chronic Inflammatory Diseases Professor Graham Rook (UCL Centre for Infectious Diseases & International Health) www.ucl.ac.uk/lhl

- humankind has moved rapidly from the hunter-gatherer environment to the living conditions of the rich industrialised countries. The resulting reduced exposure to certain micro-organisms has led to disordered regulation of the immune system, and contributes to rises in inflammatory diseases including cancers. This concept is an important aspect of darwinian medicine, which uses knowledge of evolution to cast light on human diseases and point to the potential exploitation of these organisms in novel treatments.

- Our body are mostly bacteria - so it's important not to react against them. Most are old friends : "helmiths" - if we do react against them we get elephantitis etc.

- Do you know why people get inflammation dieases like MS and even some cancers.. ?
- often it's the bodies T cells trying to fight infection and damaging the body in the process.
- The body has evolved to live in balance with natural bacteria,. The presence of these bacteria has a calming effect on the inflammation system but cos we don't get much contact with mud and ..body worms these days we don't get exposure to the bacteria.
- He was quick to stress the lifestyle changes he was talking about was not just recent but tens of thousands of years ago when people stopped drinking dirty water.
- So the dog drinking dirty water, being natural actually keeps it healthy !

- They can tell from human genes for how long these viruses and bacteria have effected humans... it's hundreds of thousands of years .. yet for domestic animals it much less... so this means that the theory domestic animals gave us diseases is wrong ..it's the other way around they caught our diseases ... cow TB actually comes from human TB etc

Milolyn Mv : Can we treat inflamations with old infections e.g. from Worms .. this may stop MS ? e.g. We can use a pig whipworm cos they don't hurt humans (won't be popular with halal, what about halal for diabetes etc )

- SUMMARY - We use some of genes or bacteria in our immune system. The presence of old friends regulates our T cell activity - so reduce inflammation. Without their presence of T-reg old friends we get - MS, Cancer, Depression
- Major changes in lifestyle - less mud, worms part of our evolution don't forget other factors like diet, exercise antibioics.

- The British library seems to have loads of resources to help small businesses : - I went to a workshop on Web 2.0 it was a bit crap .
- Why did they call it a workshop when it was just a crowded lecture promoting her course ?

- They had free wine : surely a waste of taxpayers money
- Same old stuff about the internet business all the hype without the realism "oh you could promote your business almost for free with blogs and podcasts" .. no mention of the commitment to keep writing the stuff if you stop then your business will.
... no mention of the security and copyright problems or the disinformation and fake blogs, that are popping up everywhere.

- She even tried to fit in that evil site Hostelbookers.com as a good example as web 2.0 failing to understand it’s evil business model: it pirates the hostels website and tries to insert itself between the customer and hostel charging the customer a commission which it then pockets whereas if the customer booked direct they would pay no commission i.e. their business model is bad for the tourists and hostel owner. The only extra service it gives is the reviews, but these are full of fake bad and good reviews.

- I was at the folk club last night at Cecil Sharp House. It's all singers and the audience 25 people usually sing the chorus, but the songs last night were rather weak. Incredibly there was a free bar as someone had a birthday and paid the whole bill for the 25 of us ! Then when I came out there was snow on the ground !

- My opinions : We live in a world of disinformation largely cos people have an agenda.

- In this case the guys have a book to sell, reseach grant to maintain and careers to advance.

- So first of all they fundamentally wrapped up the subject in this disinformation by "bigging up" paranoia
- 1. Paranoia has a clinical definition, but they chose to broaden it to include Paranoia2 (some completely irrational fears) and Paranoia3 (general feelings of mistrust)
- 2. They seemed to imply that of course "paranoia is on the increase", yet when questioned admitted that since no historical data had been collected in the past.
- 3. even in their talk in demonstrating that generally we overguess the murder rate they gave one figure ....only to give another figure 3 times higher a few minutes later. For God's sake if they can give such confusing figures is there any wonder the public are confused when they get their perspective from the less rigorous figures in the media.
- 4. He was unable to resist unsubstantiated hype "In US states where mistrust is highest the death rates are highest" ... so what ? .. that doesn't establish any cause and effect.
..... Mind you of course I did the same thing in writing the above title.

- Strip away all this padding and what it boils down to is - Their hypothesis was that as well as clinical paranoia there exists a level of Paranoia2 in the public. In their experiment 10-20% of people made plot type allegations against virtual reality characters. i.e. 10-20% of people are worried about threats that definitely don't exist.
How big a problem is that ? .. ..presumably if their fears could be removed
- 1. they would be happier
- 2. they would be freer in life choices.
- 3. There might be a smaller number of people commiting suicide or self harm.

- So intervention whether it be drugs, therapy or education would help these 10-20%, but it's hardly a cure for cancer .. is it ?

- is not religion itself a paranoia ? are people who grow up in a religious culture more paranoid ?
- Today we try to be logical, but surely ancient man and many indigenous people are afraid of the gods, ancestors, Sun God etc. So does paranoia have some evolutionary benefit ?

- "perhaps Over-reporting of dangers fosters a culture of paranoia" : What about policing all this disinformation in the media or internet ? Well this is impossible, so all we can do is try to set an example by resisting the temptation to put forward disinformation ourselves. ...i.e. avoid the culture of hype ... I told you a million times don't exaggerate !

- I thought their example demonstration of "data illusion" was brilliant : he read a list of names and then asked us to estimate the number of men to women. One thinks there are many more men, but it turns out they have used the names of famous men and non-famous women so in fact the proportion is equal. I "Mr Super-logical" was completely caught out, but I guess in real life we base our decisions on many iterations and experiences balance them out instead of relying on one occasion in the same way we deal with the odd optical illusion.

A Big disappointment - The exhibition at the British Library was supposed to be about the evolution of human rights in Britain. It looked like someone had given a million quid to a bunch of art students. It was full of arty and fancy gimmicks when they should have kept it simple. They had no perspective about how far we have come from the terror of religion, wifebeating, child labour, real injustice for the poor .. instead the planners used a lot of space to whinge about relatively minor issues of today, like CCTV or the right of the police to search kids for knives etc.

- They had no perspective on how much better it is much better in the UK than 90% of countries with their rampant oppression of women, police beatings and police corruption, control of media and rough arbitary justice look like our 42 day detention limit of exceptional terrorist suspects look like a speck on a football field.

- One gimmick was to insist punters wear a bar-coded wrist band and have various voting machines scattered through the exhibition space. The problem was that the 4 voting options they gave each time were completely loaded as if set by a rabid left winger. They should have made an attempt at balance the exhibit is afterall in a public building not an anarchists collective. Get that ? the government is so fucking oppressive it finances the exhibition and puts on the opening concert.

- One would hope that kids would come out of the exhibition with an understanding of what human rights are instead no doubt they come out that they are one of the most oppressed nations on earth and the most oppressed generation in history and that the government is out to get them.

- BTW going in was also a farce- normally you walk in to the British Library and have your bags checked which takes 20s. Bizarrely they had the people who had bought tickets line up outside in the rain whereas people who had no tickets were directed inside to buy them. The queuing was extremely slow, and the security guards confiscated people's water, which is strange as normally you can take water in .. it's not as if there were any politicians there at risk of assassination.

- The concert: A night of songs of freedom and rights. Although the line up composed top folk people I expected to enjoy for various reasons none of them lived up to promise. The acoustics were dire .. Cos they used the cavernous lobby it was like being in a railway station with the staion announcement system being used as a PA. Close by it was too loud, elsewhere the sound echoed off the hard walls and floors most people had left way before the end.

- One could say the organisers are taking liberties with perspective and the taxpayers money. The book is much better so maybe they started with the book and tried to turn it into an exhibition that's why it comes out as confusing ?

BTW The Wellcome Collection is another example of a museum fucked up by arts students. - it's not worth going to, but they organise lots of free activities like guided walks etc and they seem good.

- good book about fallacy in arguments The Duck That Won the lottery Julian Baggini

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