VR7. Author Questions – Homework

One of the most popular, enduring, and irritating myths about depression is that it means depressed people are sad all the time – and that by extension, people who are happy can’t be experiencing depression, even if they say they are. It is a skewed and horrible version of depression, and it’s one that further stigmatises the condition and isolates people with depression and related mental health conditions. This is because, put bluntly, depression doesn’t make you sad all the time – though the level of sadness a patient experiences can of course vary depending on the individual and the severity of depression.

When I’m having a depressive episode, I’m not walking around in tattered black clothes, weeping and wailing. I keep working and have friendly chats with the people I work with. Above all, I experience moments of happiness: a flash of delight as I’m walking on the beach with a friend and the sun is perfect and the breeze is just right; a warm, friendly, affectionate sensation at the touch of a friend, a hug at the end of an evening or a hand placed over mine as we lean forward to see something better.

Depression manifests differently in everyone and at different times. Various behaviours are not proof positive that someone is or isn’t depressed, and, as with any armchair diagnosis, insisting that someone is not actually depressed just because of a show of something other than deep, entrenched sadness is actively harmful.

(Adapted from The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/03/depression-doesnt-make-you-sad-all-the-time)

One of the most popular, enduring, and irritating myths about depression is that it means depressed people are sad all the time – and that by extension, people who are happy can’t be experiencing depression, even if they say they are. It is a skewed and horrible version of depression, and it’s one that further stigmatises the condition and isolates people with depression and related mental health conditions. This is because, put bluntly, depression doesn’t make you sad all the time – though the level of sadness a patient experiences can of course vary depending on the individual and the severity of depression.

When I’m having a depressive episode, I’m not walking around in tattered black clothes, weeping and wailing. I keep working and have friendly chats with the people I work with. Above all, I experience moments of happiness: a flash of delight as I’m walking on the beach with a friend and the sun is perfect and the breeze is just right; a warm, friendly, affectionate sensation at the touch of a friend, a hug at the end of an evening or a hand placed over mine as we lean forward to see something better.

Depression manifests differently in everyone and at different times. Various behaviours are not proof positive that someone is or isn’t depressed, and, as with any armchair diagnosis, insisting that someone is not actually depressed just because of a show of something other than deep, entrenched sadness is actively harmful.

(Adapted from The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/03/depression-doesnt-make-you-sad-all-the-time)

Whenever intellectuals gather round to discuss the causes of African underdevelopment, very rarely does anyone point a finger at the division and disunity caused by indigenous languages. Most African intellectuals are careful to avoid engaging the issue, so as not to be labelled as having what the legendary Fela Kuti called ‘Colonial Mentality’. This is quite unfortunate as the singular goal of intellectual discussion should be the pursuit of truth, even if unpalatable.

The reality of the matter is if we look honestly at the facts: based on current and historic data, there is virtually no evidence in support of the idea that a country can create and sustain economic prosperity while equally maintaining the same level of linguistic diversity which is currently observable in most African countries — there is strong evidence to the contrary. This is not to say that having less languages in a country automatically translates into economic prosperity — the picture is obviously a lot more complicated than that. However, it is to say that there is such a strong correlation between linguistic homogeneity and economic prosperity.

I have great sympathy for those whose approach to the problem of division is to advocate for the breaking up of African states into smaller nations. However valid as this suggestion may be in theory, it is undesirable and largely unworkable in practice. The millions of lives lost during the Biafran war in Nigeria have taught us that separation is not necessarily the easier option. Instead, we should direct our efforts towards nation-building. We should not see the breaking away of tribal barriers as a loss of identity, but as the creation of a new identity.

(Adapted from International Policy Digest, https://intpolicydigest.org/2018/06/06/indigenous-african-languages-are-dying-out-and-it-s-a-good-thing/)

Whenever intellectuals gather round to discuss the causes of African underdevelopment, very rarely does anyone point a finger at the division and disunity caused by indigenous languages. Most African intellectuals are careful to avoid engaging the issue, so as not to be labelled as having what the legendary Fela Kuti called ‘Colonial Mentality’. This is quite unfortunate as the singular goal of intellectual discussion should be the pursuit of truth, even if unpalatable.

The reality of the matter is if we look honestly at the facts: based on current and historic data, there is virtually no evidence in support of the idea that a country can create and sustain economic prosperity while equally maintaining the same level of linguistic diversity which is currently observable in most African countries — there is strong evidence to the contrary. This is not to say that having less languages in a country automatically translates into economic prosperity — the picture is obviously a lot more complicated than that. However, it is to say that there is such a strong correlation between linguistic homogeneity and economic prosperity.

I have great sympathy for those whose approach to the problem of division is to advocate for the breaking up of African states into smaller nations. However valid as this suggestion may be in theory, it is undesirable and largely unworkable in practice. The millions of lives lost during the Biafran war in Nigeria have taught us that separation is not necessarily the easier option. Instead, we should direct our efforts towards nation-building. We should not see the breaking away of tribal barriers as a loss of identity, but as the creation of a new identity.

(Adapted from International Policy Digest, https://intpolicydigest.org/2018/06/06/indigenous-african-languages-are-dying-out-and-it-s-a-good-thing/)

In 2001, nearly two decades into Pereira’s accidental specialisation in addiction, Portugal became the first country to decriminalise the possession and consumption of all illicit substances. Rather than being arrested, those caught with a personal supply might be given a warning, a small fine, or told to appear before a local commission – a doctor, a lawyer and a social worker – about treatment, harm reduction, and the support services that were available to them.

The opioid crisis soon stabilised, and the ensuing years saw dramatic drops in problematic drug use, HIV and hepatitis infection rates, overdose deaths, drug-related crime and incarceration rates. HIV infection plummeted from an all-time high in 2000 of 104.2 new cases per million to 4.2 cases per million in 2015. The data behind these changes has been studied and cited as evidence by harm-reduction movements around the globe. It’s misleading, however, to credit these positive results entirely to a change in law.

Portugal’s remarkable recovery, and the fact that it has held steady through several changes in government – including conservative leaders who would have preferred to return to the US-style war on drugs – could not have happened without an enormous cultural shift, and a change in how the country viewed drugs, addiction – and itself. In many ways, the law was merely a reflection of transformations that were already happening in clinics, in pharmacies and around kitchen tables across the country. Most importantly, an official policy of decriminalisation made it far easier for a broad range of services (health, psychiatry, employment, housing etc) that had been struggling to pool their resources and expertise, to work together more effectively to serve their communities.

Computer science is wondrous. The problem is that many people in Silicon Valley believe that it is all that matters. You see this when recruiters at career fairs make it clear they’re only interested in the computer scientists and in the salary gap between engineering and non-engineering students. The fact that so many computer scientists are ignorant or disdainful of non-technical approaches is worrisome because in my work, I’m constantly confronting questions that can’t be answered with code.

Here are some steps forward. Universities should start with broader training for computer science students. I contacted eight of the top undergraduate programs in computer science and found that most do not require students to take a course on ethical and social issues. Computer scientists often don’t take them seriously, are uncomfortable with non-quantitative thinking, or are convinced that utilitarianism is the answer to everything. But universities need to try.

There are many steps tech companies should take as well. Organizations should explore the social and ethical issues their products create: Google and Microsoft deserve credit for researching algorithmic discrimination, for example, and Facebook for investigating echo chambers. Make it easier for external researchers to evaluate the impacts of your products: be transparent about how your algorithms work and provide access to data under appropriate data use agreements. Ask social or ethical questions in hiring interviews, not just algorithmic ones; if hiring managers asked, students would learn how to answer them.

Companies should hire the people harmed or excluded by their products: whose faces their computer vision systems don’t recognize and smiles their emojis don’t capture, whose resumes they rank as less relevant and whose housing options they limit. In an era where even elections are won and lost on digital battlefields, tech companies need to move less fast and break fewer things.

(Adapted from https://www.wired.com/2017/04/hey-computer-scientists-stop-hating-humanities/)

Computer science is wondrous. The problem is that many people in Silicon Valley believe that it is all that matters. You see this when recruiters at career fairs make it clear they’re only interested in the computer scientists and in the salary gap between engineering and non-engineering students. The fact that so many computer scientists are ignorant or disdainful of non-technical approaches is worrisome because in my work, I’m constantly confronting questions that can’t be answered with code.

Here are some steps forward. Universities should start with broader training for computer science students. I contacted eight of the top undergraduate programs in computer science and found that most do not require students to take a course on ethical and social issues. Computer scientists often don’t take them seriously, are uncomfortable with non-quantitative thinking, or are convinced that utilitarianism is the answer to everything. But universities need to try.

There are many steps tech companies should take as well. Organizations should explore the social and ethical issues their products create: Google and Microsoft deserve credit for researching algorithmic discrimination, for example, and Facebook for investigating echo chambers. Make it easier for external researchers to evaluate the impacts of your products: be transparent about how your algorithms work and provide access to data under appropriate data use agreements. Ask social or ethical questions in hiring interviews, not just algorithmic ones; if hiring managers asked, students would learn how to answer them.

Companies should hire the people harmed or excluded by their products: whose faces their computer vision systems don’t recognize and smiles their emojis don’t capture, whose resumes they rank as less relevant and whose housing options they limit. In an era where even elections are won and lost on digital battlefields, tech companies need to move less fast and break fewer things.

(Adapted from https://www.wired.com/2017/04/hey-computer-scientists-stop-hating-humanities/)

Tolerance — which shaped my childhood and continues to mould how too many Americans talk about fighting for equity — might be an affirming term, but just barely. I know this from experience; as a brown woman I have felt tolerated for much of my life by white Americans, even though I was born and raised in this country and consider myself an American before anything else about me. Any room I’ve walked into, be it classroom or boardroom, I’ve remained aware of the ways in which I’m considered different and don’t belong. One of the most enduring impacts of teaching tolerance long enough is that it gets internalized.

Tolerance is an underwhelming goal for a truly vibrant and just American society because, like diversity, it is satisfied by the mere presence of those with different experiences and perspectives. Instead, we should strive for inclusion, where people are accepted, welcomed and valued. We should prioritize equity, where opportunities are distributed based on an accurate understanding of our sociocultural history. Recent events make painfully clear how much further we have to go. To get to a better place, we must use the power of our imagination, compassion and intrepid spirit to look past tolerance and manifest what an inclusive and equitable America would look like across every sector of our society.

I’m no longer content just being tolerated. I want more for black Americans, for fellow Americans of color and for my country. In order to stand up for this nation and its potential, I’m rejecting tolerance, the notion that the people who have historically had and abused their power and privilege should feel like they are benevolently putting up with people who have just as much claim to this country and its true ideals. I want to be included, why not even welcomed?

Sudan is the last male northern white rhino on the planet. If he does not mate successfully soon with one of two female northern white rhinos at Ol Pejeta conservancy, there will be no more of their kind, male or female, born anywhere. And it seems a slim chance, as Sudan is getting old at 42 and breeding efforts have so far failed. Apart from these three animals there are only two other northern white rhinos in the world, both in zoos, both female.  

It seems an image of human tenderness that Sudan is lovingly guarded by armed men who stand vigilantly and caringly with him. But of course, it is an image of brutality. Even at this last desperate stage, Sudan is under threat from poachers who kill rhinos and hack off their horns to sell them on the Asian medicine market – despite the fact that he has had his horn cut off to deter them.  

 Today, immense love is invested in rhinos, yet they are being slaughtered in ever greater numbers. The demand in Asian countries such as Vietnam for rhino horn as a traditional medicine believed to cure everything from flu to cancer is fuelling a boom in poaching. From 2007, when just 13 rhinos were killed by poachers in South Africa, the killings have grown horrifically. Last year 1,215 rhinos were slaughtered for their horns in South Africa.

 The vulnerable northern white rhino has been hunted virtually to extinction – in spite of every precaution, in spite of these guards and their guns – and other varieties of African rhino are under a sustained attack from poachers. The Javan rhinoceros is also on the verge of extinction. India has successfully protected the Indian rhinoceros after it was almost wiped out by British hunters in colonial times, but here too poaching is a menace. What futile human destructiveness has caused this. Can the better angels of our nature not defeat the impulse to kill? 

Theatre, ultimately, is not about buildings or props or sets – it’s about people. The people who make it, the people who engage with it, and the crossover between. The greatest threat to the vitality of plays, musicals and live performance once the lockdown ends is a drain of people leaving the arts. Audiences who can no longer afford ticket prices against a backdrop of economic strain, reinforcing the idea that culture is “not for them”. Skilled artists – particularly those from lower socioeconomic and working-class backgrounds (yes, we do exist in the arts) – who can’t afford to remain in the industry.

 In normal times, theatre is a hugely profitable industry, and one of the UK’s most successful cultural exports. But the industry has always been staffed by precariats. Despite the glamour of the trade, almost three-quarters of its employees, no matter what our backgrounds, are freelancers living from job to job. And a significant proportion of this workforce fell through the cracks of the government’s job retention schemes. Right now, nothing frightens theatre creatives more than a slowdown or reversal of even modest gains made in recent years in terms of the inclusivity and diversity of the theatre, on stage and off. There’s still so much left to do.

There are justifiable suspicions, particularly from black, Asian and minority ethnic artists, that the term “class” is deployed as a proxy to mean exclusively “white, working-class men”. So it is vital that any discussions of class must wholeheartedly intersect with every community, identity and culture in Britain, and for white working-class writers to amplify and champion their even more neglected peers.

Most importantly of all, of course, are cheaper tickets. We know this will be even more challenging for theatre companies barely able to make ends meet. Whatever new, inventive, convention-defying methods that artists, fundraisers, producers and sponsors can collectively devise, our new theatre culture can only claim to represent contemporary Britain if everyone who lives here is allowed to come and see it.

Theatre, ultimately, is not about buildings or props or sets – it’s about people. The people who make it, the people who engage with it, and the crossover between. The greatest threat to the vitality of plays, musicals and live performance once the lockdown ends is a drain of people leaving the arts. Audiences who can no longer afford ticket prices against a backdrop of economic strain, reinforcing the idea that culture is “not for them”. Skilled artists – particularly those from lower socioeconomic and working-class backgrounds (yes, we do exist in the arts) – who can’t afford to remain in the industry.

 In normal times, theatre is a hugely profitable industry, and one of the UK’s most successful cultural exports. But the industry has always been staffed by precariats. Despite the glamour of the trade, almost three-quarters of its employees, no matter what our backgrounds, are freelancers living from job to job. And a significant proportion of this workforce fell through the cracks of the government’s job retention schemes. Right now, nothing frightens theatre creatives more than a slowdown or reversal of even modest gains made in recent years in terms of the inclusivity and diversity of the theatre, on stage and off. There’s still so much left to do.

There are justifiable suspicions, particularly from black, Asian and minority ethnic artists, that the term “class” is deployed as a proxy to mean exclusively “white, working-class men”. So it is vital that any discussions of class must wholeheartedly intersect with every community, identity and culture in Britain, and for white working-class writers to amplify and champion their even more neglected peers.

Most importantly of all, of course, are cheaper tickets. We know this will be even more challenging for theatre companies barely able to make ends meet. Whatever new, inventive, convention-defying methods that artists, fundraisers, producers and sponsors can collectively devise, our new theatre culture can only claim to represent contemporary Britain if everyone who lives here is allowed to come and see it.

The best thing about the news that the government is to fund a catch-up programme of tutoring in England, to compensate for learning lost due to the pandemic, is the proof it offers that ministers recognise the problem. Since pupils were sent home in March, it has been obvious that the impact would fall unequally, with poorer children suffering more than those from better-off backgrounds because of vast disparities between resources at home.

 So, it is good news too that the catch-up spend is to be targeted. Already, evidence suggests that pupils in the most disadvantaged areas are least likely to have engaged with remote learning, while private school pupils have received more online teaching than anyone else. But if the problem is clear, the solution is less so. Tutoring has been shown to be effective in boosting the results of low-income pupils. Spent wisely, a pandemic premium to top up their education could be an effective intervention. But delivering such a scheme will be an immense organisational feat.

 From the delayed lockdown, to the lack of personal protective equipment and testing, to the now-abandoned tracing app, at every stage of this pandemic ministers have been shown up as poor planners. If they are serious about repairing the damage to education, they must now be patient.  England’s tutoring industry, which is estimated to be worth £2bn a year, is barely regulated. If substantial taxpayer funds are to be spent on one-to-one or small-group coaching, this must be done properly. That means giving schools time to work out what is needed, while deciding which providers are best placed to deliver this.

 It would make sense to put in place measures for three years, not one. A second wave of infections remains a possibility. Even without it, many children will need time to get back into the swing of school life. Those returning to their final year of school will require special consideration. But for the rest it is more important to get the recovery plan right than to rush.

(Adapted from https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/18/the-guardian-view-on-tutors-for-all-easier-said-than-done)

The best thing about the news that the government is to fund a catch-up programme of tutoring in England, to compensate for learning lost due to the pandemic, is the proof it offers that ministers recognise the problem. Since pupils were sent home in March, it has been obvious that the impact would fall unequally, with poorer children suffering more than those from better-off backgrounds because of vast disparities between resources at home.

 So, it is good news too that the catch-up spend is to be targeted. Already, evidence suggests that pupils in the most disadvantaged areas are least likely to have engaged with remote learning, while private school pupils have received more online teaching than anyone else. But if the problem is clear, the solution is less so. Tutoring has been shown to be effective in boosting the results of low-income pupils. Spent wisely, a pandemic premium to top up their education could be an effective intervention. But delivering such a scheme will be an immense organisational feat.

 From the delayed lockdown, to the lack of personal protective equipment and testing, to the now-abandoned tracing app, at every stage of this pandemic ministers have been shown up as poor planners. If they are serious about repairing the damage to education, they must now be patient.  England’s tutoring industry, which is estimated to be worth £2bn a year, is barely regulated. If substantial taxpayer funds are to be spent on one-to-one or small-group coaching, this must be done properly. That means giving schools time to work out what is needed, while deciding which providers are best placed to deliver this.

 It would make sense to put in place measures for three years, not one. A second wave of infections remains a possibility. Even without it, many children will need time to get back into the swing of school life. Those returning to their final year of school will require special consideration. But for the rest it is more important to get the recovery plan right than to rush.

(Adapted from https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/18/the-guardian-view-on-tutors-for-all-easier-said-than-done)

Companies such as 23andMe have proliferated over the past decade, feeding people’s hunger to know who and where they come from, and what diseases their genes might predispose them to. Over that time, it has gradually become clear that the main source of revenue for at least some of these companies comes from selling the data on to third parties.

 Some DNA Testing Companies (DTCs), such as 23andMe, are transparent about the sharing of data. When you sign its contract, you are asked if you consent to your data being used for research, and roughly 80% of 23andMe’s customers do. Other companies are less forthcoming. The trouble is, a health tech company is not a doctor; their primary concern is not the patient. You can withdraw your consent at any time, but that withdrawal generally takes time to come into effect, and in the meantime your data may have been passed on – after which it is harder to get it back.

 Our data is being used in research designed to improve our health and wellbeing, and there is a legitimate question to be asked about compensation. 23andMe, for example, asks its customers to waive all claims to a share of the profits arising from such research. But given those profits could be substantial, so why should we be paying them to take our data? This should be the other way round! There are echoes of Henrietta Lacks here, the African-American woman whose cells became a workhorse of biomedical research after she underwent a biopsy in 1951, and who was never compensated.

 The larger issue, though, is that with all of these databases there is ambiguity about who has access to them, and for what purposes. 23andMe states that it does not grant access to the police and government, but other companies do. These are the privacy concerns that may be behind layoffs, not only at 23andMe, but also at other DTC companies, and that we need to resolve urgently to avoid the pitfalls of genetic testing while realising its undoubted promise. In the meantime, we should all start reading the small print.

(Adapted from https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/feb/16/dna-hugely-valuable-health-tech-privacy)

At NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab, engineers, scientists, and skilled technicians design interplanetary spacecraft and schemes to get them to their extraordinary destinations. Europa mission plans have always come in pretty expensive, because everybody figured that we’d have to land there and drill through many kilometres of solid ice, potentially contaminating any ecosystem that might already be there. But if we can analyse samples flung out into space, there’s virtually no chance of contamination, and there’s no need to build landing gear, drills, or complex anchor and tether systems. It would be much cheaper than anyone had calculated.

People everywhere know and respect NASA. It’s the best brand the United States has. But like everything else, the agency’s budget has been reduced over the years; it hasn’t kept up with inflation.

Within NASA’s budget is a line for planetary science. It’s the part of NASA that does the most amazing things. Other space agencies put spacecraft in orbit around the Earth; a few even go to Mars. But no other space agency on Earth can land anything on Mars, let alone lower a small car there from a rocket-powered crane. The expertise is here in the United States. It allows people here to solve interplanetary problems that have never been solved before. It leads to innovation that produces $3.60 for every dollar that goes in.

Just think what it would mean if we were to find a living thing in a geyser of seawater on another world. Every one of us here on Earth would stop and ponder what it means to be a living thing. I hope it would fill each of us with reverence for the cosmos and for our place within it. A mission to Europa would bring humankind together—and perhaps change the world.

(Adapted from https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/6/140618-europa-bill-nye-jupiter-extraterrestrial-life-nasa/)

Many zoos conduct such studies, and also run captive breeding programmes for endangered species. However, critics say this doesn’t justify their existence.

“Zoos are prisons for animals, camouflaging their cruelty with conservation claims,” Mimi Bekhechi, director of international programmes at PETA, explains. “Animals in zoos suffer tremendously, both physically and mentally. They often display neurotic behaviour, like repetitive pacing, swaying, and bar biting. Not surprising, perhaps, considering the typical polar bear enclosure is one million times smaller than the area they would naturally roam.”

Some argue that children benefit from zoos. “We engage huge audiences with wildlife, inspiring the conservationists of tomorrow,” argues zoological director of ZSL, Professor David Field. That claim is up for debate. A 2014 study found that of over 2,800 children surveyed following visits to London Zoo, 62% showed no positive learning outcomes.

But, for every story that casts zoos in a bad light — from Harambe, last year after a child fell into his enclosure to Copenhagen Zoo killing and publicly dissecting Marius, a two-year-old giraffe in 2014 — there are heart-warming tales too. Zoos across the US can take credit for reviving the wild Arabian oryx, golden lion tamarin and Californian condor populations, among many others. And Steve Irwin’s Australia Zoo has an on-site Wildlife Hospital to save sick and injured native species. In the age of social media, high profile culls have sparked heated debates. When it comes to lethal force and animal welfare, at least, public opinion swiftly sides against zoos.

But whether recent events have triggered a profound shift in public consciousness is harder to quantify. Regardless of the merits or ethics of zoos, one thing’s for certain: they’re going to be around for some years yet.

(Adapted from https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/travel/2017/05/hot-topic-it-time-zoos-be-banned)

Many zoos conduct such studies, and also run captive breeding programmes for endangered species. However, critics say this doesn’t justify their existence.

“Zoos are prisons for animals, camouflaging their cruelty with conservation claims,” Mimi Bekhechi, director of international programmes at PETA, explains. “Animals in zoos suffer tremendously, both physically and mentally. They often display neurotic behaviour, like repetitive pacing, swaying, and bar biting. Not surprising, perhaps, considering the typical polar bear enclosure is one million times smaller than the area they would naturally roam.”

Some argue that children benefit from zoos. “We engage huge audiences with wildlife, inspiring the conservationists of tomorrow,” argues zoological director of ZSL, Professor David Field. That claim is up for debate. A 2014 study found that of over 2,800 children surveyed following visits to London Zoo, 62% showed no positive learning outcomes.

But, for every story that casts zoos in a bad light — from Harambe, last year after a child fell into his enclosure to Copenhagen Zoo killing and publicly dissecting Marius, a two-year-old giraffe in 2014 — there are heart-warming tales too. Zoos across the US can take credit for reviving the wild Arabian oryx, golden lion tamarin and Californian condor populations, among many others. And Steve Irwin’s Australia Zoo has an on-site Wildlife Hospital to save sick and injured native species. In the age of social media, high profile culls have sparked heated debates. When it comes to lethal force and animal welfare, at least, public opinion swiftly sides against zoos.

But whether recent events have triggered a profound shift in public consciousness is harder to quantify. Regardless of the merits or ethics of zoos, one thing’s for certain: they’re going to be around for some years yet.

(Adapted from https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/travel/2017/05/hot-topic-it-time-zoos-be-banned)

Plato distinguished between opinion or common belief and certain knowledge, and that’s still a workable distinction today: unlike “there are no square circles,” an opinion has a degree of subjectivity and uncertainty to it. But “opinion” ranges from tastes or preferences, through views about questions that concern most people such as prudence or politics, to views grounded in technical expertise, such as legal or scientific opinions.

You can’t really argue about the first kind of opinion. I’d be silly to insist that you’re wrong to think strawberry ice cream is better than chocolate. The problem is that sometimes we implicitly seem to take opinions of the second and even the third sort to be unarguable in the way questions of taste are. Perhaps that’s one reason (no doubt there are others) why enthusiastic amateurs think they’re entitled to disagree with climate scientists and immunologists and have their views “respected.”

If “Everyone’s entitled to their opinion” just means no-one has the right to stop people thinking and saying whatever they want, then the statement is true, but fairly trivial. No one can stop you saying that vaccines cause autism, no matter how many times that claim has been disproven.

But if ‘entitled to an opinion’ means ‘entitled to have your views treated as serious candidates for the truth’ then it’s pretty clearly false. And this too is a distinction that tends to get blurred. So next time you hear someone declare they’re entitled to their opinion, ask them why they think that. Chances are, if nothing else, you’ll end up having a more enjoyable conversation that way.

(Adapted from https://www.qt.com.au/news/no-youre-not-entitled-your-opinion/3706178/)

Plato distinguished between opinion or common belief and certain knowledge, and that’s still a workable distinction today: unlike “there are no square circles,” an opinion has a degree of subjectivity and uncertainty to it. But “opinion” ranges from tastes or preferences, through views about questions that concern most people such as prudence or politics, to views grounded in technical expertise, such as legal or scientific opinions.

You can’t really argue about the first kind of opinion. I’d be silly to insist that you’re wrong to think strawberry ice cream is better than chocolate. The problem is that sometimes we implicitly seem to take opinions of the second and even the third sort to be unarguable in the way questions of taste are. Perhaps that’s one reason (no doubt there are others) why enthusiastic amateurs think they’re entitled to disagree with climate scientists and immunologists and have their views “respected.”

If “Everyone’s entitled to their opinion” just means no-one has the right to stop people thinking and saying whatever they want, then the statement is true, but fairly trivial. No one can stop you saying that vaccines cause autism, no matter how many times that claim has been disproven.

But if ‘entitled to an opinion’ means ‘entitled to have your views treated as serious candidates for the truth’ then it’s pretty clearly false. And this too is a distinction that tends to get blurred. So next time you hear someone declare they’re entitled to their opinion, ask them why they think that. Chances are, if nothing else, you’ll end up having a more enjoyable conversation that way.

(Adapted from https://www.qt.com.au/news/no-youre-not-entitled-your-opinion/3706178/)

The day after attending A and E, Jane received an automated text message.  Two days later, while staying with my parents, we attended the Royal Surrey hospital for a follow-up scan to make sure everything was OK. Once again Jane received an almost-identical text message the following day, a system being used across different NHS authorities called “the friends and family test”. It’s difficult to describe how crass and inappropriate those messages were. Here’s the thing: Jane and I had already given our feedback. We had thanked the excellent doctor who witnessed our anguished hope, who entered into that space with us at the start of a long night in A&E and held our hands when our nightmare became reality. I can’t speak highly enough of her, and I say that knowing full well that we probably weren’t the last people whose lives she saw being shattered that night. That’s the best place for feedback: face to face, sincere thoughts and feelings expressed from one human to another.

 To the faceless bureaucrat who thought those text messages were a good idea, I would make the following plea: we come to you in the darkest moments of our lives. You see us through them, whatever the outcome, and then you move on to the next patient. You do this because that’s what the NHS is for, and it’s a beautiful institution. In the vast majority of cases we go to the nearest and most convenient hospital, which renders utterly redundant the notion of “recommending” your facility as if it were a restaurant or a B&B. Please, get rid of the gimmicks – the faux-concerned wording and impersonal feedback loop and the specious “choice” paradigm designed to soften us up for privatisation – and, most importantly, listen to your frontline staff. They know what’s really going on, and they’re the remarkable people who really care enough to face broken humans every single day.

(Adapted from https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/29/a-e-miscarriage-nhs-text)