Banning things is awesome

I wrote recently that I don't think banning things is a cost effective way for governments to solve problems. The first reason for this is simple: supply and demand; the second reason is that it's rare that something bannable is actually the root cause of the problem; finally, banning things is a restriction of personal freedoms and those should never be given up lightly.

Supply and demand

If there is a demand for a thing, banning it has, historically, created a black market supply. Banning drugs is an awesome example of this, in 2010 it was reported that every bank note in the UK was contaminated with cocaine within weeks of issue. The cost of drug prohibition enforcement in the UK is estimated at £16 Billion. I'm not suggesting that the government wouldn't squander that cash on something equally useless if drugs were legalised, just that banning things doesn't seem to work. Here's a list of other things that have been banned at one time or another:

• Christianity
• Drugs
• Alcohol
• Guns
• Homosexuality
• Books
• Furbies
• Video games (Greece)

Now here's a list of things which (to my knowledge) have been banned effectively:

• Time travel (China)

Solving the wrong problem

It's easy to see why some people don't like guns, drugs or Christianity, but if banning them is expensive and seemingly ineffective, why is it such a popular choice? My guess is that it's a lot easier to ban something than it is to solve the actual issue. For example, where would you rather live, in a place where everyone had guns but no-one got shot, or a place where no-one had guns, but your neighbour dreamt every night of shooting you using your own ass as a silencer? It's quite possible that solving the issue of people wanting to kill each other might give better results than simply taking away one of the more effective ways of doing it. However, that's a difficult problem to solve, it's hard enough catching murderers after they've killed someone, let along before...

It's often easier to be seen to be doing something than it is to actually do something. Like when a friend wants to tell you about their problems. You could sit, listen, perhaps make some insightful comments, help them get their heads into a better place. But that's an evening you are never getting back, plus it sets a dangerous precedent. So, you take them out and get them drunk instead, it's way more fun for you and much less work. I think it's the same with drugs, it's much easier to be seen to create jobs for drug enforcement officers and pledge someone else's money to a cause than to actually try to reduce the demand for narcotics. Especially in the instances where drugs are not taken recreationally, but as an escape from appalling social conditions.

Liberty

In addition to not working, banning things is a reduction in personal freedom. There would have to be a lot of evidence of the efficiency of such a move to warrant it in my eyes. This is true regardless of whether I want to make use of that particular freedom or not. I didn't own a gun when they were legal in the U.K. nor do I base my sexuality on the legality of homosexuality. The point is the loss of personal freedoms to a government that is doing the political equivalent of sweeping mental health issues under the rug of gun control and shoving the mess of social problems into the closet of drug prohibition.

Don't worry, I'm not going to go into the tired old chat about banning one thing being a slippery slope to a totalitarian state. It just irritates me because it's lazy and not the fun type of lazy like someone getting their food delivered from a restaurant so close I can shout my order to them. It's the evil sort of lazy that encourages stupidity by pandering to it. It's easier to ban someone from t.v. for the words they use than explain that it's the meaning behind words that matters. It's easier to ban websites than to monitor your child's internet activity. It's easier to ban jam on aeroplanes than to make them safer. It's easier to ban certain breeds of dogs than to ensure the owners aren't idiots. It's easier, it's ineffective and it makes the world just a little duller.

Are some things too complex for sound bites?

Like most people I love a good sound bite or a witty one liner. Distilling a complex issue down to a few words is a very complex task and takes a keen mind, for me, H.L. Mencken was a master of this:

I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone.

It's short, memorable and very much to the point. For these reasons, the idea is super portable, posting something like this on twitter could see your idea entering a vast number of other people's heads and finding a resting place. There is, of course, a draw back to this, ably condensed by Mr. Mencken:

For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.

While Mencken's pithy quotes are short, memorable and well thought through, it is only the first two factors that make them repeatable and "sticky". Therein lies the rub...

If god meant for people to talk into cellphones, he would've put our mouths on the side of our heads...

Just because something is pithy doesn't mean it has value above and beyond amusement. Sometimes, that's the point of a quote, we're dealing with those times when it's not. Fortunately, some are easy to deal with, for example if they are simply factually incorrect:

The chance that higher life forms might have emerged in this way (natural selection) is comparable with the chance that a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein.

No, it's not.

Others, however, require a bit more thought. I saw this little nugget of wisdom today, it's not an Mencken quote and I doubt it would convince anyone to swap sides in an argument, but it seems to have the effect of cementing together people of the same view. It's tweet provoked a very focused discussion on gun control.

We keep having shootings because there aren’t enough guns yet.

It's short and memorable - so it gets a tick for being portable. But what idea does it bring to the point? The idea that guns cause shootings? That people only want to harm other people because they have access to guns? If you put a normal, healthy individual in a room full of guns will they transform into a murderer? Or are there more complex reasons why shootings occur?

Get to the point

I chose H.L. Mencken's quotes because they are great examples of the power of short, memorable phrases; they sum up a large idea correctly without room for error in interpretation. It's pretty obvious that saying things that are just blatantly wrong is to be avoided in short, memorable phrases as in long, unmemorable ones. The reason for this post is the final example, where the phrase is ambiguous. It's hardly worth a blog post to explain that people should say what they mean and try not to be ambiguous or wrong, but this is where short, memorable phrases tend to be different. They entice us with a witty, highly repeatable phrase which supports our view on a subject. It's flattering to think that others agree with us and the tendency is to repeat these things without thinking too much about them. However, if they are not exact, if they don't focus on saying only what they mean, other ideas can slip in unnoticed.

Most people would agree that shootings are a bad thing and the fact that there are so many shootings is a form of evidence that the wrong people have the guns. The passenger idea here is that banning guns would solve the problem. I could be persuaded to agree with the comment "I don't feel comfortable with the general public having guns because they need to be told to wash their hands after using a public toilet". But I see no evidence to suggest that banning things is a reasonable way to solve the problem.

The reason Mencken wrote so many quality little quotes is that he took the time to say exactly what he meant, not sacrificing precision for brevity. When his topic was more complex, he was less brief. However, in short phrases lacking that exactness there is the danger of introducing passenger ideas, either intentionally or by accident.

The fact that I have no remedy for all the sorrows of the world is no reason for my accepting yours. It simply supports the strong probability that yours is a fake.

Is it possible you might be responsible for your own misfortunes?

I'll start with a tale from real life that I feel illustrates my point. It does this so comically perfectly that it just has to be true (although these are not perhaps entirely accurate quotes).

I brutally and obviously cheated on my wife and now she's divorcing me. I love her completely and the fact that she won't give me another chance has ruined my life. Why is she doing this to me? I refuse to accept that this is just and right and will now devote my life to misery.

Hang on, wait... you're the wronged party in this tale? I don't want to come across as unsupportive, but you realise that you are refusing to accept the consequences of your actions here? That's not normally something that makes you the hero of the story or even a particularly likeable character.

On another memorable occasion a work colleague decided to regale me with a list of poor life choices which had lead him to become unhappy. I asked him if he thought that perhaps a large part of his woes might be due to poor decision making? For example, if he'd have chosen, at random, another member of staff to unburden himself to, he would, most likely, have received the sympathy he obviously required. I was genuinely interested in seeing what thought process had started with "I'm sad and need solace" and had ended with "Ah! There's Julie, she's really kind and compassionate, maybe I could tell her my problems... No, wait, here's Ant, I remember, one time, he told me that I would be the first person in the office he would sacrifice to save himself in the event of a zombie apocalypse, I'll tell him instead".

On an almost daily basis I seem to see incidents in which people are utterly unaware of the role of their actions in their own fate.

"I can't believe I got ANOTHER parking ticket - I got one yesterday as well, this is bullshit!"

"Were you parked in the same place as you were yesterday?"

"Yea."

"In the disabled bay next to the main doors?"

"Yea, I had a box to bring in..."

Imagine my joy to find that this isn't a new thing. That many plots of the most famous novels follow this pattern of obliviousness.

Frankenstein

So, Frankenstein is smart enough to create new life, but then abandons it into the world because it's ugly. Then makes a bargain with the monster under threat of having those he loves murdered. A bargain he subsequently breaks and is stupid enough to be woefully unprepared for what follows.

The monster itself turns out to be utterly wretched. "Oh woe is me, I am lonely! I am stronger and faster than normal people, I am almost impervious to the weather and require little sustenance, but those are small comfort to someone who is lonely and it's someone else's job to fix that for me".

Wuthering Heights

The entire plot here is driven by people failing to act in the face of brutal provocation. If Ellen Dean had been shot in the face at the start of the book and someone competent brought in to replace her, this would probably have been a very different novel. Of course, it's unfair to lay all of the blame on Nelly. If Edgar Linton hadn't taken so calmly to a man breaking into his house regularly to spend time with his wife things might have turned out differently too.

Heathcliff, of course, is responsible for his own misdeeds, but it's the inaction / acquiescence of others that allows them to be so devastating. If Edgar had taken action by confronting his wife's obvious love of another man, or by accepting that he had an enemy bent on his destruction and preparing for it he wouldn't have had to live his life in fear and seen his ward and eventually his daughter taken from him. Telling your child she's not allowed out of the garden isn't keeping her safe in the same way that having a fence between the tiger enclosure and the nursery isn't.

Solution

My point here is that's there's way too much boo hooing in the world and not enough taking responsibility. It's that lack of responsibility that leads to inaction. It's entirely possible to solve all of the problems discussed here in two monosyllabic words: "man up". We all have a responsibility to lead by example, great literature doubly so, so here are some amendments to our plot lines.

• "So you see Dr. Frankenstein, you must make me a bride, you are completely in my power!"
• "Not at all simple creature, did you really think I, the genius who created you from nothing, would chase you all this way unarmed? I have poisoned your tea and now I intend to shoot you like the dog you are. Then I shall return to my beloved Elizabeth and marry her in safety."

• "But I've met 10 people in my life and none of them liked me, I am so lonely. It's not my fault I murdered people, I'm lonely."
• "So super strength is not enough of an advantage for you, you need someone to solve your loneliness problem for you don't you? Well, here's how to solve it - GROW A PAIR! Now stop whining and sort your own problems out instead of placing them at my doorstep - my brother's dead for god's sake you thoughtless dick!"

• "Ah, Heathcliff, I see you are in my wife's bedroom. I can't say I'm pleased about this, but I'll give you the chance to leave and never come back."
• "You shall never force me to leave her be. There's no way you can stop me!"
• "Wilson, shoot this man in the face and have his body dragged to the moors, then stop by the constabulary and explain how this mad man broken into my home and tried to assault me with the poker."
• "Now, Catherine, perhaps you and I should discuss the future of our relationship."
• "Oh and Ellen, you deceived me and brought this man into my wife's bedroom, you're fired."

Sorted.

Reading, listening and comics

I have recently created an Audible account which I absolutely love. It turns the drive to and from work into a pleasant experience and I often use it when working out. It also means that I have rattled through more than the usual amount of books this year. Many of these books have come from reading round the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen comic book series. Yea, it's odd to think that a set of comics are interesting enough to get me to read the novels from which they draw their characters. So far I have read or am reading:

• All the Sherlock Holmes novels - loved them.
• Orlando (Virginia Woolf) - weird but interesting.
• Raffles: Amateur Cracksman (E. W. Hornung) - good fun.
• The Island of Dr. Moreau (H. G. Wells) - dark and thought provoking.
• 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (Jules Verne) - terribly dated.
• Moonchild (Aleister Crowley) - good so far.
• Gulliver's Travels (Jonathon Swift) - awesome.

I realise I am missing some of the main character's novels, but I'd already read Dracula, some of the Alan Quartermain novels, Dr Jeckyl and Mr Hyde, the Time Traveller, War of the Worlds and enough of H.P. Lovecraft to follow a lot of the subtle jokes and shifts in writing style.

In general reading, my recommendations are as follows:

The Yellow Birds - Kevin Powers

Frighteningly well written it also has a very powerful story. I was gripped from the very first sentence. I may have to re-think my top 10 :)

The Martian - Andy Weir

A story of the survival of an astronaut stranded on Mars. A well told story filled with humour and wit - a super easy read.

The Name of the Wind - Patrick Rothfuss

The first of a set of fantasy books following the life of a very gifted boy and his search for magic. It is superbly well told, the world and the characters are incredibly rich.

Solaris - Stanislaw Lem

A sci fi classic and rightly so - a very thought provoking look at how different an alien life form could be compared to the usual human-centric creatures we see in other novels.

Comics and graphic novels

I'd never really thought of comics as something I would want to read - I don't think the idea of super heroes really appeals to me. Then I discovered that a lot of comic book writers felt the same and I decided to give V for Vendetta a read. It's probably one of the best things I've read in a long time, my quotes file has grown fat on just this one graphic novel. I also discovered Alan Moore, which has been a real source of joy.

The art work in V is pretty dated, but the story is so amazing that I went to my local store and asked for a recommendation for more of Alan Moore's work. I was pointed to The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen as his master work. It's truly amazing, the story is a weaving of many works of literature into an alternate history of our world. There are so many wonderful places where the plots of two or more novels join seamlessly that you just stare at the page in wonder. The artwork by Kevin O'Neil is everything that V was missing. I genuinely haven't enjoyed reading something this much in a long long time. It also turns out that Alan Moore is a fan of H.P. Lovecraft and there are a few novels using that mythos - Neonomicon (the art work by Jacen Burrows is masterful) and Nemo Heart of Ice, which is an off shoot of the League with Kevin O'Neil, also outstanding.

So, if you have never read a graphic novel, I would heartily recommend giving them a try. Also worthy of mention are Neil Gaiman's The Sandman series and, if you want a gritty anti-hero I highly recommend The Punisher.

What is wrong with us?

Language and literature

As a species we've pretty much mastered language and we are way ahead of our nearest rivals. For example, frogs know about 3 words, dolphins on the other hand are known to associate themselves with names and have a wide vocabulary. Impressive huh? Yea sure, until we roll out some of our poetry - Ozymandias written nearly 200 years ago; or our literature, take 800 pages of War and Peace to the face dolphins, written nearly 150 years ago.

So, we've totally nailed language, we excel in literature and poetry. We are so far ahead of our nearest rivals we could wait 500 years and still not have a dolphin best seller, or could we? We have all of this amazing literature and poetry, things people can use to better their mind, contemplate alternate worlds, discover new thoughts. How are we using it? Well, in the top 20 best selling books on Amazon, the top 3 are diet / cookery books, with another 4 dotted about. There are 2 books with instructions on how to pass your driving test and Dan Brown has a place in there. Jesus people! You have all the works of literature to choose from and Dan Brown can sell books!

So, we have all this amazing literature, but we aren't using it, what about science?

Technology

I'm not even going to compare our advances in technology to those of animals, it would just be embarrassing. We have television! What do we do with it? Well... there's erm EastEnders and Coronations Street, obviously. There was a show on last night called "I love my country" and another one where a puppet asks celebrities questions. I'm pretty sure John Logie Baird would be relieved to know his invention was being used for a higher purpose.

There's also the internet - that's a marvel of technology! Yup, it's currently being used for spam, porn and keeping people up to date on our bowl movements.

There's always proper science, that's the home of true intellectual endeavour. Well, physics is stuck with string theory, which is the first major theory to have the benefit of being untestable. Genetics is a total mess with back pedalling on a grand scale. The decline effect is rampant. However, the scientific community is more dogmatic and narrow minded than ever. Much in the way they were when that fool Copernicus started mouthing off about his heliocentric model of the universe.

We've reached our zenith

As a wise man once said, "any species that has words in it's language for sexual asphyxiation isn't built to last". I, for one, say we accept and enjoy the slide down to our nadir and graciously welcome our new dolphin overlords when they make the transition to land.

You know what's fun?

Playing games that are fun to play... I am currently playing the exceptionally highly reviewed Bioshock Infinite. It has lots of good features:

• Probably the best companion ever - she gives you cash, health and ammo
• The world is beautifully realised and engrossing
• The story is gripping and you care about the characters
• Travelling by rails on a hand held hook is awesome

Surely all these excellent points warrant the high ratings? Well, they would if this was a film, but it's not, it's a game, so it needs one more feature - gameplay.

To me, this is where Bioshock Infinite really lets itself down - it's just not that much fun to play. The shooter itself is fundamentally broken, here's what I think.

Battles

So, we've got a big dude with a massive gun - you do extra damage when you shoot him in the back. Ok, so, I have a gun and an ability to freeze this guy in place - strategy sorted.
This will work great if I have plenty of space, and I do. However, I am shot by lots of other NPC's, I don't die, but I am at low health now - maybe my strategy is wrong? Ah well,
there's some health over there, so all's well that ends well. I'll try a different strategy next time.

So next time, I take cover, grab a rocket launcher and shoot from a distance. I kill the machine gun dude, but am flanked and loose a lot of health. Hmm, not an ideal strategy either,
still, I don't die and there's a fair amount of health lying around, so onwards and upwards.

Next up is a guy who takes extra damage to the chest and does lots of damage at close range. I keep him at a distance using my vigors and shoot him in the chest. I take a lot of damage,
but I don't die and there's lots of health around... By this time, I am starting to see a pattern forming. So next time, I just stand my ground and shoot - I take a lot of damage,
but I don't die and there's lots of health around. Man, this kinda sucks, I wonder if the game is more advanced than I'm giving it credit for? So I take to the sky rails and use them to keep mobile.
Same deal... sadness descends.

Weapons

The weapons are largely functional, you shoot up close with the shotgun for maximum damage, the sniper rifle for long range and in between you have the machine gun. There's the RPG for splash damage, but not a single weapon that's fun to use. Nothing that makes you laugh and and smile when you first use it... Remember the gravity gun from Half Life 2, yeah you do! Or the first time in Dishonoured when you blinked onto a walker and cut the driver's throat? Getting the chainsaw in Doom2? The line-gun in Deadspace? Things that were fun to use and play with? I have never practised combat in a single player game the way I did in Dishonoured, but it was just so much fun, there were so many things to try out and play.

Also, you can only carry 2 weapons at once in Bioshock Infinite, which is a nice nod to realism in a game where you can shoot electricity from your hands. This would be fine, if there seemed to be a game play reason associated with it. So far, I've not come across a scenario where the RPG and a machine gun weren't sufficient.

Linearity

I've just finished playing Tomb Raider - which was awesome fun and very linear. My problem with Bioshock is that it seems to suggest an open world to explore, so it jars when I come to a door I can't open or a ledge I can't jump off. It's also the linearity of the combat. I've read reviews raving about how you can set an opponent on fire and then push them at others, or you can trap them in place and shoot them. My issue is that you have to do one of those combinations and it doesn't seem to matter which. Neither option is enough fun to overcome the lack of inventiveness in the options.

Other games

Now Dishonoured allowed you the freedom to kill in many different ways, it even offered you the option of not killing. You could play with the game mechanics and have loads of fun without following the linear plot. Take a look at this and tell me it doesn't look fun Dishonoured. Now I know they are different games, but they both need to be fun to be worthy of such high reviews.

Grinding my gears

What's bothering me

I keep seeing lots of random people in the entertainment industry speaking on behalf of science. They mock anything other than the standard scientific view as proposed by celebrity scientists without any real understanding of what they are talking about. I'm not just talking about Heather Mills talking about the dangers of eating meat, or Roger Moore claiming foie gras causes Alzheimer's disease.

Take this quote from Ricky Gervais:

"Science seeks the truth. And it does not discriminate. For better or worse it finds things out. Science is humble. It knows what it knows and it knows what it doesn't know. It bases its conclusions and beliefs on hard evidence -­- evidence that is constantly updated and upgraded. It doesn't get offended when new facts come along. It embraces the body of knowledge. It doesn't hold on to medieval practices because they are tradition."

All very true and correct as a principle, but it is hopelessly naive as a statement of fact. The scientific method is, of course, the best way we have of acquiring new knowledge and verifying existing theories. However, it is implemented by people and therein lies the rub. If you have made your career based on proposition X, how likely are you to be impartial when examining opposing proposition Y? Really? Is there any evidence to back my claim up?

"String theory now has such a dominant position in the academy that it is practically career suicide for young theoretical physicists not to join the field."

Lee Smolin - The Trouble With Physics.

"A study by the University of Edinburgh examined more than 4,600 scientific research papers published between 1990 and 2007 and found a steady decline in studies in which the findings contradicted scientific hypotheses.
Papers reporting null or negative findings are in principle as useful as positive ones, but they attract fewer readers and citations, so scientific journals tend to reject them.."

http://phys.org/news/2011-09-pressure-positive-results-science-threat.html

There are way too many factors that can distort the accuracy of information coming from the "body of science" to discuss here. However, imagine having to go to your boss and tell him that the work you have done in the last 2 weeks has lead nowhere. 2 weeks of work down the drain - would that be a happy day for you? Now imagine that you are heading up the Human Genome Project.
You have promised a golden era of bio-tech and unparalleled return on investment for your billions of pounds funding... Are you going to go with "For better or for worse, we've found out that it's more complex than we initially thought. Designer babies and the cure for cancer are going to have to wait a bit longer. So in conclusion, there are waaaaay fewer genes than we thought. Remember epi-genetics? Well that's coming back in a big way, so lets all embrace that new body of knowledge"?

"Britain's biggest drug company, GlaxoSmithKline, is facing fraud charges in the United States for allegedly concealing information that its leading antidepressant caused suicidal behaviour among children and teenagers during clinical trials."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2004/jun/03/mentalhealth.medicineandhealth

Why does it bother me?

Because the scientific method is the way forward, however, it is impossible to be sure that you have analysed all of the data correctly when you simply don't have all the data.
Ben Goldacre has made a career (and a valid contribution to science) of exposing this.
Yet, I continue to see people mock the views of others because of their dogmatic belief that anything the scientific community says must be true.

We need to move back to the old scientific standard of having an open and enquiring mind. A balanced view of all sides of the argument is the route to making up your own mind. Not choosing a science super hero on the basis of their personality and mindlessly vomiting their words into the ears of anyone who tickles your unscientific gag reflex.

If you read Richard Dawkins The God Delusion, read Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's The Phenomenon of Man. If you read about the mind, read Hofstader, Penrose AND Sheldrake. Learning is fun! It's much more fun if you figure out the answer for yourself.

I have always liked this quote from Pierre-Simon Laplace, when asked by Napoleon where in his scientific thinking was the role for a creator, he replied "I had no need of that hypothesis".
It represents to me a beautiful neutrality, without a hint of the dogma I oppose in the current scientific zeitgeist.

Finally

And if you are going to mock religion, be careful! It's like playing pool against your kid - if you win, it's the slow hand clap of 'well played, you have better eye hand co-ordination than someone who still gets dressed by his mum'; if you lose, the mockery is, rightly so, endless.

I watched a comedian I follow on twitter make a comment about the death of Christ not being a big deal for God because he could always have more kids... Really? The basic premiss of this attack was 'you are stupid because your beliefs have no logical basis, I am superior to you because I am a logical man of science'. Who believes that people who lose a twin shouldn't be upset because they have a spare? On behalf of those of us who were atheists before Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris told you it was cool - please stop talking.