Scepticism is only a secondary virtue

In a peculiar way, I suppose I should be grateful to Brendan O'Neill, as I'm getting a second post from my reaction to his article in The Big Issue defending climate scepticism.

This one's more of a general reflection on the worth of scepticism in general.

I hear a lot about scepticism: towards politics, in matters of faith or about the future.

And at least some of this scepticism is a good thing. Reasoned doubt means we ask ourselves and others searching questions. We look before we leap; we don't let ideas live rent free in our heads. We politely decline offers to drink the Kool-aid.

But in and of itself, scepticism is not enough. It achieves nothing constructive - it merely clears the ground for new ideas. It's also a tool which can be turned against the positive - curdling dreams, miring visions in if's and but's. at its worst becoming an inverted, black-hatted dogmatism of disbelief.

Or, to put it another way: you can't build a better society on a bullsh*t detector.

German has a great portmanteau word for traits like this, which is Sekundartugend or 'secondary virtue'. Secondary virtues like sceptical enquiry (or thrift or etiquette, say,) are only really virtuous when exercised in tandem with compassion for others; in the absence of love they can serve a bad cause just as well as a good one.

So tell me what you're for, not just what you're against.

A slighly grumpy post about UK Games Expo

Over Spaghetti Junction cold, through Great Barr deep and Aston old, #ukgamesexpo here i come!
— Tim Atkinson (@Magpiemoth) May 26, 2013

I swung into UK Games Expo on Sunday for a quick game of Achtung Cthulhu and a mooch around the trade halls. 

This was the first time it had moved from the Masonic Conference Centre and neighbouring hotel in Edgbaston out to the Hilton at the NEC. Word of the Gaming Gods is that they got 3,500 people along (most for 2-3 days) which is their best attendance yet.  

Good stuff: 

• The Trade Halls and gaming rooms were a lot better laid out and easier to navigate than the previous venue (there was much less chance of your way being blocked by a marauding dalek). 
• I was able to lay hands on a copy of Shock.
• You could still check out board games to play-test in the bar (like this round of Pirates Cove)

• Good family-friendly atmosphere
• The USP of always being able to get into a game, whether RPG, board or wargames.
• Being able to get there by train was much appreciated.

Not so good stuff: 

• Food and drink prices ranging from expensive to rip-off, with punters shelling out upwards of £4 for a decent coffee or a pint at the main bar, which wouldn't have been so bad were it not for...
• ... the comparison with previous years, where you could nip outside the con to a range of decent pubs and restaurants, even if you weren't straying more than 5 minutes walk away. 
• Or go in search of cheap snacks according to means and timing.
• General sense of soullessness endemic to the Hilton and surrounds made you long for the quirkiness of Apron 'n' Compass central.

The setting for a con matters, so while transferring Expo to the Hilton probably makes a lot of sense for the size of event it's become, it has lost quite a bit of its charm in doing so. 

I'm not sure if that was my last visit to the event, but I'd be reluctant to do more than a day in future. I wish the organisers well, but perhaps I'm not their target audience.

Spacemen 3 covering Will The Circle Be Unbroken

This was how I discovered country gospel standard Will The Circle Be Unbroken, bent out of shape by Jason Pierce of Spacemen 3 / Spiritualized into a sluggish blues of addiction, ecstatic repetition and the shadow of the grim reaper.

This version keeps the original chorus - Will the circle be unbroken /By and by Lord,by and by? Is a better home awaiting / In the sky Lord, in the sky? - and sandwiches it between the grim tale of a junkie funeral; no direct lyrical reference needed to work out how the celestial harbour is going to be reached.

Pierce has had a long and artistically satisfying career out of juxtaposing keep-your-eyes-on-salvation with the psychedelic experience. But this is my favourite thing he's been involved in.

Top 10 acts we saw at The Great Escape Pt 2

Last weekend we went down to Brighton for the Great Escape festival of new music. Between discovering a new city, eating some amazing food and rejoicing in a man dressed as Rowlf playing street piano, we saw some fantastic music.

1. Wolf Alice 

Indie rock 'n' roll in the Pixies / Peejay vein. The only 'buzz' band we managed to get in to see and they didn't disappoint.

2. Luke Sital-Singh

A young Conchord-a-like with a honeyed voice for solo guitar. The original songs are good but I also have a feeling he'd be an inspired interpreter of others' work.

3. Popstrangers

The great indie rock-n-roll revival part 2, this time from New Zealand and checking the boxes marked Pixies, Posies, Pumpkins. Live, they knock this stuff out of the park, so you definitely go see them play while they tour this coming fortnight.

4. Blek

The great Indian indie rock-n-roll revival, pt 3. Has Mumbai nurtured the heirs to the Minutemen?

 
5. Gabriel Bruce

Just imagine if the title track to St Elmo's Fire was the foundation on which modern music was built.

Scepticism: I do not think it means what you think it means

There is a comment piece by Brendan O'Neill in last week's Big Issue which tries the following argument on for size.

1. Scepticism is hugely important. Hooray for the spirit of rational enquiry, Huxley and Mill!

2. But scepticism is under threat, since speaking out against man-made climate change theories is taboo (solitary case study: Johnny Ball being booed at a science and atheism event).

3. Therefore we should defend climate scepticism and challenge the scientific consensus on it.
  
Oh really? This smacks to me of sloppy reasoning.

First, the statement no-one can disagree with. We're all wedded to the scientific method here, Brendan. :-)

Then, the extrapolation from an isolated case, which conveniently forgets that the fact that we regularly hear climate-sceptical voices, e.g. in the right-wing press and mainstream political parties. 

This allows O'Neill to (incorrectly, in my view) present this as a censorship issue rather than a science issue.

Sigh.

For the purposes of his argument, he's treating man-made climate change as if it were equivalent to a medieval superstition, a pre-scientific received truth like the creation myths challenged by Darwin, Huxley and others.  

Let's just say one more time for the record that man-made climate change is an idea well established by evidence and the scientific method.

And, what's  more: you challenge a theory like this in the court of scientific appeal through fresh evidence. This is something the sceptics have as yet failed to do, although not for want of trying over the past decade and more, even in states like the US where Government policy has at times been receptive.

Still, the overwhelming majority (97%) of peer-reviewed research papers still agree that, yep, man-made climate change is happening. O'Neill might regard this as placing too much reliance on expertise; I say, if you've got the evidence to the contrary, bring it to the top table.

Let's be clear here what scepticism is not. It's not hanging onto obsolete ideas, it's not  challenging the conclusions of others without convincing evidence to the contrary. Convincing in this case meaning 'that with which you can persuade large numbers of others'.

That, my friend, is dogmatism. 

And it seems to me that dogmatism is what we're dealing with here.

Flashback: my student review of Goya Dress - Rooms

In my wasted youth at University of Hull, I penned the odd review for Hullfire, the student newspaper. For the sake of both completeness and comedy value, I'm adding them to this blog and then listening to the original if I can track it down to see if I agree with 20 year-old me.

Today, we've got Goya Dress, who produced a rather underrated album which as the review below shows I had rather a soft spot for. I also saw them at the Phoenix Festival in 1995, where they were excellent.

KLANG! Oops! A false alarm set off by the name of the band, for while Goya Dress are intelligent and passionate, they are thankfully not over-pretentious.

I'm not sure if 20-year old me had anything more than the vaguest idea who Goya was, so clearly I was in no position to judge.

Essentially old-school indie that wouldn't look out of place on 4AD, dabbling at times in Tori Amos territory, the album delves into the emotional undergrowth, managing to be gripping without being over-sentimental, or worse still, the Cranberries.

Singer/guitarist Astrid Williamson even manages to make all those exhausted cliches about angelic, unearthly voices sound reasonable. 

This was before 'achingly beautiful' was invented, otherwise I would have no doubt dropped that in too.

I could moan about the duration of the album, or complain that two of the tracks are unworthy to wear flowery dresses in the presence of the rest...

Nope, I got nothing.

...but often the Dress are the musical equivalent of a whole box of luxury chocolates, you can overlook the odd hazelnut surprise. (8/10)

 Am I? Yes I really am deploying a variant on the Forrest Gump metaphor. I now want to go back and smack myself upside the head. 

Here's the demo version of my favourite Goya Dress track then and now - Scorch, which I prefer to the album version 

#indiesnob. 

Top 10 acts we saw at The Great Escape Pt 1

Over the weekend we went down to Brighton for the Great Escape festival of new music. Between discovering a new city, eating some amazing food and witnessing the marvel of music industry reps buying cans of Red Stripe on expenses, we saw some fantastic music.

1. Christine and the Queens

Comfortably our favourite act of the whole three days. Came on like a gender-swapped Bobby Conn in a white suit, performed Jacko-moves to electro-pop. And absolutely slayed with accapella.

See also this amazing acoustic cover of Who Is It - a later period Michael Jackson song I had previously thought was irredeemable.

2. Mary Epworth

Psychedelic folk with star-quality somewhere between The Band and Garbage. Had a song about opening the seals of Revelation which pressed my recovering evangelical buttons.

3. Wall

Songs for sleepwalking fanzine editors. Comfortably the most beautiful thing we heard.



4. Ryan Keen

One of the best acoustic guitarists I've heard in a long time. Held Brighton Unitarian Church rapt and got the staff dancing.

Also, claymation video!

5. Embers

Not the finished article yet on record or in stagecraft, but having seen them twice over the festival these young shoe-gazers could become something special. It's not every band that can veer from Bono to blast beats from song to song.