Aleksandr Zinoviev on Convictions and Intellectual Maturity

The Russian author Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Zinoviev (Александр Александрович Зиновьев) was famous in the seventies and eighties for his irreverent analysis of the Soviet system and the Soviet citizens. What he did not seem to fully realise himself, not even after he was exiled to the West in 1978, was that much of his descriptions of shortcomings of the Soviet system equally well could be applied to describe a capitalist system or in fact any human system.

We humans work according to very similar mechanisms whether we are part of a Soviet state, a Soviet communist party, a Western conservative party, a military organisation, a big corporation, a religious organisation or, sometimes, a family at a Saturday picnic in the city park.

One of my favourite passages in Zinoviev's writing is the short chapter about convictions in his Homo Sovieticus. Here it is in Charles Janson's translation:

Philosophical Convictions and Behavioural Stereotypes

And here’s yet another mystery for you: what I’m saying here doesn’t express my convictions. And, what is more, it’s only an apparent mystery: I haven’t got any convictions. I’ve only got a more or less stable reaction to everything I bump up against: a behavioural stereotype. Convictions are something Western man has, not Soviet man. Instead of having convictions the latter has a “stereotype of behaviour”. This doesn’t presuppose any convictions, and so it’s compatible with every sort of conviction. When you confuse convictions with behavioural stereotypes without convictions, you get many misunderstandings, and strange ideas arise among Westerners about Soviet behaviour. If somebody else were to say what I am saying, I would start arguing with him. If you want to get at the truth, the first thing to do is to get into an argument with yourself. But I say this not from conviction, but in order to be witty, because I am not concerned with the truth either.

If a man has convictions it is a sign that he is not intellectually mature. Convictions are only a compensation for not being able to understand a given phenomenon quickly and accurately in its concrete manifestation. They are a priory guides to how one should behave in a concrete situation without understanding its concreteness. A man with convictions is rigid, dogmatic, tedious and, as a rule, stupid. But more often convictions have no effect on people's behaviour. They merely beautify vanity, relieve unclear consciences and cover up stupidity.

And for those of you who want to attempt making friends at parties by quoting the central argument in Russian, here it is: Человек с убеждениями негибок, догматичен, зануден и, как правило, глуп. Make sure you stress the last word, глуп, pronounced "glupp". It means "stupid".

Information missing from Wikipedia

Recently I wanted to know more about Jean d'Ormesson. You know. The member of the Académie Française since 1973 and author of dozens of books, one of the more important French authors the last sixty years. Logically, I went to Wikipedia. English Wikipedia has an article of 5,775 bytes about him. To get a little more information I went to French Wikipedia, which has a much bigger article with 31,755 bytes. I read it, and re-read it, and then my mind drifted off. Suddenly there was something I wanted to know about The Simpsons. You know. That American cartoon. The Simpsons article is 122,973 bytes, four times as big as the article about d'Ormesson on French Wikipedia and more than twenty times bigger than d'Ormesson's article on English Wikipedia.

This is a cartoon, we are talking about. A television cartoon, and there is apparently twenty times more interesting things to write about it than there is about the life of an 88 year living French classic author. At least in English.

Admittedly d'Ormesson is not English and not all his books have been translated to English. So what about an English author, like Julian Barnes, winner of the Booker Prize, the Somerset Maugham Award, the David Cohen prize and many others? His Wikipedia article is 18,366 bytes long - a seventh of The Simpson's article.

But that is not all. There are 45 articles about different Simpson characters and more than 500 for different Simpson episodes. Not even a dozen of Julian Barnes' books got their own Wikipedia on English Wikipedia.

I do not know what this says about Wikipedia editors, about our society and its priorities or the mechanisms behind sharing information.

But it is clear that anyone who thinks that Wikipedia already contains all needed and relevant information is much mistaken.

Be Nice to Management

In my sister's company, management is under a lot of pressure. To alleviate the problem, HR has sent out a message to all employees:

"In order to make working conditions acceptable to management, all employees are asked to prioritise positive reporting over real work. Ideally, you should not spend more than 40% of your time actually working. The rest should be spent making credible looking reports where problems, delays, lost accounts, heavy losses and so on are either not mentioned at all or phrased in such a way that they look like progress. With this in place, management will be able to sleep much better at night."

I am Genetically Modified

One can make a long list of pseudo-science movements: creationists, homeopaths, climate change deniers, astrologers, vaccine-autism scare mongers, and so on. To that list I would like to add a large portion of the GM Food opponents.

It is very rare to see any scientifically valid criticism of GMO. Most of the arguments I see against it are of the type "people are worried, so we should not use it, so we do not worry people", an argument that is set up to worry people. And then there are arguments against a particular genetically modified crop, where some obscure report has hinted at the possibility of a risk. Now, I have not seen any valid such report of any of the approved GMOs. And even if there had been, that would have been a argument against that particular GMO - not against all of them. It would not have been an argument against GM as a solution.

Looking at what a genetic modification is, it is not mystic in any way. It is not "unnatural" like inhaling burnt nicotine and tar. GM is a matter of moving genes around, just like organisms already do in nature.

Every single one of us is a genetically modified version of our parents. We have a different set of genes, a mix from our parents and we have a few mutations, most of which are harmless. We are all mutants. Say that together everyone: We are all mutants!

That is nothing to be scared of. Nothing is perfectly clean in this world. We are surrounded by weak radioactive rays, to cheer those up who are scared of radiation, and we have a few mutations. That is just what the world is like.

GM does not introduce anything new - no new poisons or drugs. It is simply a shortcut to breed new variants quicker. Man has bred new variants of crops for thousands of years, and if we had not done so, we would still be nomadic hunter gatherers without cities, writing, roads, hospitals, theatre, films or smart phones.

In some situations, GMO could be ecologically safer than other crops. If a new insect threatens some crops, it is possible that we have the choice of using either a resistant GM variant of the crops or to apply chemically produced insecticides. The immune GM variant may simply be resistant, while the insecticide is accumulated in the food chain and could harm other animals. If we are so scared of GMO that we ban them, the harmful insecticide is the only way out.

Anyhow, this does not mean that we necessarily have to let all GMO loose. Just like with other new technology, we need to study it and control it. Any scientifically valid study about its issues or advantages is welcome. Any reasonable criticism is welcome. This blog post does not bring up all aspects. What happens if the speed of evolution increases dramatically with our food with more and more GM? Will we have the time to verify long term effects of the combinations of all modifications, if development suddenly goes faster than our control institutions? What happens if non-verified GMOs are released in countries that cannot afford proper verification? Can we be sure that no GMO will take over as invasive species?

I do not have answers to those questions, and I would like to have them. However, completely banning GMOs is not the right way to get the answers.

This flower is not genetically modified as far as I know, but it could have been. A flower that is bred or genetically modified to its current genotype would smell as sweet.

Don't take my opinion, get your own one!

There is something strange with people who believe in something so strongly that they try to promote their opinion to others. Most of us get opinions and stubbornly stick to them for the rest of our lives - mostly out of convenience. But some people not only have opinions, they are so naive that they think their opinions are better than the opinions of everyone else.

If there are more than four billion people who do not belong to my religion, that is a fairly good indication that simple logic is not enough to convince thinking people that my religion is the only true one. In other words, my belief is not built on common sense. I do not mind carrying an opinion that is not built on common sense, but why would I inflict it on others?

There are exceptions to the majority rule, of course. In the 17th century, Galileo was right with his minority heliocentric world view, because he had telescopes, and hardly anyone else did. But how many people today who desperately try to convince others of their own opinions build them on scientific instruments that no one else has access to?

Besides, the world would be a pretty boring place, if we always all were of the same opinion.

But I could be wrong, of course.

For and Against

“Are you for gun control?”
“Absolutely.”
“I am against gun control. Let the guns free, I say. Every adult who can prove no criminal record, no psychological problems, no genetic link to violence, and a practical need for weapons that cannot be satisfied in any other way should be able to buy a gun.”
“Sorry, I tuned out there. I cannot be bothered to listen to what you gun lovers say. Anyhow, gun sales is a serious business, and it should clearly be regulated. It should not be permitted to sell guns on Christmas day. Not before noon anyhow.”

“Are you against abortions?”
“Absolutely.”
“I am for abortions. In situations where one makes a medical choice between the life of a mother and a very young embryo, I think the mother should have the right to terminate the pregnancy to save her own life.”
“Sorry, I tuned out there. I cannot be bothered to listen to what you abortion enthusiasts say. Anyhow, I’m against abortions, and I think they should only be allowed when at least one parent or a doctor recommends it, and only when the embryo is younger than, well, a few months or so.”