It is said that Generals always plan for the last war, failing to understand how the world is changing, Thus cavalry are sent into battle against tanks, and nuclear powers find themselves fighting against terrorists. 

The plan for Auckland Governance and the super city is another example of this last war thinking.  The introduction to the bill describing the 'problem' talks about weak and fragmented regional government with poor community engagement. 

 

The goal of the writers to to foster growth and prosperity allowing Auckland to compete as an international City.   Boundaries are being redrawn to extend the urban region of an already sprawling city.

 

However growth is an inherently problematical concept, growth without control or limit is a cancer, growth results in polluted air, rivers and oceans, exhaustion of natural resources, depletion of natural capital and human society. 

 

Auckland doesn't need to grow - it actually needs to shrink. It needs to go on a diet of common sense and vision, that can result in a leaner more self sufficient city, or rather a collection of vibrant communities from which a larger city emerges. 

 

The battles of the next few decades are not going to be how to achieve a ring of motorways around the city, or how to bring all utilities, water, electricity, sewage, waste under single authorities suitable for privatisation.  The battle is not how to compensate for lack of community engagement by centralising power into a few talented - but ultimately flawed hands. 

 

Auckland needs to prepare for the way the world is changing, we will be living in an era of energy descent, where year on year fuel will increase in cost several times above any growth we might achieve, we will be living in an era of climate change where even a 1 metre rise in sea level will swamp parts of the city and motorway network.  We may live to see New Zealand have to cope with vastly increased numbers of economic and environmental refugees as those who can flee the worst affected regions of the northern hemisphere. 

 

In times of strife an inspiring and talented leader is always a valuable asset, but the the test of a leader is their ability to delegate and bring in the efforts of the crowd.  No one person, nor one small group of 20 representatives actually has the experience, knowledge and motivation to deal with the thousands of individual issues that arise in a city.  

 

Without a strong level of community engagement, without strong communities full stop there is no effective city, there is no effective ability to achieve a happy and successful city or resiliently weather change.  

 

The Royal commission complains that there is little community engagement. The Government's proposal is for 30 small local boards; without any power to effect local change; without any power to provide checks and balances on the centre.  Such boards will attract no person of thought or ability, A talking shop is of limited value, less so when everyone knows that they are not being listened to.  

 

The Solutions to tomorrows problems come from the crowd, they come from each person engaging in their community and changing their own behaviour.  A city council is not going to achieve zero waste without being led there by the people, A city council is not going to be turning the suburbs into local food production centres. 

 

There is a choice now - create local boards with real representation, power to hire and fire, power to get things done, to encourage innovative solutions. to be a place where local skills and talents can be expressed.  local boards that form the good soil from which the city central authority can grow.  Where diversity is expressed.

The alternative is a single tier Auckland, a few true blue councillors and their big business partners. nothing effective below - and the energy of the people wasted in fighting city hall, or routing around pointless and ineffectual plans. 

This is why I will be writing a submission to the parliamentary select committee on the Local Government (Auckland Council) Bill. Even though this topic would normally have me asleep in seconds I feel that everyone needs to speak out.

see the new website. OneWaiheke.co.nz for more information

 

I have not blogged for ages, but this issue finally got me going again.

Why will Auckland City Counselors this week award the Waiheke waste services contract to a giant multinational instead of the proven successful local community based scheme?

Leaving aside all the party political issues, local rates misinformation, and plain dirty tricks for the moment the simple answer is because the council officers tell them to.

The game is rigged you see, the counselors are the end of a long process that leads to a forgone conclusion, Their role is to rubber stamp a decision that was made months ago. They are simply the anal sphincter at the end of the alimentary canal that is Auckland City Council. Their choice is but to relax and let go or to clench and allow the pressure to build up.

Surely the counselors are fine upstanding citizens who being democratically elected, always act in the best interest of the city and the people involved. They may well be, although their behavior at the last council meeting I attended undermined my confidence in this somewhat. Nevertheless the counselors will vote to give a ten year 21 Million dollar contract because they have been told by the council officers who prepare all the reports that this is the best – and by that they mean cheapest option.

Why do Auckland City Council Officials recommend that Waiheke green waste should be shipped off the island and across the city to an island in the Manakau harbour to be composted and then shipped back to be paid for by the islanders instead of the current simple solution of mulching locally and feeding the results to the local trees? Why would they recommend that carefully hand sorted and high value recyclables be replaced by wheelie bin full’s of mixed glass, paper plastic and other rubbish to be carted once again to a mountain of the stuff in Onehunga to be sorted poorly and then shipped off at the lowest possible value.

Because they have a nice clear tendering process and set of requirements designed to get the best value for Auckland as a whole of course. No corruption is required here as the game has already been rigged to allow the groups tendering to ignore issues such as carbon footprint, fuel usage, the council’s own waste minimization policy, the district plan. What they know about the world takes place in a closed box, in order to avoid bias they carefully ignore any reports that might introduce questions about the viability of the process or whether the final outcomes actually make sense in the real world.

So the requests for tender went out and came back in and TPI’s was definitely the cheapest. So that’s what the officers recommended to the counselors.

Why is TPI’s tender so much cheaper that the local competitors. After all you would think that taking rubbish so much further, using all that extra fuel, ferry fares etc, selling the recycled waste at a much lower price – or even just stacking it up on Mount Visy; would cost a bit more than a local community based solution that on a shoestring invents new world class ways of recycling tricky things like meat trays and toothpaste tubes.

There are two answers to this – first of course thwww.nzherald.co.nz/waste-management/news/article.cfmere is the argument of economies of scale. TPI’s builds bigger, better, moves more, pays less, has good lawyers who make hard nosed contracts and generally play with the big boys of the international waste industry. In fact TPI pretty much is the big boy of the waste industry having spent the last few years on an incredible debt fuelled shopping trip for local waste companies. The goal being of course to establish and effective monopoly and thereby in the long game – charge what they like. In other words this low bid is simply a loss leader, a cheap can of beans to get you into the shop. Having all of Auckland to feed its think big plans is well worth losing some money shipping waste from Waiheke Island.

The other answer though is more subtle and reaches to the heart of what the world has become. TPI are allowed to externalize their costs. They don’t have to include in their plans the cost to the island of 22 lost jobs, they don’t have to plan for soaring fuel prices over the next ten years because there is a get out clause in the contract that allows that cost to be passed back to the ratepayers. They don’t have to include the costs of the extra waste generated over those ten years by people not having to think about what happens to their waste. When you have a big bin on your doorstep you can throw away what you like, you are much less likely to complain about excess packaging, wasteful design, planned obsolescence, etc. So more oil gets used to make more water bottles, more oil gets used to make more agri-chemicals to replace lost soil quality instead of recycled compost. Fundamentally although they talk the talk of waste management and recycling this company is still designed around the old and dangerous, extract, produce, consume, dispose cycle that will gradually and increasingly rapidly convert all the world’s natural resources into low-grade waste. Clearly there is a huge profit to be made in this process.

Why does the tender process allow such a result to happen?

Because although we have some fine words in the district plan about zero waste, waste minimization and the maintenance of the New Zealand clean green image, Although there are a lot of caring people in the council who believe in saving the planet, our country and our local homes for the future. It only really takes a couple of people in key positions to be wined and dined and persuaded to get the consultants to generate the requirements that leads to the tenders that show that this is the best result that leaves the counselors with no option than to accept it. So on at the next council meeting on Thursday if the counselors are feeling a little bloated and uncomfortable about what they are about to do they should blame those oysters some unnamed official ate last year. I doubt they will have the nerve to actually listen to the community, the expert reports the international best practice or even their consciences.

One more Why.

Why will this keep happening?

People like a simple life, we like easy questions and answers, we like issues swept under the carpet.

Take the new super city for example. A further concentration of power into the hands of a few elected officials, organized on party lines so there is really only an us and them to worry about, each counselor responsible for many 1000s of people and therefore unable to be responsive to them all. Each so busy with the many activities required to run a vibrant city that they have little time to get out and form their own opinions. Each therefore totally reliant on the underlying civil service who in turn are busy and overworked and don’t have time to work out all the details, and who are therefore easy meat for the multinationals who can play the long game, focus on the long standing officials, build relationships, tell stories, and most of all – provide nice easily packaged solutions that tick all the boxes and save everyone a whole lot of work.

So underneath this little story about an island and its rubbish we have an invasion, a coup, a steady removal of rights from individuals and communities into the hands of an invading power – the multinational companies who through a combination of carrots – all those reports and conferences and dinners, and sticks – all those contracts and lawyers, chip away at our ability to work locally, know what is important and most of all, do what is right.

links:
The story: www.nzherald.co.nz/waste-management/news/article.cfm
The facts: waihekedoesitbetter.org.nz

 

This is worth a read.

On Receiving Harvard Medical School's Global Environment Citizen Award

by Bill Moyers

Interesting stuff about how fundementalist Christians see no point in preserving the earth as it is all going to get blown up by the end of the world anyway. The scary bit - just how large this group is, and how the people in power in the US may well think that way.

We come back to the same old question - how do liberals who abhore conflict and extremism, who think people are entitled to have their own beliefs and views, how do they cope with fundamentalists of any hue that think God is on their side and everyone else can go to hell. ( or denominational equivalent).

Will America see a religious civil war in its cities and streets ? Will it see a purge of liberals, atheists, jews, muslims, homosexuals, socialists, intellectuals, scientists, teachers, librarians?

How does one tackle fundamentalism? Few countries subjected to islamic fundamentalism have managed to avoid is well - perhaps we should look to Turkey for some lessons.

Once a group manages to ring fence itself from all other influences, - when it has its own schools, its own business organisations, its own leaders, money supply, communication channels, holiday destinations. Once it is this isolated there is little hope to change many peoples minds, few ways to divert the flow. There is no real head that you can challenge and cut off.

Once that group is large enough to command a majority in the democracy then they are the mainstream - now you are the minority and therefore by definition wrong. In a democracy you can protest - but they can now pass laws to put you in the wrong, to silence you, to put you in jail. To make breaking your windows or shooting you legal.

The Taliban came to power in Afganistan, Bad news for women, and non islamists.
Ditto in Iran. Does anyone think that Christian Fundamentalists will be any better behaved or tolerant ?

They will force polarisation - if you are not for us you are against us. They will arrange matters so that normal right thinking tolerant christians will be forced to choose, either side with us or join the enemy.

So - how to prevent polarisation, how to maintain open lines of communication, the ability to discuss and educate?

Here is a good question? How do you put in place laws and a constitution that protect human rights, the environment and the checks and balances of power - and make the defendable against a time when people who do not believe in these things hold power in the government, executive and judiciary?

How do you build the system so that it survives those times and yet also prevents ursurpers from using the same constitution to put in place equally unturnoverable laws?

All swans are white -- until you reach Australia and discover the black swans paddling serenely. For science built on induction, the counter example is always the ruffian waiting to mug innocent hypotheses as they pass by, which is why the scientific method now deliberately seeks him out, sending assumptions into the zone of maximum danger. The best experiments deduce an effect from the hypothesis and then isolate it in the very context where it may be disproved. This falsifiability is what makes a hypothesis different from a belief -- and science distinct from other towers of opinion.

Michael Kaplan 'Chances Are'

That falsifiability is the heart of the scientific method. but it does mean that the quality of an idea, what moves it from a hypothesis, to a theory to a law depends rather on how well the search for counter examples has been carried out.

The theory that all swans are white is only proved when you have inspected every swan.   If every search for swans returns only white swans then the theory gains credence but it still not proved.   This means that while a lot of ideas get disproved fairly quickly a lot are left sitting around failing to be disproved but never reaching that proved status.   The alternative theory that 'black swans exist' can be proved once and for all - as soon as you find a black swan, but similarly can live a long time in that intermediate state. 

Even though never proved, some ideas are more likely to be true than others and some have a lot of evidence.  Here are some non proofs that allow an idea to gain credence.
1.  Lots of people try but fail to find a counter example
2.  The idea comes with a mechanism of how it works that shows you where you could look for counter examples - you look there but don't find them.
3.  Experiments supporting the phemomena in question are replicatable by anyone, anywhere.
4.  The idea makes predictions about what will happen when certain tests are performed - these tests are performed and the predictions are right.

Anyway all this is basic science philosophy,  Pseudo sciences try it on by making statements in the language of science but usually by breaking one of these items.   - most often replicatability - see cold fusion.

The thing is science also progresses by working out new ways of exploring the world.  There are lots of ideas around that can't proved or disproved by the straight scientific method and new techniques can open them up for investigation. 

Probability and statistics had a huge effect on science when it first was introduced. These mathematical tools allowed investigators to make statements about how much something is likely to be true, or how often, or whether the difference between two sets of data is significant enough to mean something, or could just arrive randomly.

Research on People - e.g. drug therapies for example rarely gives 100% yes or no answers.  When you are trying to measure whether someone 'feels better' or 'less depressed'  it can get really difficult.   There are 1000s of potential variables so it is hard to corner that counter example mugger,   There are no solid rulers to measure the amount of 'betterness' etc.     Hence drug research often relies heavily on statistical information. 

Really good studies are double blind, and  wide scale. That is neither the people being tested or the testers know what they are getting so cannot be influenced by a wish for it to work or fail.   Other parameters are as much as possible held constant, e.g. social and economic factors, other health risks etc.  Wide scale because statistics only start to get meaningful when the numbers get large. 

Smoking causes lung cancer is a good example,  a really easily detected effect - cancer, numerous studies, over decades, in the face of a group of people (the tobacco lobby) determined to prove you wrong leads to a solid conclusion - you are more likely to get lung cancer if you smoke.  That doesn't mean you will, but it does mean that if all your friends smoke then there will be a lot less of them in the old peoples home than you might expect otherwise.

Research on some anti depressants or ADHD treatments are not a good example.  a vague effect, a few studies, often open rather than blind, conducted by those who gain from the success, without determined opponents, giving statistically marginal results.  

While it is good to know that smoking causes cancer, that cigarettes should be classified as a poison, or at least an addictive class B drug. Society is very slow to do anything about it.  The Science is done,  politics and money remain.

Meanwhile people with depression really do want something that works, so they will try each therapy in turn hoping to be the one who benefits from these marginal effects.  They also try alternative therapies - often ones with about equal chances of having an effect. that is low but not necessarily zero. 

What's my point?

One of the frustrations of science is that it has tons of good answers about many things, how the universe operates, how life evolves, even about how people think and feel. but there is always an even bigger arena where science doesn't have any answers, or worse where the answers it does have are not useful.   Is is really useful to me to know that drug X will shorten my illness by 5% in 20% of cases ?

That's it, the most annoying characteristic of science is to constantly go 'we don't know that yet'. or worse to be unable to communicate the amount they do or don't know something.   show me the error bars!

Why would someone forego a treatment which arises evidence based medicine in favour of an alternative remedy that may or may not work?

Having watched Michael Moore's Sicko one answer is a lot clearer to me - at least in the USA.

- because the proper treatment costs hundreds or thousands of dollars plus expensive visits to health care practicioners, form filling and health insurance claims.  While the alt-med is $10 and can be bought locally and comes with free tea and sympathy.

When you have no access to the best treatments you fall back on what is available - when you have no choices the evidence of efficiacy becomes moot.

In the US there is no universal heathcare system, no NHS or ACC.  Instead most people have insurance - except that there are lots of people who don't, or find that their particular issue is not covered, or is experimental, or there are any one of a thousand reasons why the insurers can deny treatment.  

Having grown up with the NHS in the UK, where yes we complain about service, costs etc, but really we just turn up at the GP or Hospital and just get treated, I really didn't get just how distorted the system is in the US.  Doctors are not judged or rewarded on how good they are at treating people.  They are rewarded by how many treatments they can use and be paid for, or if they work for the insurance companies - how many they can avoid.  The Insurance companies, HMO's and Drug companies in effect form a cartel which ensures that a significant portion of a normal worker's income is going to get soaked up if they should be unlucky enough to need health care. - If I understand correctly it ends up being much more than they would pay in increased taxes if the whole system was run through the government.

I would be very interested to know if the level of usage of homeopathic or other alternative remedies is relatively higher in countries that have free healthcare or not.

Historically there wasn't a lot you could do if you got sick with baterial or viral infection.  There was a big gap between the origination of the germ theory of disease, its confirmation with the spread of microscopes and the development of effective antibiotics.  However there have always been some remedies which have had weak antibacterial properties and they probably did have enough of an effect to help people with mild infections.  One wonders whether the old bread poultice was an accidental anti-biotic.

The advent of penicillin and later antibiotics pretty much killed off these old remedies.  The new stuff works so much better. However if you are denied access to modern medicine then it makes sense to fall back on these older choices. 

People use alternative medicine for different reasons,  some philosopical, some cultural, some because they have issues with the way evidence based medicine is practised and delivered.  If the health of individuals is important for the health of an entire society then we need to look at not just the science - yes treatments should be appropriate and effective - but they must also be available.

Skeptics constantly feel that their point of view is really clear and anyone should be able to understand it. Often it makes no sense to them why their opponents will continue to believe stuff in the face of evidence, or logic or any rational reasoning.  They feel that only if you could see the world as they see it you would surely understand too.  I know this because I do myself.

This is of course is exactly what Christian believers think too.  I know that because I did myself.

Basically no-one is going to change their mind through plain argument.  And abusing or denigrating people because of their beliefs is not going to work or be very constructive anyway.

A skeptic would like to be able to say that my belief system is such that I do change my mind - If provided with new information or facts, or evidence that is equal to or outweighing previous information then mind changing is definitely supposed to be considered.

Basically that is saying if you play by my rules then you can beat me at my game. 

The trouble is that other believers are not interested in playing by the skeptic's rules.   It is equivalent to a Christian saying well if you give up on relying on evidence or reason and just immerse yourself in the social group that is the church, study the bible until it directs all your thinking then you will find that Christianity 'works' for you too.  - and the truth is it probably would - see the being happy or being right entry.

Creationists play a dangerous game when they try to science up their arguments. After all once you try to undermine evolution using scientific arguments - or even pseudo science arguments you are starting to play by sciences rules.  If you let yourself be nailed down with a statement like - there is no evidence for a transitional fossil between mammals and whales - then you are going to get caught out as soon as someone finds just that fossil - as they did.

Much safer ground is to just say - God did it and I don't have to prove how. 

Skeptics need to consider what their goals are when conducting such debates.  Why do we get so het up about things? 

Let me choose a less contentious subject - lottery tickets.   Rational people may make statements like:
* the odds are so high you are more likely to get hit by lightning
* its a tax on gullability
* it won't be you
* if you want to gamble that dollar put it somewhere with better odds.
* its a waste.

They are not seeing the other side - because its irrational
* someone wins every week
* its my choice - i could just spend it on chocolate or coffee
* it could be me though
* I don't want to win a little I want a life changing amount of winnings.

These arguments although irrational have emotional strength.  There is hope built into each ticket and for some the disappointment of losing doesn't outweigh that hope.   If I buy a ticket every week for a decade and then die - I will have spent $500.  Thats nothing over that period, if I saved it and died anyway it would be worth nothing to me,  However if I had won a million It would have changed my life.  I at least had the chance of my life being changed,  if you never buy a ticket because it makes no sense then neither will you experience that miraculous event.
- change the personal rules and what is apparently rational changes too.

Buying a lottery ticket is no more irrational than enjoying mountain climbing - there are risks and rewards and everyone decides on the ratio that they want. 

Falling in love with another person - is not conducive to rational analysis.  You may know that under the hood your body is doing some sort of complex chemical calculation involving hip to waist ratios, pheromones, intellectual stimulation, and just plain opportunism.  But it doesn't feel like that.  It feels like you are taking a leap of faith, a chance to change your life.

So when talking to someone about belief you do need to understand the rules by which they are operating. You need to understand whether they are interested in playing by your rules or modifying their own or whether they are quite happy with the status quo.

I am learning that I need to go beyond agreeing to disagree.  I need to really understand the way others see the world - walk in their shoes, before I try to claim that mine are more comfortable.  Maybe that this the beginning of true open mindedness.

P says that sceptics sometimes sound a big like members of a cult.  Listening to SGU I can see what she means.  Normally they are informative, rational, amusing etc.  Then sometimes they sound petty, us and them, arrogant etc. 

"Cult" typically refers to a cohesive social group devoted to beliefs or practices that the surrounding population considers to be outside the mainstream.

For die hard skeptics I think you can identify a social group - although we tend to be about as cohesive as cats as likely to argue with each other as anyone else.   The believe that is not mainstream though,  that is debatable.  Although Science and Technology are big in our society so are supernatural belief systems.  In fact for some countries mainstream does mean following the cultural religion of the country or at least subscribing to it generically.  The belief that everything is natural and potentially described by maths or physics might be considered a minority view.

Clearly the standard dictionary definition doesn't really work.
1. Formal religious veneration
2. A system of religious beliefs and ritual; also: its body of adherents;
3. A religion regarded as unorthodox or spurious; also: its body of adherents;
4. A system for the cure of disease based on dogma set forth by its promulgator;
5. Great devotion to a person, idea, object, movement, or work (as a film or book).

However I understand her point when you see an us and them viewpoint developing and people banding together to re-enforce each other's viewpoints.  On the other hand I can understand the vehmence that is reserved for certain people  who promagulate their views by cheating, lying, rhetoric and disinformation, who have hidden agendas and use personal attacks to undermine or deter opponents.  These seem to be most prevelant in the field of creationism or Intelligent Design - because whereas a homeopath will just shrug when you disagree with them and say 'it works for me'  A creationist has 'God on their side' and to challenge their view is to commit a sin.

So maybe skeptics are sometimes cultish - in the same way pretty much everyone else is from time to time.  They are human after all.

This question - asked me by P. is a tough one for me.

The first answer is of course - Happy.   Being right doesn't fill your stomach or help you sleep better, it doesn't necessarily get you laid or any other nice things. 

The second thought though is.. but could I be happy living a lie?  Would not having to continue to be wrong make me unhappy anyway.

it's a false dichotomy of course.  It is possible to be both right and happy or sad and wrong.  In general everyone would choose to be both right and happy. 

The question as phrased implies a specific context.  A choice where you can choose to assert your correctness but in doing so your quality of life may suffer.
A classic example might be someone who wants to publish the truth about an opressive regime, who has been asked to cover up some information - they may have to stand up and lie, knowing they are wrong, but to tell the truth would result in prison, torture or even death. All not forms of happiness.

In such circumstances may people probably choose to stay silent.  There always seem to be people though who value the truth enough that to lie brings them more sadness than any external threats. 

Galileo,  forced to recant Copernicus' theory that the Earth moves around the sun, is said to have murmured, "Nevertheless, it moves!"

oh - but let us be more close to home. 
If I am arguing with my girlfriend, about a matter of opinion, or even a matter of fact.  I have to decide whether winning the argument, maybe even going the the length of obtaining and demonstrating proof is going to be a good idea. 

For a guy it is a lose lose situation. Either he wins the argument - thereby pissing off the girlfriend and damaging the relationship, certainly severely damaging the chances of a cuddle.  Or he has to swallow his pride and admit he is wrong. ( even if he happens to be right ).

Clearly it is important therefore not to get into this situation in the first place.

P and I played a game with her boy F last night, one he recieved as a birthday present last week - he is 11.

The game consists of a pack of cards, and 4 crystal tokens.  The cards contain money cards, map cards and various actions which modify the play....

..and some instructions that might be regarded as complex.

Basically the game is a version of Gin Rummy, in that you are collecting 'tricks' of money cards and trying to get a set of map cards by drawing and discarding from the pack.   The game is made more 'interesting' by having special cards that make people miss a turn, switch which map they are trying to collect etc. All with a piratical theme.

So we are sitting on the floor trying to understand the rules when we hit one of those fundamental differences in viewpoint that P and I seem to have.  This results in some intense debate and prevents the game progressing for 5 minutes before we agree to an arbitary rule.

The issue is that when somone plays a hurricane card all the other player's crystals rotate to the right. Sounds simple.

I thought that this meant that I would give my token to the person on the right.
P thought that the tokens would rotate clockwise (to the right) and therefore would be given to the person on her left.

hmm.

So is a rotation to the right clockwise or anti-clockwise. 

Screws are righty tighty, lefty loosy.   when you turn them clockwise to tighten the top of your hand moves to the right,  - but underneath it is going left,

The hands of a clock turn clockwise and as they move from 9 to 12 to 3 they move to the right, but from 3 to 6 to 9 they move to the left.

P eventually demonstrated her view point.  She stood up, held out her right hand across her chest, moved it to the right and continued spinning - clearly going clockwise.

I demonstrated my viewpoint,  sitting in a circle playing cards or a game play generally moves to the left, - also clockwise.  
If you hold hands in a ring and dance to the right - the circle goes anti-clockwise.

Before reading on - consider for yourself whether to the right means clockwise or anti-clockwise.



So here is the key.
P puts her viewpoint inside or at the center of the circle,  She looks the issue from the point of view of the rotating object.  In this world clockwise is to the right.  

I put my viewpoint outside or at the bottom of the circle, I looked at the issue from the stationary point of view with an object moving past me. - This also only really works if the rotation is in a horizontal plane - like at a card table.

Both viewpoints are true - no one is wrong.  All that is necessary to align our differences is to identify the frame of reference.  It's another one of those is the train moving forward or the platform moving back questions.

And so to clocks.
The hands on a clock move clockwise - why ?

Because for most people looking towards the sun i.e facing south, the sun rises in the East - on the left, and Sets in the West, on the right and therefore moves 'to the right' during the day.    If you stick a stick in the ground the shadow starts on the right side of the stick and moves to the left side of the stick circling clockwise - Hence when you first start numbering the hours they will go clockwise around the face.  
Once mechanical clocks replaced sundials the convention was maintained.

Here in NZ, the sun still rises in the East and sets in the West but to see it we face North, so it appears to move from right to left - anti clockwise across the sky.   This is one way you can tell that you are actually in the Southern Hemisphere.
If clocks had been invented here maybe the hands would spin in the other direction.

This all confirms that the correspondence between left and right and clockwise or anti-clockwise rotation is dependent on frame of reference and fairly aribitary.

Which brings us back to the game - what do we think the maker's intended?

a) As it is a card game, and play conventionally moves to the left, they may have said 'to the right' in order to mean in the opposite direction to the order of play i.e. anti-clockwise.
b) They may have meant rotate the crystals to the right - they did specifically use the word rotate so they may have intended clockwise.
c) They may have been sloppy and non really cared so long as the pieces move around.

I guess c is the most likely - it doesn't affect the game which ever way around the crystal's move. so as long as it is clear before the game starts it doesn't matter.   I does matter once the game starts as then people can be tactical about which map cards they might want to collect.

More evidence for general sloppyness is the instructions statement that the crystal tokens should be placed face down.  - they are the same on both sides.   Now which side is the face ?


Did we resolve the argument ?
My philosophy is that  given evidence or a logical argument I have to be prepared to change my mind.
P's is that she doesn't actually have to - irrespective of the weight of evidence or logic. 
Hence the issue is irreconcilable.

So I let P have her way of course.   consoling myself with this blog entry instead.




 

By that I don't mean that I am bright in the sense of intelligent - you can form your own opinions about my intelligence.

No It means I subscribe to the following definition: from http://www.the-brights.net

Bright (n.)--What is the definition?

The noun form of the term bright refers to a person whose worldview is naturalistic--free of supernatural and mystical elements. A Bright's ethics and actions are based on a naturalistic worldview.

worldview: the overall perspective from which one sees and interprets the world; a set of beliefs about life and the universe held by an individual or group.

naturalistic: conceiving of reality as natural (not supernatural)

Antonym: A person who is not a bright is a super. That’s the noun term for someone whose worldview does incorporate supernatural/mystical element(s). In other words, a super's worldview is not naturalistic.

Individuals are either brights or supers (can’t be both). There are brights of all stripes and supers of all stripes – one humanity, one world.

Does that mean I am an atheist? 
Well I am an atheist - I don't believe in a supernatural God.  But that doesn't mean all atheists are brights. There are plenty who don't believe in God - but continue to believe in astrology, magic, Friday 13th etc.

Does that mean I don't like supers, or I think I am better than them?
No,  I understand that people's belief systems are deeply tied in with their upbringing, life experiences and culture.  I understand that although my worldview is rationalistic I still have to take what I know about the universe mainly from the words and experiences of others. I don't have to visit Brazil in order to believe it exists.  So I am aware that in one sense it is an article of faith to me that all phenomena in this universe are aspects of this universe and therefore in a true sense natural. 

Should you be able to provide me with good evidence of supernatural behaviour I would of course be interested to know 'how it works'.

As to whether I am better than anyone else. I believe that it is what people do rather than believe that counts - although one may follow from the other. So an aid worker in Somalia who is there because of their Christian principles and one who is their because of humanitarian principles may both be better than I am in the sense of helping others.  In comparison I am quite selfish really.

Does that mean you are unspiritual?
No, I am equally able to be moved by a mountain-top sunrise, a babies cry, a starry night. I fall in love, feel pain, laugh, cry - All human emotions.  I am moved by poetry and prose, can be stirred by a speech or a song, a thought or a moral tale.  I am inspired by a mathematical equation that describe a rainbow - as much as by the rainbow itself.

Really all I am saying is that I feel Nature, the universe, is amazing enough. I don't need a creator, life after death, promises of reward or punishment etc in order to be thrilled to be alive and feel some responsibility for not wrecking the place.