Passing Thoughts

Fireworks or not

I'm working from home at the moment. Abby is laid up with a bad back and so looking after children is not really feasible. When you are in a position like this you really wonder how single parent families cope. Its quite nice though at the moment from my point of view - I'm getting lots of work done and seeing lots of my family. Can't complain about that.

Last night Milo and I went out to look at fireworks. I have very fond memories of going out as a youngster myself with my Dad and Brother and Sister to see the various displays around town. To my astonishment there was very little going on. In any of the places I've lived prior to here (mainly Glasgow and Leeds) the inhabitants would be making a jolly good show of trying to set fire to the city and give it a damn good send off. Not here. Maybe its a Northern thing. Anyway I resolved last night to take the children up north for fireworks night when I get a chance.

And so George W was reelected. I've followed the election with interest and via the various blogs I read have discovered many new things. From reading the internet you would get the impression that America is full of intelligent well educated people but I guess those are only the ones that write and publish. You can see what the rest are like from their voting and the contents of your spam folder.

I've been quite depressed about peoples ignorance recently. Studies show that the people who voted for Bush are not that well informed about the world about them. This ignorance is everywhere you look though - I've had arguments about whether Homeopathy has any validity with people who really should know better. With technical things its even worse. Its clear that peoples understanding of the technology around them is poor. The views and decisions that non-technical people make about technical things shows a profound lack of understanding that borders on treating technology as magic. I guess in the past I've worked directly with fairly technical customers (even if the company they worked for wasn't). In web archiving this is most definitely not the case. What I really find astonishing though is the attitude that if they don't understand then other people don't either. This has lead to technical recommendations from our team being ignored by non-technical people. I guess once the world around you starts being mysterious then you just have to start guessing and its easy to presume that other people are guessing too.

One thing that makes that easier is that science can't give absolute answers most of the time and if you misunderstand the process (which people do more often than not) then you are free to (incorrectly) insert your own.

The argument goes something like this:

A technologist or scientist makes view known
person: But you could be wrong?
T/s: well.....yes...but
person: so [insert wild unsupported idea here - for example creationism,homeopathy, the fact a project might work
despite the budget being too small and not having the right tools....] might be true?
T/s: No
person: but you said you might be wrong?
T/s: well...yes...but
person: so I could be right?
etc. etc.

This may seem reasonable from the 'person' point of view but to the scientist/technologist the conversation looks like this one:

person: so do you know what is making these small holes in the skirting board?
t/s: no. but we've deduced that its small, moves quickly and quietly
person: but you don't know
t/s: well not as such
person: so it could be a Rhinoceros then.
t/s: no
person: but you just said you don't know
t/s: well...yes...but..
person: so it could be a Rhinoceros
etc. etc.