Panic-buying, toilet paper, and selfishness

Today is an historic day. The 26th of March 2020 is a day I shall always remember. I have, after much searching, managed to buy some toilet paper!

A couple of weeks ago, selfish people began panic-buying toilet paper, pasta, hand sanitiser, wipes, and cleaning products.

Image source: BBC 

I have seen zombie movies, disaster movies, and post-apocalyptic movies where the rule of law goes out the window. But I have never seen a movie where people go panic-buying toilet paper because there is a virus doing the rounds. I guess fact really is stranger than fiction. It's not even as if covid causes diarrhoea or something which requires excessive amounts of toilet paper. The mind boggles.

I just can't get over the abject selfishness of people who go out and buy 60-100 toilet rolls when they only need 4-6 for the week ahead. It's inexcusable.

Ok,  I might excuse elderly or very sick people who have (a) been told to shield, (b) have no one who can shop for them over the next few months, and (c) cannot shop online. No one else has any reason to buy a gazillion toilet rolls.

My plight

Over the past few days, I have been on the hunt for toilet paper as I saw our supplies dwindling. I've been to four major supermarkets (Morrissons, Tesco, Sainsbury's, Lidl) and two smaller convenience stores, and not seen a single roll of toilet paper, box of tissues, or even kitchen roll in any of them. 

I'd actually started mentally preparing my son for the fact that we may have to improvise. I cut up some old tea towels and a bed sheet when we got down to our final roll of toilet paper, and ripped some newspaper into strips. And all the while, there are people with their spare rooms full to bursting with toilet paper!

But throughout all of people's panic buying, a quote from Michelle Obama has become my mantra: 

"When they go low, we go high."

Just because other people are selfish and buying more than they need, that doesn't mean I'll sink to their level.

Today, when I went into the petrol station to buy petrol and saw several packs of 4x toilet rolls, it was unbelievably tempting to buy more than one pack, so I wouldn't have to face the same problem again in just another few days' time. But I didn't. I got just the 4 toilet rolls. 

I walked out of there feeling pretty pleased with myself. I was on cloud nine that I'd found toilet paper after what had felt like an eternity, and I would not have to subject my son (and myself) to using newspaper and cut up bed sheets after going to the toilet. Moreover, I felt really pleased that I had resisted the temptation to buy more than I needed when I did get the chance. Michelle Obama's wisdom got me through.

We all need to eat, and we all need to go to the toilet. If everyone only buys what they need, there's plenty to go around. Liking and sharing is so popular on social media, but it seems much less prevalent in real life. Please be kind, be restrained, and share the love: share the toilet paper. 

Edit: When those four rolls were running low and we needed to buy more, we found toilet paper much more easily.

Aphantasia - I never realised I think differently from everyone else

Imagine a beach. Can you see the sand and the waves? I can't.

This week I discovered that I have something known as aphantasia. This is the inability to see things in my imagination - my mind's eye is blind! Of course, I've always known that I didn't really see anything when I imagined it (why would I see it? it's only imaginary after all!), I just never knew that other people really did see what they imagined. I still find it hard to believe that other people see what they imagine.

I was writing something about robot faces as part of my PhD research and I wanted to find out the name for seeing faces in inanimate objects, like doorknobs and car headlights (it's called pareidolia, by the way) and I came upon a page about aphantasia, describing how some people don't see anything when they imagine it. This was not a revelation; it seemed to be pointing out the blatantly obvious. It's like saying that people don't look as beautiful as they wished they looked, or that people aren't as rich as they want to be. Well duh, imaginary things and reality are obviously different. Turns out, it's not so obvious after all, as most people can see what they imagine. Weird.

Baggy McBagface. Image source: The Conversation

It's really strange that I never realised that my thinking was any different to anyone else's, and yet according to several studies, this "condition" of mine affects just 2-3% of people! So I'm in a tiny minority.

So aphantasia is a minority thing; most people have normal phantasia (they see what they imagine), and another minority at the other extreme have hyperphantasia (an exceptionally vivid imagination). I was certainly surprised to discover these differences in how we imagine. I've read Descartes, Locke, Hume, Kant, and other philosophers who wrote about ideas and imagination, and discussed these with others at length. Yet never did I realise that others were imagining differently from me.

Which of these categories do you fall into? To find out, you can take a VVIQ test here. I scored the very lowest score on every single question: no matter how hard I try, I don't 'see' anything when I imagine it. Visualising a beach is as impossible as visualising a colour that doesn't exist; imagining a house is as impossible as imagining what the thirty-second flavour of the alphabet sounds like.

How do I know what I'm imagining?

You might wonder how I know when I'm imagining something. How do I recall what things look like? That's not particularly easy to explain, but I'll try. 

I know when I am imagining something because I'm aware of the thought in my mind. I have thoughts, such as "I'm hungry", and "I must remember to go to the post office" and "I remember putting my purse on the shelf yesterday" and "horses are yay tall" and "5 x 6 is 30". None of these thoughts have any imagery for me, but I now understand that some of them may have imagery for other people. But the imagery really doesn't seem necessary to the thought. I know that 5 x 6 is 30 without having to visualise a rectangle of five squares in six rows: I just remember the fact. It's the same with where I put my purse, or what my mother looks like. I can rattle off a 'shopping list' of features of my mother, just as I can rattle off an actual shopping list. I don't need to see a picture of my mother in my mind to know that she has short hair.

It's both fascinating and unfathomable to discover that other people's imagination really is different from mine. I had no idea. Our minds are private, and I suppose that's why people like me manage to go so long without realising our minds are different to anyone else's. I could quite easily have never found out.

Wittgenstein gave an example that helps illustrate this. He asks us to imagine that everyone has a little box, and inside their box is something which everyone calls a beetle. No one can look in anyone else's box, but each can look in his own box. Everyone says they have a beetle in their box, but I have no way of knowing whether the contents of my box (my 'beetle') are the same as the contents of yours, or indeed if some people have empty boxes. The mind is the same; I cannot leave my own mind and look inside someone else's to check if it's the same as mine.

Probably not what Wittgenstein had in mind, but it's hard to know for sure.

What is life like for me, without any visual imagination?

Well, it seems totally normal to me not to see things I imagine, but that's not helping you to understand what it's like, so I'll try to clarify. But knowing which features of me are features of aphantasia and which are just parts of my personality is tricky. There's no way for me to separate the two, but I'll do my best. But know this: life with aphantasia feels totally normal. I see things that are real, and I don't see things that are imaginary.

Inside my imagination

When I close my eyes and imagine something, all I see is some sort of brownish blotches such as this. I suppose it's the insides of my eyelids that I'm seeing, because when my hands are over my eyes, what I see is darker, and when I'm in bright sunlight, what I see is lighter. But literally whatever I'm imagining or thinking about, this is what I see (if my eyes are closed; if my eyes are open I see what's in front of me).

Some people with aphantasia say they don't have visual dreams. I do. Dreams seem just as real to me as reality does (until I wake up of course). I can recall some dreams and they seem quite vivid. Of course, when I recall them I don't see any images though.

Many people with aphantasia report having a bad memory, particularly for visual things. I would say I have a pretty good memory actually: I can learn the names of a new year group of up to 60 students in a week. I have memorised all the national flags of the world (if I see the flag, I can identify the country; I find it much harder to hear a country's name and describe the flag though), and I obviously have a mind good enough to manage a PhD. I fare very well on all aspects of IQ-type tests, including things that seem to rely on imagination, such as spatial reasoning. I can memorise lists of things, and I can recall things I've heard more easily than many people can. For example, a few years ago I did some conservation work in the Amazon rainforest, and I learned over 70 bird calls. I didn't find it easy, but I did manage it where many others failed.

But my mind isn't perfect; I'll forget appointments if I don't write them down, and I forget how to do things if I don't practice. But I think that's fairly normal. 

I don't really enjoy reading fiction. Especially fiction which is description-heavy such as Lord of the Rings; it's excruciating to have to trawl through lengthy descriptions of a landscape. The fiction that I do occasionally read is more action-based, or I could happily read a play - where there's almost no description at all. I prefer non-fiction, as it sticks to the facts. Although I can read as quickly as anyone else, my comprehension is slower than I'd like. When I used to read fiction, it wasn't uncommon for me to reach the end of the book, but struggle to recall the plot. I have to make notes on academic papers or I will very quickly forget what I've read. That's a bit of a pain, but I've always managed: I am a prolific writer and happy enough to make notes on things I read.

What must life be like for people who do have a visual imagination?

It seems very strange -- and disturbing -- that some people see what they imagine. If you are seeing things that aren't real, that aren't there, then that to me sounds like an hallucination, if not the sign of a serious mental disorder. And suppose a person is imagining their dog is sitting next to them. When they see the dog, how would they know if it's the real dog or the imaginary dog?! It must be a bit like being in a hall of mirrors. Not to mention terrifying. I have sometimes imagined scary or upsetting events - if I actually saw these things happen in front of me because I'd imagined them, I'd be a dribbling wreck, seemingly surrounded by skeletons and snakes and other monstrosities - all imaginary, of course. 

But maybe people don't imagine scary things - perhaps they only imagine nice things. I must admit, it would be nice if I could call the faces of my deceased loved ones to mind, but I can't. I cannot see them any more, and when I imagine (think of) them, I see nothing at all. Dealing with grief must be a whole lot easier when you can just 'see' your loved ones and talk to them simply by imagining it. 

And holidays.... there'd be no need to go and see the Pyramids at Giza, the Grand Canyon, and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, given that you can just 'see' them for free by imagining them. I'd save a fortune on holidays if I could just see anything I wanted to by an act of will! I'd travel the universe too.

Imaginary pancakes... or are they real? 

I've read that it's not just the sense of sight, but that most people can hear, smell and taste the things they imagine too (there doesn't seem to be the same phenomenon happening for touch though). I don't experience any of these things when I imagine them.

If others really can hear, taste, smell and feel what they imagine, then dieting must be a breeze! You could eat a tiny salad but just imagine that it was a burger and chips, or eat the same dull porridge oats for breakfast every day, but just imagine it was a breakfast fit for a king! I can only assume that it's not as simple as that, but I just can't get my head around the idea of really, actually experiencing the things you imagine.

Just a figure of speech

I'm still sceptical that others really do see (hear etc) what they imagine. Surely, no one can actually see something that's imaginary? You're having me on! It's a collective joke, for sure. Or perhaps - just like with the Emperor's new clothes - no one wants to admit that they can't see something which others claim to see. Most people don't want to feel "abnormal", to have a deficiency in place of an ability which others have.... if indeed others really do have it. So if some people say they can visualise something, others may agree even though they can't in fact visualise it. 

Or like the old me, people may think "visualising" something is just a figure of speech. I speak that way too: I say things like "ooh, I can just imagine myself lying there on the beach under the sun"... well yes, I am thinking about it, and as far as I am concerned, thinking about something and imagining it are the very same things. I always believed that people were speaking figuratively when they said they could 'see' or 'visualise' things. I knew I didn't mean it literally, so assumed they were the same.

Life goes on

It's a curious thing to go one's life (over 40 years now!) having an unusual condition and all the while, thinking it was normal. Anecdotal evidence on forums seems to suggest that people can go almost their entire lives without realising there is anything unusual about their thought processes. It's fascinating to think that a condition such as this, which has presumably been prevalent for quite some time, has hitherto gone unnoticed (or unnamed at least) until the 20th century. It does make you wonder what other mysteries people might be hiding within their minds, all of us trapped in our own little worlds, trying to interact as best we can. 

But in truth, lacking the ability to actually see what is only imaginary does not bother me at all, any more than it bothers me that I can't sense electromagnetic signals the way a shark can, or sniff out a missing person the way a dog can. These are not senses I need nor really want. I am perfectly happy to live with my mind the way it is, and be safe in the knowledge that everything I see, hear, smell, taste, and touch is real. 

Probably.

Election Reflection

It's that time again. No, not Christmas; I do of course mean general election time - which admittedly is about as frequent as Christmas. We've had three general elections and a referendum in the past 5 years. I think I've visited my polling station more often than some of my own relatives' houses.

The results are in from yesterday's election: 365 seats to the Conservatives; 203 to Labour. The election maps are awash with dark blue, for it's the Conservative Party's largest majority since the 1979 when Thatcher won. Whether we think such a landslide is strikingly good or strikingly bad, we cannot deny that it is striking.

Brexit

Given Boris Johnson's continued mantra that he wants to "get Brexit done" - apparently the Conservative Party's top priority - then such a large majority might seem to suggest that the people of Britain* also want to get Brexit done. However, what seems to have escaped Johnson is that 52% of voters backed parties who want a second referendum (Labour, Lib Dems, Greens and SNP) while only 47% of voters supported Brexit-backing parties (Cons and DUP).

* I'll come back to the divisions of Scotland and Northern Ireland below.

Why has there been such a large Conservative majority? Brexit has obviously been a key issue in this election, but I suspect that people (not everyone, but enough to make a difference) haven't necessarily voted for who they think will give them the result they want, but rather, they have voted based upon who is most likely to bring about some closure (of any type - remaining, leaving, anything other than limbo). If I am right, it would not bean enormous surprise, given that the Brexit referendum was 3.5 years ago, and it's barely been out of the news since. People - and indeed the news media - have often said that they're sick of hearing about Brexit.

Could it really be that being bored of Brexit has been one of the major driving forces in the Conservative victory? In "getting Brexit done" Johnson has sought to assure voters that it'll all soon be over. And that, perhaps, is what people want most of all. Just like a friend who keeps talking about their turbulent relationship, even though there are always new tumultuous developments, arguments, arrests, and altercations, it can become tiresome to hear about it day after day. After a while you wish your friend would either commit to making the relationship work, or leave the relationship, but most of all that they'd just shut up about it. And this seems to be many people's attitude towards Brexit at the moment: they're bored of it. I suspect that a sizeable number of people voted Conservative yesterday because they saw the Tories as the party most likely to get it all over and done with. I can't think of any other times in history when voters vote because they're sick of hearing about something, but I suspect this may be the case with this election.

Here's a little quote from Leonardo Dicaprio's character in The Beach  (2000) which seems reminiscent of such an attitude. (Whoever said a movie about backpacking in Thailand cannot give insights into a general election in the UK 19 years later?!)

"In a shark attack, or any other major tragedy, I guess the important thing is to get eaten and die, in which case there's a funeral [...] or get better, in which case everyone can forget about it. Get better or die. It's the hanging around in between that really pisses people off."

Of course, if and when Britain does leave the EU, then that doesn't mean it'll suddenly be out of the news. I would think Brexit will still be newsworthy for a few years yet.

Anyway...

Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales

Look at a map (rather than a bar chart) of how the UK has voted, and you'll see a marked divide along country lines. 

• England is largely dark blue (Conservative); 

• Wales is dark blue (Conservative) and green (Plaid Cymru); 

• Northern Ireland is dark green (DUP) and burgundy (Sinn Fein);

• Scotland is almost all yellow (SNP)

Map of election results. Source: BBC News

Maps can be a little misleading though - for example, the green (Plaid Cymru) which appears to cover half of Wales does not represent half of Wales's population, but actually only a small share, because the area is sparsely populated. London and other major cities are also deceptive: they're small in area, but in terms of population size and number of constituencies, they're far larger. This means that the cartogram (see diagram below, or here for more info) looks rather different from the map. Labour has done well in urban areas, which are smaller on the map, making the larger rural areas in dark blue look more plentiful than they actually are.

Cartogram of election results. Source: BBC News

As the cartogram shows, the Plaid Cymru seats are very few: Wales has largely voted Labour and Conservative.

But Scotland and Northern Ireland have definitely have not. The success of the SNP has (predictably) added fuel to the fire that is Nicola Sturgeon's burning desire (see what I did there?) for yet another Scottish independence referendum (indyref). Sturgeon is desperate to leave the UK - a position which seems a little inconsistent with her equally desperate desire to remain in the EU. Does she see value in breaking apart from a historic union of countries, or in staying together with old pals? Does she think Scotland needs to join forces with other countries to be stronger? Is she happy to have her power overshadowed by a larger superpower, from further afield? The answers vary depending on which union / power we are taking about: the UK or the EU. 

What is interesting, however, is that despite the startling yellowness of Scotland on the map (and cartogram), Sturgeon's SNP only obtained 45% of the Scottish vote (see here) and so even if all the people who voted SNP are in favour of leaving the UK, this alone would not be enough to win a referendum for it to leave the UK. I expect that Sturgeon will call another indyref, and that Scotland will again choose to remain with the UK and thus out of the EU. But I could be wrong. We'll find out.

I imagine that if EU voters were now asked to decide whether Britain should remain in the EU, they'd vote us out! After all, it's hard to play nicely with someone who says they don't want to be in the gang any more. I wonder whether the people of England (and NI and Wales) would vote to push Scotland out of the UK if they were given the choice? They might. But I don't suppose Sturgeon will ask them.

So the UK may yet see more changes in its makeup. We need not see the dissolution of the UK/EU as a terrible thing though. I've written in a previous post how we need to take Brexit (and the potential loss of Scotland) with a pinch of salt: it;s not the end of the world, but just another page in history. In spite of their lack of support for our two main parties, Northern Ireland looks set to remain as part of the UK. But who knows whether post-Brexit border chaos will change things in Ireland.

Democracy and Proportional Representation

Elections and referendums don't always give us the results we want. I've been eligible to vote for two decades, and during that time, I've seen that sometimes the party I voted for did not win (either locally or nationally). When we lose an election - just as when we lose a board game, or lose our bet on a horse race - we can gracefully accept the result, or we can throw our teddies out of the pram. If we value democracy, then we should accept the result of it, even when we dislike it. Because democracy is more valuable than the rate of inflation, whether the Pound is up against the Dollar, and waiting times in GP surgeries. Freedom to vote means we have freedom to vote in bad leaders with stupid policies, and even if we do vote in bad leaders with stupid policies, then democracy is still worthwhile.

What doesn't seem great, however, is the way in which the number of representatives in the House of Commons is calculated. Here is how I think democracy should work: everyone gets a vote, and whoever gets the most votes is the winner. But our "first-past-the-post" system, doesn't support this, because it is possible for a party to have the most votes, but to still lose the election (massively). See below for how this can happen. Just imagine this happening on a larger scale (I've chosen some neutral colours to represent three main parties in a first past the post system):

                          《--------------Votes ------------》
Constituency       Grey     Beige     Cream
 Const. 1               850        900         750
 Const. 2               850        900         750
 Const. 3               850        900         750
 Const. 4              1300         0          1200
==================================
Total votes          3000      2700       3450
 Seats won              1            3             0

The party with the most votes is the Cream party, with 3450 votes. The Beige party has the fewest votes. But in terms of constituencies won - which translates into seats in the House on Commons - the Beige party has 3 seats, the Grey party has 1, and the Cream party, which received the most votes, has no seats at all.

Democracy is valuable because it gives the people what they want (even if what they want is a silly choice), but a first-past-the-post system doesn't really give the people what they want. The people wanted the Cream party to have the most power, but in fact it has the least power. This seems very wrong.

Let's get back to reality. These results are for the whole of the UK:

                                Con     Lab    SNP   LibD
% of vote won          44        32        4       12
% of seats won         56        31        7        2
No of seats won      365      203      48      11

If we compare the percentage of seats won to the percentage of votes won, we see that the Conservatives have benefited from the first-past-the-post system: they got less than half the votes, but over half the seats. The ones who've really lost out are the Liberal Democrats, getting 12% of the votes, but just 2% of the seats. This seems really unfair for those smaller parties who don't get their views heard.

The above table showed the statistics for the whole of the UK, but let's take a look at Scotland by itself:

                                Con     Lab    SNP   LibD
% of vote won          25       19       45      10
% of seats won        10        2         81       7
No of seats won       6         1        48        4

The results here are even more remarkable: the SNP have benefited enormously from the first-past-the-post system. No wonder they are triumphant about the number of seats they've won: for 45% of the vote to translate into 81% of the seats is shocking. The Lib Dems have lost out a little, but both the Conservatives and Labour have lost out massively in Scotland because of the first-past-the-post system. As I said above, the Conservatives benefited from the system overall, but the fact that anyone is benefiting or losing out because of the first-past-the-post system is unfair. And it's almost always the smaller parties who lose out to the election winners.

If representative democracy is about the views of the people being fairly heard, then proportional representation is essential, or the views of the losing parties are not heard. For the next few years, views represented by Labour and the Lib Dems (as well as other smaller parties like the Greens) will be lost in the blue tidal wave across England, and the Yellow tsunami across Scotland. In the next election, as in previous elections, the winners and the losers may change, but the fact that the smaller parties lose out does not change. Whether the minority parties who fail to win seats have abhorrent views, or progressive views, whether they wish to legalise honour killings or to neutralise the UK's carbon footprint, if they are the views of a significant proportion of the UK people then they should be represented by in Parliament. But they're not. And that is the real tragedy of this election, and indeed every election in the UK.

Techy or tacky: why social media is just about bearable

I joined Twitter this week.

Now, given that Twitter has been around for over a decade, you might think I'm coming a little late to the party, and you'd be absolutely right. This is no accident. I've been purposely avoiding Twitter under the impression that it's a platform where people go to snipe about the contestants on Celebrity Love Island having cellulite, or to spread disinformation about the 'dangers' of vaccines, to showcase their hatred of Jews and Muslims, and to share the general minutiae of their everyday lives with the entire planet.

I haven't changed my opinion in this respect; I still think that Twitter is the place to go to discuss celebrity cellulite, to spread disinformation, hatred, and minutiae - but now I'm willing to admit that there is (a little) more to it than merely this.

It's not just Twitter of course: Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, Weibo (etc) are also guilty. Social media as an institution is predicated on the fact that people love to make snarky comments from behind the safety of the screen. I've written previous posts about people encouraging a girl to kill herself on social media (which sadly, she did), and people are oh-so willing to criticise politicians, celebrities, and indeed anyone via the wonderful internet.

I must admit I'm not above this sort of attitude - after all, in this blog post I have made (albeit implicit) judgements about people who watch Celebrity Love Island, oppose vaccinations, and so on. It's a human compulsion to criticise, and social media is the ideal place to do it: people can be vicious without (much) recourse, and reading the comments is a sure-fire way to waste away your life. That's why I try to avoid it.

You might be surprised that someone writing a PhD about AI and future tech shuns social media, but there is no reason to think that all tech is a force for good. We shouldn't just accept tech with open arms merely because it is new or techy. (Indeed, my thesis will serve as a warning as well as an attempt at a solution to the perils of new tech.)

I've not always shunned social media: I spent ten years of my life on Facebook, and it was not time well spent. I knew it was drivel, yet I found myself scrolling through it several times a day, often shaking my head at the banality of its content, but reading it nonetheless! 

I probably spent an hour a day looking at the chocolate-covered faces of the nephews of old school friends, or watching people I once met on holiday pour a bucket of ice over their head, or listening to the rants of people I didnt really consider friends, but felt social pressure to friend them on Facebook because they'd sent me a request and I sort of knew them. It took the Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2018 to give me the push I needed to leave Facebook. 

So, I deleted my account.* The following day, there were several times when I thought to myself "I'll just check Faceb-- oh, I deleted it. Ok I'll do something else." Within a couple of days, I stopped thinking about it altogether, and didn't miss it at all. Now, it's just not a part of my life any more. It's something I wasted a lot of time on, and ditching it gave me more time to devote to other things (such as my son -- not just eBay, Pinterest and TV!)

* Social media being what it is, I understand that my profile was not really deleted, at least, not by Facebook. It'll never be obliterated, short of a planetary meltdown on the scale of the extinction of the dinosaurs.

After that watershed moment (not just leaving Facebook, but leaving Facebook and not missing it at all), I resolved to stay away from social media for good. In my humble opinion, Facebook is possibly the least toxic of the social media outlets: at least it's people I know writing about things in their actual lives. On the other hand, Instagram is probably rife with duck-pout selfies and photos of people's dinners (this is my guess; I must admit I haven't checked). Snapchat is the place to go if you wish to receive unsolicited "dick pics" (again, this is my guess, not an empirical fact). And as I wrote earlier, Twitter is primarily celebrity-bashing, banal arguments, and disinformation. Weibo I'm less sure about, but it is probably filled with posts of people wholeheartedly endorsing the amazing Chinese government. In a nutshell, it seems to me that social media platforms are the means by which humans disseminate the drivel which we would tune out if someone were saying it IRL (in real life). Or it is the written (photographic) manifestation of smalltalk which is palatable in tiny doses, but causes severe nausea and brain damage when taken as a regular part of one's diet. 

So why the turnaround?

If the above is my genuine opinion of social media (and it is) then why on earth have I just joined Twitter?

Well, I was convinced by my friend and fellow grad student Mo (I'm not mentioning their real name; I wouldn't want to be named on someone's blog without my knowledge, unless they were citing my awesome work, of course). Mo said that Twitter is a great place to find out about new research, to make connections with people writing about similar things, and to find out about conferences. At first I was unconvinced, but Mo made a compelling argument. Mo also said Twitter is a great place to self-publicise (although Mo noted that they hate soing this, as it sounds so arrogant and conceited).

I gave it a fair bit of thought, and decided that Mo was probably quite right - Twitter could be useful.

But how could I go on Twitter whilst avoiding the chatter about celebrity cosmetic surgery and the banal minutiae of strangers' lives? Further reflection gave me my answer, and I felt more than a little sheepish. Social media is an echo chamber: if my previous experiences were characterised by pointless trivialities, then I had only myself to blame. If my online friends had interests which I was/am so disdainful of, then why did I engage with it - and with them? I must have engaged with it, because it kept coming back! 

The Plan

This time around, on Twitter, my intention is this: 

1. Follow only people or organisations whose interests truly fit with my own

2. Don't engage with banality, should I happen to see it

3. Unfollow people who routinely post banality 

Will it work out? We shall see. If I don't complete my PhD because I'm too busy commenting on botched nosejobs and why a score on Strictly should have been an 8 rather than a 7, then we'll know the experiment failed.

Wish me luck.

Scholar's guilt

Today is the first day in years that I've had an entire day to myself. My son is away for the day and night with Beavers, and I had an entire day to do with as I pleased.

Obviously, I have day times when he's at school and I am at home, but this was an entire 24 hour period.

It was weird.

So what did I do with my time? Well, I did a few necessary tasks like laundry, then I decided no, I should make the most of having the day of freedom.

So, I got myself a glass of wine (it was 4pm; I never drink before my son's bedtime to this was an uncharacteristic indulgence), set up the hammock hanging between two trees in my garden, and lay back and read a book.

Sounds leisurely enough, right?

The book was an academic text which I think will be pretty crucial for my PhD (John Danaher's Robot Sex). I was highlighting and making notes too.

The incessant studying even on a day of 'freedom' is of course caused by a phenomenon that many students, professors and academics are familiar with: scholar's guilt.

Whenever I'm not writing/researching (and not parenting) I have a voice in my head which says "you should be working on your PhD". It's like a micro-managing pedant lives on my shoulder, forever checking up on what I'm doing.

That's not to say I'm always working - of course I'm not! In fact I found the time today to scroll through Pinterest while lying in the hammock - then accidentally dropping my mobile phone onto the floor and smashing the screen on it 😭 (and I was only a couple of gulps into the wine, in case you're wondering!) But I digress.

The salient point is that while I was scrolling through Pinterest- and later, Googling how much it costs to repair the screen on my phone (it costs about 75% of what I paid for for the phone 😭) - I had scholar's guilt all the while.

I suppose it's just something that people either learn to live with, or they somehow overcome it. I don't get the guilt when I'm with my son, as there is no conceivable way I could do any substantive work while he's awake... but whenever he's asleep or away from me, I feel it. The nagging feeling that I ought to be working. Even when I'm sleeping over at my mum's house, or on the few occasions when I wake up before my son, the scholar's guilt is there, telling me to get PhD-ing.

Then again, perhaps a little scholar's guilt is a good thing, or else I may spend my non-childcaring time just lazing around in a hammock and drinking wine all day long. Then I'd never complete the PhD - and it'd cost me a bloomin' fortune in smashed phones too!

Should vaccinations be compulsory?

Health Secretary Rt Hon Matt Hancock MP recently articulated his support for compulsory vaccinations. He commented that there is a 'very strong argument' for making vaccinations compulsory, and I am wholly with him on this.

Anti-vaxxers

There is a small but significant group of people - anti-vaxxers - who don't believe in vaccinations. This scepticism might take a number of forms. Anti-vaxxers might believe that: 

1. vaccinations don't really work; 
2. other methods are better at protecting from illness; 
3. it's dangerous to inject diseases into people; 
4. vaccinations carry a significant risk of disease or other condition (such as autism); 
5. we shouldn't interfere with nature; 
6. vaccinating a particular child isn't necessary, because the disease in question is uncommon - perhaps because so many other people are already vaccinated.

Some of these standpoints are based in sheer ignorance, while others are based more on hope/faith. Below I examine these claims and argue that vaccination should be compulsory for all who can be vaccinated.

Vaccines don't work

There is a massive body of evidence which shows that vaccines work, and protect against illnesses far better than other methods. Nonetheless, just as abstinence will protect one against sexually transmitted infections better than a condom can, avoiding all human contact is likely to be very effective in the fight against communicable diseases. But in most cases, it's wholly unrealistic, and not a method used by anti-vaxxers anyway.

People might suggest that other methods - such as prayer, homeopathy, voodoo magic and so on - will protect against illnesses as well as or better than vaccines can. I would love to see a clinical peer-reviewed study into this. Group A is vaccinated against measles; Group B prays; Group C uses homeopathy or something similar. Then all participants in each group are exposed to measles in the same way - say, a person with measles coughs in their face. Then, we monitor the results, and see which of the people contract measles. 

Obviously, this sort of study would never pass ethical review - and why not? Because it'd be considered too dangerous for groups B and C! This is of course because we know that the non-vaccinated people would be in critical danger of developing measles, a disease which can kill.

Vaccines cause sepsis, autism etc

Although it's possible to cherry-pick anecdotal stories which show a person who was vaccinated later getting the disease, or to give credence to discredited 'scientific' studies such as the one which linked the MMR vaccine to autism, the overwhelming body of evidence shows that vaccines work, and are not dangerous.

There are some tragic cases where children die suddenly, and it is totally understandable that parents and other relatives or friends would try to find meaning in the death, and to know why it happened. Take sepsis as an example: it arrives with commonplace symptoms such as rapid shallow breathing, low temperature, and nausea, and by the time symptoms seem serious enough to seek medical help, the patient might be beyond the stage where they can be saved. It's only natural to think back to what could have caused it, and what has happened in the few days prior to the illness or death.

If a child has a vaccination, and then a few days later develops sepsis or some other horrible illness, it is understandable that a parent would make a causal link between the two, even if that link is unjustified. But any good statistician knows that correlation doesn't prove causation. Just because a child begins exhibiting symptom Y a few days after event X does not prove that X caused Y. Science doesn't work like that; superstitions do. If a child get sepsis a few days after walking under a ladder this is not compelling evidence of a link either.

So although it's understandable why people would make the link, it's unjustified.

We shouldn't interfere with nature

I have a great sympathy for this sort of attitude, and when it comes to something really invasive like a blood transfusion or an organ transplant, I am even more sympathetic to the standpoint. I can totally understand why some people might prefer to live a more simplistic and natural life, free from medical intervention and 21st century attempts to play god with medical science. It's not a belief I share, but I can understand the motivation to pursue such a life.

Often, but not always, such a standpoint might be grounded in religious beliefs such that one decides that if it is God's will that he dies from measles or heart failure, then so be it, God has decided. To try to circumvent God's plan by using medical interventions is contrary to God's plan and it therefore wrong. I respect that thinking, and when it involves things that only affect oneself, I would never argue that we should force people to have medical procedures they don't want.

HOWEVER

Whilst lifestyle and religious beliefs should be tolerated and respected, when S's religiosity starts to have a potentially fatal effect on everyone else's lives, tolerance and respect needs to come to an end.

If it were someone's religious or personal belief that one should carry razor-sharp weapons in each hand, and swing his hands vigorously as he walked, this is fine on a deserted island, but totally unacceptable in a public place - particularly around children who would be in greater danger from such activities. It would be legitimate to say he cannot enter a public place whilst swinging his knives around.

Analogously, if someone chooses to remain unvaccinated for religious or personal beliefs in the sanctity of nature, this is fine if they are alone or around others who share that belief. But when they bring their potentially disease-ridden bodies into a public place, they are playing Russian roulette with other people's lives - particularly children who are in greater danger from many communicable illnesses. It then becomes legitimate to say he cannot enter a public place whilst he is unvaccinated.

As John Stuart Mill wrote: "The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others." (On Liberty 1859/1974:68). I may have mentioned elsewhere that Mill is a legal genius, well ahead of his time, and although there are some problems with his theories which future scholars have had to iron out, the principle stands as a really useful one to live by. Do as you please, but when it starts to endanger others, your right to individuality ends. Mill would have supported compulsory vaccination.

Herd immunity

When a high enough proportion of people (typically 95-100% is quoted) are immune to an illness, the remaining 0-5% are safe too - after all, the disease is really uncommon and unlikely to be spread around. If I'm unvaccinated, but all the people I come into contact with are immune to an illness, then I'll never get the illness, because they'll never get the illness.

That's the theory, at least. For some illnesses, this is absolutely true, but I think there might be some illnesses which an immune person can still carry and pass on to others (I'm not totally sure about this though - maybe I'm just remembering that scene in 28 Days Later where the immune children passed on the zombie sickness to their mother?!)

Anyway, even if no one can carry an illness they're immune to, the herd immunity argument only works when the number of people immune to the illness is very high. If only 1% of people are susceptible to measles because everyone else is vaccinated, then there's only a very slim chance of coming into contact with another unvaccinated person - and a slimmer chance still that the unvaccinated person just so happens to be contagious at that moment.

But as the number of unvaccinated people rises, the chance of catching the illness increases. Vaccination against measles among UK children now stands at around 90% - one of the worst uptake rates of any developed country. Herd immunity to measles has been lost.

Some people can't be vaccinated, because they have an autoimmune disease or something similar. And babies aren't vaccinated against every illness the moment they leave the birth canal, but rather, they receive vaccinations in their first few months of life. This means that young babies and some older children and adults are susceptible to preventable illnesses. Why should their health be risked because S decides not to vaccinate their child and instead rely on herd immunity? The herd immunity approach should be reserved for those and only those who cannot be vaccinated for health reasons. Everyone who is able to be vaccinated should be vaccinated.

Smallpox and Measles

Child with smallpox

Does anyone remember smallpox? I don't. No one I know - indeed no one in the entire world - has had smallpox during my lifetime.

In the 20th century, smallpox was responsible for 300-500 million deaths worldwide; in 1950, there were an estimated 50 million cases of smallpox each year. I'm not a mathematician, but that seems like quite a lot. Yet in the last 40 years, there have been 0 cases of smallpox in the world, and it's all thanks to a worldwide vaccination programme. Without the vaccination programme, it would be highly likely that some members of my family and yours would have died from smallpox.

Measles hasn't been eradicated, and is still out there in the world doing its thing. It isn't just getting a bit spotty and feeling under the weather for a few days: it's horrendous, and can be fatal. In 2016, an estimated 90,000 people died of measles worldwide, and plenty of others suffered terribly with the disease, and were left deaf, blind, and with profound physical disabilities or even brain damage.

Wouldn't it be nice if measles went the way of smallpox, and we could eradicate it forever? It could be done through vaccination, if enough people were on board. It certainly seems as though a small but significant group of anti-vaxxers are trying to save measles from extinction, in much the same way that we might save whales and tigers from the brink. They are going out of their way to allow the disease to spread and remain alive, and they take to the streets to campaign, to get others to join their crew.

I would never wish illness or death on anyone, and I hope that anti-vaxxers never have to suffer the heartbreaking situation where their children die from a preventable disease simply because they refused to vaccinate them.... but some of them will die. Moreover, some newborn babies and people with autoimmune disorders who cannot be vaccinated will also die, simply because the anti-vaxxers wouldn't believe the science. It's a tragedy. A preventable tragedy.

Is it OK to ask whether a woman has kids?

People have made a claim in recent years that no one should ask a woman whether she has children, whether she's planning on having (more) children, and why (not). The claim is that having children is a personal issue which can be very upsetting for some women to talk about, whether they are being asked by strangers or close family members. Below I consider whether these claims are justified: is it really so bad to ask these questions?

Do you have kids?

For many years I couldn't imagine myself as a mother – nor indeed was I sure I wanted to become one. In my 20s, particularly after I'd been in a relationship for a few years, people would ask about whether I was planning on getting married, and whether I planned on having children. Although I found the questions a little tiresome, I gave my answer (‘no’ or ‘I don’t know’) and it was usually met with acceptance. Luckily for me I was surrounded by people who didn't pressure me or try to guilt me into following the conventional path of marriage and children. If I had been subjected to frequent questioning and pressure from my family, friends or even strangers, this could have been unbearable. So I can wholly understand why it is so annoying for people who are frequently on the receiving end of pressure to produce offspring.

During my childless years, strangers also occasionally asked me whether I had kids, and I didn't really mind this, it's a reasonable question to ask of a woman in her 20s or beyond. I wasn’t berated for being unmarried and childless, but I used to have to field the questions about why I didn’t have children, and those were more frustrating, as though I had to explain and justify why I hadn’t procreated yet. After all, parenting is (in many societies, at least) a lifestyle choice and not a moral requirement. So asking someone whether they are a mother seems permissible, but continuing to question them about why they are or aren’t a mother becomes something else. (Analogously, asking someone if they’re a vegetarian is reasonable, but asking “why are you vegetarian?” is infuriating. No one should have to justify their food intake any more than their procreation status, but that’s another post for another day). What we can avoid, and indeed should avoid, are the ‘why’ questions about someone is childless. When someone says they don't have any children, the whys and wherefores of their situation are no one’s business but their own. Asking whether they have children is engaging in small talk; asking why they don't have children is prying and pressuring.

Making connections 

People make connections with others by talking. It's how friendships build up, and conversations often make the day more pleasant and less boring. Generally, small talk focuses on elements of people's lives or the news – look at the weather, what's your job, where do you live, and suchlike. Asking someone whether they have children is in this category, it seems. As a mother, I know that talking about children to someone else who has children is a great way to find common ground and build a rapport. How else could I find out that we have this in common if I weren’t to ask them if they have kids? If someone asks another person whether they have kids and the answer is yes, this will probably be followed up with questions such as how many, boys or girls, how old are they, and so on. This is how people converse and make friends, and this should not be prevented.

There are of course some questions that are out of bounds for strangers to ask one another, for example about their sex lives, or their toileting habits. These are highly personal questions which would rightly be met with shock and condemnation if they were to be asked in most situations, but whether or not a person has children is not in this league. “Do you have any kids?” is much more similar to “What’s your job?” or “Do you have any pets?” than it is to “How often do you have sex?”

But childlessness can be a touchy subject. And there are many reasons why a woman might not have children. (The same is true of a man, but I don't think childless men are questioned and judged in quite the same way as a childless woman is: after all, a woman's sole function on earth is to raise children, right? (*sarcasm)) 

So, why doesn't S have children? Perhaps she doesn't have enough money to support a child; perhaps she is single and has no partner with whom to conceive a baby; perhaps she has chosen to focus on her career rather than motherhood; perhaps she is not attracted to men; perhaps she's planning on having children, but just not right now; or perhaps she simply does not like children and doesn't want to have any! These (and many others) are perfectly legitimate reasons for someone not to have a child. And it may well be the case that if these are the reasons someone doesn't have children they may feel comfortable saying these to family members or strangers. 

But there may also be people who would really like to have a child but for some reason they don't. For example, perhaps she or her partner may have a health condition which makes it difficult or impossible to conceive; perhaps she has been pregnant but suffered miscarriage or stillbirth; perhaps she had one or more children who have now died; perhaps she has gone through a divorce and not been given custody of her children; or perhaps her children have been taken into care because she was an inadequate parent. These are not likely to be topics of conversation which someone is happy to explain to strangers, and it is understandable why someone in one of these situations would hate being asked whether they have kids, and I have every sympathy for these people.

"I just get so upset when I think about the rain"

However, anything can be a touchy subject: any question which someone asks to another person in the process of small talk could potentially be upsetting. For example, suppose I strike up a conversation with a woman about the weather, complaining that it's raining again - this may seem to be an innocuous conversation starter, but she may find the conversation upsetting for some reason. For example, perhaps her partner is a meteorologist and she is just discovered he's been cheating; perhaps her daughter slipped when it was raining and fell under a bus and was killed; perhaps she is on the way to her sister's wedding and the rain is going to ruin the day; perhaps when it rains she is reminded of the time she was raped in the pouring rain; or perhaps she was talking about the rain when her mother had a stroke and has been institutionalised ever since. Any of these could be the case, and this could mean that my chatting about the rain upsets the person I'm talking to. However, the mere possibility that someone may be upset by talking about the rain should not preclude us from talking about the rain to anyone.

If mere chit chat about the rain could upset people, then it is easy to see how asking someone about their job, or whereabouts they live, or whether they have any pets, could be even more distressing topics of conversation, after all, they may have lost their job, or maybe they're about to have their home repossessed, or maybe their dog just mauled a child to death - who knows? The same can be said for asking them whether they have children. It might upset them, but given that most people are not upset or offended by being asked whether they have kids, it is reasonable to ask the question. I cannot allow the fact that someone might be upset by talking about children prevent me from asking them whether or not they have children. (As suggested above, interrogating them about why they don't have children is something quite different indeed. The why questions are just prying, and imply judgement too.)

The verdict

This hasn't been my most eloquent or philosophically flawless argument, but I think it is intuitively correct: we need to make a judgement about the chance that someone would be offended, versus the opportunity of building a rapport. "How often do you have anal sex?" is quite likely to offend, and minimally likely to build a rapport, whereas asking about the weather is very unlikely to offend, but doesn't build much of a rapport either. "Do you have kids?" is a reasonable way to build a rapport with someone, and although it carries the possibility of upsetting a minority of people, this should not preclude us from asking it - so long as we don't interrogate others about why they do or do not have kids.