The Archive of Free Thinking

think – act – grow

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  • Productive or Paternalistic?

    “We very often fail to think as carefully about helping others as we could, mistakenly believing that applying data and rationality to a charitable endeavour robs the act of virtue.”

    William MacAskill

    Charities are information-rich and income-poor. They have deep knowledge of the people they serve, highly developed networks with experts and extensive relationships with donors. However, their mechanisms for raising funds, based on gifts or grants, frequently constrain their scale and impact. This article outlines an alternative approach, proposing that charities should act as catalysts for change. They should combine their knowledge of the needs of the people they serve with information from experts to create new services. As an example, a charity in the healthcare sector could develop a cancer treatment recovery service delivered at home using a combination of remotely delivered medical expertise, AI-driven care management and easy to use low cost diagnostics tools. Such services could be developed and provided by charities through a combination of gifts: donations of time and expertise, together with financial payments: governments buying the service or commercial healthcare organisations paying royalties to use the service. The article also argues that charities will require a new mindset to become catalysts for change. They will need to apply “data and rationality” to charitable endeavours and give up the idea that blurring the line between gifts and transactions, between charity and business, robs “the act of virtue”.

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  • To: Humans and Machines. Subject: Creating Creativity

    “Creativity is magic. Don’t examine it too closely.”

    Edward Albee

    For all the hype surrounding ‘generative’ AI, it remains apparent that AI, in its current form, is profoundly uncreative. It functions like a very sophisticated blender; it is able to mix up only what we put inside it. This is why there is such intense focus on training data and the definition of analytical rules; but the more we ‘feed’ the system, the more complex the blend becomes, while always remaining within defined boundaries. But creativity is about making something new and stepping outside existing frames. Using our blender metaphor, creativity is not pressing the ‘on’ button; it is in the choice made in selecting ingredients, it is in the aesthetic ingenuity of the designer, and the person who thought, ‘there has got to be a better way of enjoying fruit’. The machine is simply a physical expression of human creativity, a device that can do processes and probabilities much faster than a person, but is not, itself, a creative force.  

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  • A Board Question: Where Should the Money Go?

    “In the era of welfare capitalism, the enlightened corporation, not the labour union or the state, would spearhead the creation of a more benign industrial society.”

    Lizabeth Cohen

    In the early twentieth century, Industrial Paternalism, as a form of Welfare Capitalism, emerged as a new method of managing wealth distribution. This was a consequence of the rise of mass production, the growth of large corporations with increasing monopoly power, as well as the counter-reaction from workers and increasing industrial unrest. With the emergence of similar trends today: monopolisation, a widening wealth gap, ease of communication between workers (across both industries and countries), and new, disruptive technologies like AI, there is a need to return to the question faced by the twentieth-century industrialists. What does a company owe its employees and the communities they operate in?

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  • Can we ever go home?

    “The ache for home lives in all of us. The safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.” 

    Maya Angelou

    The importance of the home is indisputable. It is both a physical place and an emotional experience; somewhere which simultaneously protects us from the outside world and helps us to build the personhood and confidence to face it. Maya Angelou expresses this vitality in her statement, emphasising this importance by highlighting the essential and functional benefits of going ‘home’. The intertwining of the home and the self was further explored in Zofia Rydet’s important photograph exhibition, the ‘Sociological Record,’ at The Photography Gallery in London. Each photograph shows the extent to which ‘home lives in all of us’. These images capture how homes are profoundly shaped by the individuals living there and how, in turn, these individuals are shaped by their homes. As Frank Lloyd Wright stated, ‘we create our buildings and then they create us’.

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  • Do you know your place?

    ​​There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.

    Ernest Hemingway

    Hemingway’s perspective that there is ‘nothing noble in being superior’ challenges our devotion to hierarchy. He does not argue that there are no differences between men, but rather that the enforcement of these differences over others is not ‘noble’. There is something more true, more practical about the man who seeks his own development compared to the false idol of personal superiority. There is a human tendency towards hierarchy, apparent in the dangers of nationalism to the layers of superiority found even in small, niche groups. Sharon Traweek found hierarchies even in the culture of high-energy physicists, with theoretical physicists viewing themselves as more senior than experimental physicists, who in turn considered themselves more senior than data analytical scientists. This article argues that the existence of hierarchies in communities and groups can be harmful, resulting in judgmental behaviour, failure to listen and understand and a tendency to impose views. These issues of hierarchy are particularly damaging in social policy, including healthcare, housing and immigration, where they can result in ineffective programmes and the allocation of people to defined roles in society of either ‘giver’ or ‘recipient.’ The ‘givers’, the state, charities and ‘recipients’, groups or individuals, then become separated and stuck, repeating the same roles, with increasing dependence, loss of agency and disappointing outcomes. To address the issues resulting from these hierarchies, this article proposes a new approach, a ‘switching of hats’, whereby people deliberately and visibly move positions within the hierarchy, from ‘recipient’ to ‘giver’ or from ‘giver’ to ‘recipient’, to create greater empathy and understanding. This approach, over time, can break down the idea of hierarchy, superiority and separation. It offers the opportunity to transform the impact of social policies, the efficiency of government, the effectiveness of charities and the livelihood, the sense of worth and the ‘nobility’ of individuals. 

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  • The value of stories

    “Literature and fiction are two entirely different things. Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.”

    G.K. Chesterton

    Chesterton’s quote can be interpreted in four distinct ways. It is a criticism of intellectual elitism, a clarification of the distinctions between fiction and literature: between entertainment and insight, and between freedom of imagination and the prescribing of cultural values. It describes how Chesterton wrote his detective novels by combining fictional stories and moral purpose (the detective uncovering truth and ensuring justice). In another sense, it is also a heartfelt expression of the real human need for stories.

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  • The importance of understanding video games

    “They assimilate games into some other, more respectable category of human practice.” 

    C. Thi Nguyen

    Nguyen argues that comparing games to other art forms, rather than establishing and examining games within their own category, leads to an underestimation of their distinctiveness and importance. An importance which lies in a game’s unique quality as a medium; unlike films or theatre, a game is physiologically immersive, and only complete when played. Using the same analytical approaches as with film or theatre, because they involve moving images, is partial and inadequate. This article argues that the genre deserves more respect and a closer analysis of the relationship between the player and the game. Without specific analysis of how games work, they will not be understood, and the medium’s strengths and potential risks will not be appreciated or mitigated.

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  • The secret to better parks – a visual essay

    “Parks are not automatically anything”

    Jane Jacobs

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  • Are we drowning in data?

    “Data is like garbage. You’d better know what you are going to do with it before you collect it.”

    Mark Twain

    The conventional view on data and garbage is “garbage in, garbage out.” But Mark Twain raises a more fundamental point, that data is only as useful as its potential applications, and these must be thoroughly investigated before the collection begins. This is important because collecting data for the sake of having more data is wasteful of both time and money. Furthermore, focusing on data can distort behaviour, limit the development of new questions and challenging insights and also delay action. Twain’s warning is even more relevant today with our continuous focus on data collection, our increased ability to acquire data and AI generating new data. As a result, we need a new approach that redefines the relationship between data collection, measurement, insight and action, which is more focused on effectiveness and impact. Without such a transition, our ability to respond to social, economic and climate challenges will be constrained and will eventually stall.

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  • How to ‘energise’ politics

    “Agitation and mutability are inherent in the nature of democratic republics, just as stagnation and sleepiness are the law of absolute monarchies.”

    Alexis de Tocqueville

    Tocqueville observed that ‘agitation and mutability’ are features of societies responsive to the political needs of their people. This essay examines the fundamental forces that drive this change: injustice, knowledge and hope. It also argues that on their own, these forces are insufficient because the energy required to create change is often dissipated over time or lost through factional disagreements. As a result, there is a need for organising frameworks which maximise energy to ensure a functional democracy. They need to encourage collective action, reward involvement, drive focused effort and ensure continuous action. The analysis also reminds us that preserving democracy is an ongoing and demanding process, as Dwight Eisenhower stated, “History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid.” 

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