David Colquhoun at U of T

Last Friday, January 25 2008, UK science professor David Colquhoun presented a talk at the University of Toronto, hosted by CFI:Ontario and the UofT Secular Alliance, entitled "Science in an Age of Endarkenment". While the silly title with a made-up word was alone enough to make me skip the talk, I attended the bi-weekly series with an open mind (as always) .

CFI exec Justin Trottier’s introduction was much quicker than usual, which was surprising and welcomed, and I sensed that he is getting a lot better at what must be a boring and repetitive task for him. The UTSA rep that followed was hesitant and awkward but you have to start somewhere and no one was listening anyways.

Colquhoun started his talk with a shriek of the microphone and continued with a gargling sound coughing every two seconds until one of the hosts stood up and adjusted the system. His inability to use his own powerpoint slides was distracting and I chuckled as I kept comparing him to a mumbling, bumbling grandpa who enjoyed ranting against everything he hates.

Although, to be fair, the topic was interesting (although CFI hosted a similar talk two weeks ago). Even though the speaker couldn’t articulate his position I felt he did a good job describing the homeopathic industry and how they scam some of the most vulnerable of today’s society. He continued by rallying against the university system for allowing these quacks to promote their trade (although he said he wouldn’t have a problem with them if they had the same rigorous scientific protocols that real science classes had to follow). He lost me when he started blaming the state of universities on corporations, which I found ironic since he is a pharmacologist whose career hinges on the drug industry.

He concluded by mentioning the power of the internet to affect change, with a special emphasis on bloggers, to which I almost felt bad comparing him to a mumbling, bumbling grandpa, especially since he joined us afterwards at a local pub.

Overall, the event was successful, filling three hundred seats, and, I hope, picking up a few more supporters for CFI. When I asked, most people found the topic interesting but didn’t think the speaker was very good. I’d like to see if CFI can find a speaker who hasn’t been brainwashed by socialism but I guess even a lonely young libertarian, stuck in a cesspool of economic ignorance, should be allowed his own utopian fantasies.

For some more positive reviews, see The Frame Problem, and Liberal Debutante.

Also check out the National Post article that appeared the day after the talk.

Institute for Liberal Studies seminar in Toronto

On Saturday, January 19, 2008, I attended a seminar presented by the Institute for Liberal Studies (ILS). I had never heard of the organization and only discovered it a few weeks ago when I searched "libertarian" in facebook and came across the group. Since they were hosting an event, I thought it would be nice to check them out to see if ,indeed, it were possible for libertarians to organize themselves. The theme of the day-long seminar was environmental issues and featured three speakers: Jim Harris (former Green Party leader), Dr. Pierre Desrochers of UofT, and Dr. Glenn Fox from the University of Guelph. The topic was appealing, since I am frustrated at the lack of debate in our society surrounding environmental issues, and I thought it would be nice to finally find some people who can cut through the socialist bullshit that has infected the environmental movement to present realistic and effective solutions to some of the problems we are facing.

Jim Harris spoke first and his presentation was almost exactly as I had predicted. As a motivational speaker by trade, he tried to tailor his talk to how we can use market forces to better the environment. While I agreed with his points about why industry can become more efficient when faced with increasing resource costs, he still seemed to think that more government legislation is the solution. His analysis of the peak oil phenomena (and how he thinks we are there now) was unconvincing but I applaud the effort since I'm sure he knew he was speaking to a skeptical audience. I liked how he demonstrated how some corporations have increased profits by reducing waste. I always thought environmental groups should focus their efforts on promoting innovation and efficiencies in industry rather than resorting to bullying corporations and whining to governments and Harris seemed to want to almost echo this idea.

The next presentation by Dr Desrochers (entitled "The Environmental Responsibility of Firms to Increase Profit") was entertaining and informative (especially for someone like me who has never taken economics classes). He began his talk by saying that there was no market failure (in direct opposition to the previous speaker), and quickly criticizes those who think that capitalism revolves around profits at the expense of the environment. This is obviously wrong since by destroying the environment, capitalists would destroy their market (thus eliminating profit, the sole objective of any capitalist). If you want to lose weight, you don't cut off your leg, he says in as an analogy. With this in mind, in an homage to Adam Smith, Dr. Desrochers presents the 'invisible green thumb', basically a symbol of how free market forces will protect the environment better than anything else. Again, efficiency is the key to improving the environment and he outlines examples of how a centrally planned system (and it's inherent inefficiencies) produces more waste and environmental degradation that a free market system. He criticized politicians and environmentalists for supporting inefficiencies and he offered the 100 mile diet as an example of how you could be producing more waste by trying to be environmentally conscious. He wonderfully concludes his presentation by saying that if we let people be creative and reward them for innovation and effort, we can rely on a decentralized system to protect the environment.

The third presentation by Dr. Glenn Fox was similar to the previous in that it was primarily presented as a basic economics lecture. He focused on how property rights is the key to a cleaner environment. By letting people own sections of our environment, we can trust them to not destroy it. He points to the privatization of the fishing industry in Iceland as an example. When the Icelandic government assigned shares to every fishing company (that can be bought and sold), and let them set their own quotas, the result was a decrease in fish catches, since the industry knew that they would profit more in the future if they let the fish stocks grow (hey Newfoundland, look this up!). He concludes by saying that the free market is often misunderstood and that it has an ethical component that its opponents neglect.

Overall, I enjoyed the three presentations and I gathered that they were also well received by the audience. My only advice, from an activist's point of view, is that we can't focus solely on economics to prove our point. If we are to convince people to take more responsibility for their lives and reduce government, we can't throw a bunch of fancy terminology in their faces because people are far too busy with their own lives to teach themselves basic economic theory. The introductions were short and to the point, which is normally appreciated. However, I would have liked more details about the hosting organization (who they are, what they represent, what they plan on doing, etc.) for newbies like me, and the absence of these details led me to believe that most people in the room knew each other already, thus giving the place an eerie cult-like feeling but the discussion groups that followed each presentation helped liven things up (and were as interesting as the presentations themselves). I wish the ILS luck and hope to see many similar seminars in the future.

James Alcock speaks at CFI:Ontario

Last night, January 11, 2008, psychology professor James Alcock presented a talk entitled "The Appeal of Alternative Medicine at CFI:Ontario.

I don’t see much threat in alternative medicine since, to me; the believers are the only ones who are getting hurt. People should be free to waste their lives and money on whatever they want and I have enough things happening in my life to care about yours. Since I’ve also taken more than my fair share of science lectures in university, I assumed this would be another boring talk about a boring subject.

For the most part, my predictions were accurate, although the talk was still entertaining and I sensed that the almost full house found the subject interesting.

Throughout the longer-than-necessary introductions about upcoming events at CFI (anyone can look them up on the website), James Alcock’s numerous credentials and experiences were laid out ad nauseum to a point where I sometimes think these talks are more about promoting the speakers than promoting the subject.

Alcock introduced his talk with a movie he took in China about a Qi Gong master who looks more like the guy at the night club on Special K than an ancient healer. The powerpoint slides that contained the bulk of the lecture were a little lame (Don’t ever attach sound to your presentation!) although he routinely included applicable cartoons that lightened an otherwise dull performance.

Alcock presented a good history of the medical profession, noting that we really haven’t changed much over the last thousand years. He noted how magic developed in ancient times to fill the gaps of our knowledge and how these eventually evolved into religion.

I dozed off a little throughout the history bits but from what I understood, the Greeks were the first to use evidence based techniques to solve problems but the Romans didn’t continue these techniques so when the Christians took over, Europe had lost most of its problem solving skills. Luckily, the (comparatively) progressive Islamic nations held onto the old Greek textbooks while Europe buried itself under Christianity for a few hundred years. Alcock did like to throw in some useless but interesting trivia every few minutes (Did you know that Muslims built the first mental hospital?).

Alcock continued with the rise of university-based education that eventually led to the famous Flexner’s Report that states that doctors should be trained by scientists, not by doctors (it was previously customary for doctors to train by apprenticeship). Next was the rise of pharmaceuticals where doctors now seem to prescribe a drug for everything rather than actually treating patients.

Alcock’s main thesis was that alternative medicine’s current popularity is due to the lack of patient care. Doctors today tend to ask you a few questions and then prescribe you a drug. There is little patient contact and people tend to leave the doctor’s office confused. Since alternative medicine practitioners seem to actually care about the patient, the patient automatically feels more comfortable, completely ignoring the fact that the medicinal part is complete bullshit. This is an interesting point, since it leads to the argument that if we were to privatize our health care industry, the doctors might want to actually find out what’s wrong with you rather than push you out as quickly as possible (under our socialist system, doctors get paid on the quantity of care, not the quality).

In his section about the current state of universities, Alcock attacked post-modernism, which seemed out of place but not surprising since science-minded people hate others who rely on emotion rather than facts. He also criticized his students for having lost the ability to write which I agree completely since I can remember trying to proofread my engineering classmates’ undergrad thesis papers only a few years ago.

Alcock concludes by criticizing the government’s self-regulation rules that give pseudo-scientific ‘professions’ like chiropractors their own government funded agency, thus also giving them legitimacy in the eyes of the people. His overall message seemed to be that people want to avoid pain, rather than work hard for a cure. I interpret this message as people are too stupid and lazy to treat themselves effectively, so they look for whatever is the quickest and easiest way that makes them feel better even though they really never will.

Oh well, as my first paragraph mentions, as long as people want to waste their own time and money, they should be free to do as they please. My only complaint is that since our health care is publically funded, I end up paying when these alternative methods fail and people end up visiting the real doctors too late, thus making treatment more expensive.

Overall, Alcock stayed within his area of expertise and seldom strayed even when asked by members of the audience (he was often asked questions only a doctor should answer. Alcock is a Psychologist). During the Q and A, he answered the questions effectively and with confidence and always seemed in control throughout his presentation. Although I didn't find the topic interesting, Alcock did a good job presenting his ideas and most people seemed to enjoy themselves so I imagine the evening was successful.