Making the Unthinkable Thinkable

Here's something I am struggling with at the moment. 

I am, by and large, in favour of people thinking, and indeed thinking for themselves (as my frequent posts about Nancy Kline's Thinking Environment testify).  Likewise, I am in favour of free speech, and deeply suspicious of those who try to stop others from saying things they do not wish to have said.

And yet... I think there are boundaries. Indeed, I am sure there are. The obvious ones about inciting to violence or criminal activity are easy. But that's not where my dilemma lies. I am thinking more about the erosion of public morals; or to put it another way, the undermining of values that underpin a civilised society. 

Until fairly recently, for example, there was a broad consensus that suicide is not good. It is not good for the individual, nor for his or her immediate family and friends, nor for the wider society. But one of the results of the debate about Assisted Dying (and other cultural discourses about hyper-autonomy) is that that consensus is being eroded. 

The press have very strict guidelines about the reporting of suicides, because it is well-established that it can be socially contagious.  And such guidelines I believe to be a societal good. But the political debate about assisted suicide has been carried on vociferously and often intemperately.  And my point is this: that by making the unthinkable thinkable (in this case, suicide) we risk increasing the number of people who move from thought to action.

This is also (one of the reasons) why pornography is so harmful; and why we have a particular abhorrence of (and legal sanctions against) child pornography. For whilst it may be true that not all those who indulge in child pornography go on to act out their fantasies, it is certainly the case that nobody abused a child without fantasising about doing so first (I refer readers again to Gwen Adshead's excellent book The Devil You Know, about which I have blogged before).

And we have a new factor to make this problem considerably more complex: social media. Another book I have already blogged about is Jonathan Haidt's The Anxious Generation. It is worth reading his account of teenagers presenting as having Tourette Syndrome with a very particular tic: the word 'beans' - and how that came about: social contagion from a popular TikTok star, Evie Meg Field. For more on Tourette social contagion, see this piece in The Atlantic, by Helen Lewis. 

It turns out that young people (whose brains, of course, are not fully developed) are very susceptible; and that social media algorithms effectively bombard their developing brains with reinforcing content of whatever catches their imagination.

It seems self-evident that many of the teenage girls who suddenly discover that they are transgender are in fact suffering the same kind of social contagion; and that girls who have other psychological, emotional and cognitive comorbidities are particularly vulnerable. When trans was 'unthinkable' (ie hardly any teenagers had heard of it) this population reached other self-diagnoses, such as anorexia (which also became 'thinkable' - and then socially contagious - at a particular point in time).

So on the one hand, I believe that ideas are amongst the most precious - and worthy-to-be-safeguarded - things that we have; not least in Higher Education, which is my particular field of interest.  But clearly, ideas are also potentially harmful, not just at an individual level but also at a societal level. When we make what was unthinkable thinkable, the consequences can be catastrophic.

How do we square that circle?  I don't know; and what is worse, we don't know, as a society. Censorship is profoundly distasteful to me, except in extremis; and I have particular mistrust of anyone who thinks that he or she is the right person to do the censoring.  Yet the impact of harmful ideas (and I haven't even started to discuss toxic ideologies such as Andrew Tate's, or racism, which again seemed unthinkable for the vast majority of us until very recently etc...) is profound and vastly amplified by modern technology and the booming echo chambers that it creates. 

Perhaps we need some previously unthought ideas to address this...

How dangerous is AI?

 Over the weekend I watched The AI Dilemma on Youtube. It's about the risks of the race for AI supremacy (or at least advantage).

There's lots here to be concerned about, and their practical illustrations of the risks are nothing short of shocking: not least Snapchat's AI Friend feature cheerfully supporting the grooming and proposed rape of a 13 year old girl by a much older man. Likewise their claim that 50% of researchers working on AI think that there is at least a 10% chance that AI will cause the extinction of humanity.  Yes, read that again! 

I won't try to summarise their argument here; rather I recommend that you watch the video. But beyond that I am not sure what you (or I) can do.  But sharing this seems like a good start.

And perhaps, just perhaps, the existence of thoughtful critics like this (who are not Luddites, but rather wanting proper thought to precede mass rollout) may account for the fact Open AI's Sora - which looks fantastic, but also very dangerous - is not yet released, as it is undergoing safety checks.

One of the many worrying things that Harris and Raskin talk about in the video, however, is the degree to which the cat is already out of the bag, as it were, with social media. That is to say, that we have had a huge rollout of social media before we were collectively ready for it.  And whilst the benefits have been real and significant, the harms were largely unforeseen and even more significant. 

But as I say, I won't try to summarise their arguments here, merely exhort you to watch and think for yourself. 

 

Social Media for HE

John Denham, Sue Littlemore & Gordon Mackenzie
in the panel discussion

This week, we had the media and engagement module of Winchester Futures, featuring a stellar range of guests, including John Denham, Sue Littlemore, Gordon Mackenzie, Alastair Bruce and Alastair Stewart.

John, Sue and Gordon, along with Sam Jones, the University's Head of Communications, were discussing how we can influence policy and practice.  Their insights and experience shed a great deal of light on the political process and appropriate ways to engage with civil servants, policy makers and ministers.

Alastair Bruce: Royal Herald
as well as distinguished broadcaster

The two Alastairs joined us for the subsequent interview skills practice: taking participants in small groups through the essential skills of TV interviews, and then interviewing each on camera. I had the pleasure of welcoming them, but I wasn't present for their interviews as I was working with other groups at the same time on radio interviews. However, all the reports were extremely positive, so we are most grateful for their time and expertise.

Alastair Stewart, stalwart of ITN

We also discussed social media,, with Vanessa Harbour and Debs Wilson sharing their knowledge and experience. I also contributed a bit, and promised participants a list of the links and resources that I mentioned. It occurred to me that other people in HE might find them useful, so I post them here, as a reference point.

One of the points we discussed was the importance of curating your online profile. Even if you have no intention of engaging in social media in support of your work, it is important to know, and to manage, what people will see if they search for you online. Here is a useful checklist for that process.

We also talked about the range of ways in which one can engage. At one extreme is the passive consumer. At the very least, it is worth bookmarking THE, The Conversation, and Wonkhe.  Wonkhe's Monday Morning HE Briefing is worth subscribing to, as well.

If you want to look more seriously at how to use Social Media to support your research, you should have a look at Mark Reed's slides on this. Mark is an academic researcher who has developed a sideline in helping other academic researchers to increase their impact. His book, The Research Impact Handbook has a very valuable section on using social media, and the associated wwwsite is worth exploring, too.

If you want inspiration, have a look at the JISC's list of top 50 HE professionals using social media, here. The range of examples is extraordinary. Here I cite are just a few that caught my eye.

Cardiff University Medical School’s official Facebook page Cardiff C21 is now one of the most influential platforms of communication within the school. The page is used as an adjunct tool in medical education, and is estimated to reach over 70% of the School’s 1,400 medical students. Innovative content, thought provoking articles and other posts keep the content relevant and interesting to students. The team ran some research and discovered that:

    • 42% of students studied topics further due to posts on the page;

    • 26% applied for jobs and opportunities advertised on the page;

    • 47% attended an academic event advertised on the page;

    • 24% of responders joined a club or society due to work of the page;

    • 62% of respondents reported feeling either more or much more satisfied with the medical course as a result of using the page.

Or there is the Jisc-funded social media crowdsourcing project, The Great War Archive, which managed to collect 6,500 digitised items from the public in just 12 weeks.

I also liked the sound of a YouTube 'clone’ site YouTestTube.com (closed site for students), for bioscience students at Ulster University. Students in small groups of three or four make a reflective video documentary about one of the experiments they conduct; this is then uploaded to the site and shared with everyone on the module; and also #Vetfinals on Twitter: a revision club for vet students at Nottingham, where an expert tweets a clinical case for students to ‘solve’. 

Another valuable sites to explore, if you want more ideas, is the Oxford University Social Media Guide. It has 29 top tips for creating and managing effective social media channels.

 Finally, the Newcastle University Library Services site is excellent, showcasing how a huge range of different social media platforms can be used in support of research.

There are risks of course; one is reputational. The speed and vehemence of social media campaigns when one puts a foot wrong can be breathtaking (remember the Tim Hunt affair?)  The other is time: it is easy to get seduced into wasting a huge amount of time on social media. Both Mark Reed's material and the Oxford Top Tips have something to say about this.

But the benefits are also, potentially, enormous. The reach of social media is enormous; and academics who use it well can both spread their work and engage a huge public in ways hitherto unimaginable.