Alec McFarlane - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Alec McFarlane
Independent, 2023
This fourth installment of the analytical series is contemporaneous where I am now writing about ... more This fourth installment of the analytical series is contemporaneous where I am now writing about one of Harvard University president Claudine Gay's papers from 2010. Co-written with Jennifer Hochschild, this paper has sequential relevance to my series that can be found in its very title: Is Racial Linked Fate Unique? Comparing Race, Ethnicity, Class, Gender, and Religion.
The reader that has followed my series and checked my piece on human evolution knows that the title is revealing in its predetermination; the fiat accompli element; the prerequisite of race and color.
Independent, 2023
The contemporary social justice imperatives are not wrong in and of themselves, rather the proble... more The contemporary social justice imperatives are not wrong in and of themselves, rather the problem is about the practical inability to answer causation. Social justice and civil rights movements are not wrong to want to address the effect or the consequences but they largely lack the practical capacity to address causation and this is legendary. There are, for instance, United Nations (UN) studies of multination, multi-year, social justice movements that illustrate that about 90% of them fail. And why? Because they fail to address causation.
Independent, 2023
This essay was motivated by and written in Medium and it is being introduced as the second of the... more This essay was motivated by and written in Medium and it is being introduced as the second of the Analytical Series because it takes directly from AI or Artificial Intelligence and expounds upon the premise that underlies the difference between teaching something as fiat accompli and the act of educating people. In this essay I analyze the premise behind two disparate papers presumably looking to endeavor the same objective-making right a wrong by way of "truisms".
Independent, 2023
This particular paper is being re-published on Academia as the first part of a series that analyz... more This particular paper is being re-published on Academia as the first part of a series that analyzes various other publications, papers, conferences among the literati. This paper, "The Road to Hell is Paved with Good Intentions" has been chosen for its unifying nature-believe it or not-of the subject matter of AI or Artificial Intelligence.
My use of the word "unifying" is about bringing together existing knowledge. The thing is not so much "knowledge" itself but what we do with it.
This particular paper is also unifying in that it gives a common denominator to various subject matters that are otherwise considered exclusive silos: The silo of racism; the silos of sexism and sexuality; the silos of disability; the silo of deafness; the silo of religiosity; the political silos of the liberal and the conservative, liberal or democrat, free or unfree, etcetera. The question is just this: Will AI amplify fallacies or will AI amplify truisms? What AI proves, to date, is that there is nothing that we didn't put in there. The fear of AI in the future is not about domination from "mad machines", but rather about the "sane machines" we made that propagate fallacies that are in turn used to perpetuate certain belief systems.
Part of what I illustrate is that some of these belief systems work, to a certain point, but after that they have no practical relevance. Take, for instance, science and medicine and the fact that they are getting skewed for want of some socially constructed notion of what constitutes a human being.
Notes to the reader:
1 This paper was originally written in November of 2020 and addressed, privately, to certain leaders of the program at the University of Maryland.
2 This paper was first published, or made public, via Medium.com on December 10, 2023.
3 This paper needs to be read in conjunction with the few of my other published papers, beginning with my piece on human evolution aka "[Recast and Extrapolated] Exploring Human Origins: Promoting a National Conversation based on a Partnership between the American Library Association and the Smithsonian." [McFarlane, 2022], "The Proactive Challenge" [McFarlane 2016], "Deafness as a Great Equalizer" [ABC-CLIO 2023], and "The Notion of Two Sides and the Act of Indoctrination" [McFarlane 2023]. Taken together, these five papers (the four I cite and the one I post here) should illustrate the same thing five different ways.
4 The forthcoming series that will build off of this initial post are all about practical analysis aka supposition and falsification, conjecture and refutation, and/or critical analysis and the if-then proposition. The ultimate if-then proposition is just this: If we want to solve problems, then what are we doing?
5 The many analyses are intended to show the unironic nature of what we are doing when we propagate certain ideologies in lieu of critical thinking and intellectual freedom.
6 The sequential list of papers under the analytical series is intended to show the same thing many different ways in order to substantiating an underlying premise of understanding what exists and understanding what we make of what exists-the existential and the psychological.
7 Last but not least, this publication series are all parts of my forthcoming book, The Theory of Relative Absurdity that began by analyzing the fallacies of deafness-the literal notion of what it means to be deaf some 15 years ago.
Private, 2022
[This letter was originally addressed to members of the American Library Association (ALA) and is... more [This letter was originally addressed to members of the American Library Association (ALA) and is intended to address current issues of race and racism.]
The endeavor of any club, society, association, academic, religious, institutional, state or federal government pursuit is essentially the same in terms of declaration, they all want to solve problems. As information professionals concerned with the facts and opposed to misinformation, disinformation, and pseudo scientific information, it follows that our larger concern should be with the tangible; we are supposed to be the proprietors of tangible facts. The facts themselves are not absolutes; the facts themselves are not good or bad, right or wrong, moral or immoral, they just are... What we make of them is the real differentiator.
As an explicit matter of intellectual freedom, we must first define freedom along with belief and responsibility: We are free to believe whatever we want but we are alone responsible for said belief. It follows that we want to understand belief as the thing that gives way to what we think, say, and do. Ultimately, what we do is the issue at hand. And where does the belief that gives way to what we think, say, and do come from? The same place bias comes from: our life circumstances. Bias is human nature.
American Library Association, 2016
This paper was used to facilitate a member-based resolution that was passed, in a modified form, ... more This paper was used to facilitate a member-based resolution that was passed, in a modified form, in 2017 at the American Library Association (ALA) where I am a member. The paper was written in 2016 and uses the ALA Annual Report of 2015 to illustrate how we can leverage Pubic-Private Partnerships (P3) in order to effect change. In this paper I use a particular community --those otherwise deaf-- as an example but the larger rationale behind P3 systems work the same way for any subject and any community.
This paper has been lightly edited for punctuation and grammar and the original can be found via The WayBack Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20160302135019/http://connect.ala.org/node/249779
American Library Association Conference Accessibility Task Force, 2016
Books by Alec McFarlane
ABC-CLIO, 2023
Chapter Contribution: "Deafness as a Great Equalizer", Chapter 6 pp.129-161 The idea of deafne... more Chapter Contribution: "Deafness as a Great Equalizer", Chapter 6 pp.129-161
The idea of deafness is often confused when people are classified by hearing levels, communication modalities, or culture. Deafness is neither a hearing level, nor a communication modality, nor a culture. Rather, deafness is really about the lack of sound—by any measure. When taken at its simplest meaning using first principles, one should realize that the prevalence of people who are affected by deafness is greater than we might have thought. The World Health Organization (WHO, 2019) says that there are about 466 million people worldwide who are deaf—defined as someone suffering a loss of 40db or more, 30db or more for infants.
ISBN/UPC 978-1-4408-5907-6
Independent, 2023
This fourth installment of the analytical series is contemporaneous where I am now writing about ... more This fourth installment of the analytical series is contemporaneous where I am now writing about one of Harvard University president Claudine Gay's papers from 2010. Co-written with Jennifer Hochschild, this paper has sequential relevance to my series that can be found in its very title: Is Racial Linked Fate Unique? Comparing Race, Ethnicity, Class, Gender, and Religion.
The reader that has followed my series and checked my piece on human evolution knows that the title is revealing in its predetermination; the fiat accompli element; the prerequisite of race and color.
Independent, 2023
The contemporary social justice imperatives are not wrong in and of themselves, rather the proble... more The contemporary social justice imperatives are not wrong in and of themselves, rather the problem is about the practical inability to answer causation. Social justice and civil rights movements are not wrong to want to address the effect or the consequences but they largely lack the practical capacity to address causation and this is legendary. There are, for instance, United Nations (UN) studies of multination, multi-year, social justice movements that illustrate that about 90% of them fail. And why? Because they fail to address causation.
Independent, 2023
This essay was motivated by and written in Medium and it is being introduced as the second of the... more This essay was motivated by and written in Medium and it is being introduced as the second of the Analytical Series because it takes directly from AI or Artificial Intelligence and expounds upon the premise that underlies the difference between teaching something as fiat accompli and the act of educating people. In this essay I analyze the premise behind two disparate papers presumably looking to endeavor the same objective-making right a wrong by way of "truisms".
Independent, 2023
This particular paper is being re-published on Academia as the first part of a series that analyz... more This particular paper is being re-published on Academia as the first part of a series that analyzes various other publications, papers, conferences among the literati. This paper, "The Road to Hell is Paved with Good Intentions" has been chosen for its unifying nature-believe it or not-of the subject matter of AI or Artificial Intelligence.
My use of the word "unifying" is about bringing together existing knowledge. The thing is not so much "knowledge" itself but what we do with it.
This particular paper is also unifying in that it gives a common denominator to various subject matters that are otherwise considered exclusive silos: The silo of racism; the silos of sexism and sexuality; the silos of disability; the silo of deafness; the silo of religiosity; the political silos of the liberal and the conservative, liberal or democrat, free or unfree, etcetera. The question is just this: Will AI amplify fallacies or will AI amplify truisms? What AI proves, to date, is that there is nothing that we didn't put in there. The fear of AI in the future is not about domination from "mad machines", but rather about the "sane machines" we made that propagate fallacies that are in turn used to perpetuate certain belief systems.
Part of what I illustrate is that some of these belief systems work, to a certain point, but after that they have no practical relevance. Take, for instance, science and medicine and the fact that they are getting skewed for want of some socially constructed notion of what constitutes a human being.
Notes to the reader:
1 This paper was originally written in November of 2020 and addressed, privately, to certain leaders of the program at the University of Maryland.
2 This paper was first published, or made public, via Medium.com on December 10, 2023.
3 This paper needs to be read in conjunction with the few of my other published papers, beginning with my piece on human evolution aka "[Recast and Extrapolated] Exploring Human Origins: Promoting a National Conversation based on a Partnership between the American Library Association and the Smithsonian." [McFarlane, 2022], "The Proactive Challenge" [McFarlane 2016], "Deafness as a Great Equalizer" [ABC-CLIO 2023], and "The Notion of Two Sides and the Act of Indoctrination" [McFarlane 2023]. Taken together, these five papers (the four I cite and the one I post here) should illustrate the same thing five different ways.
4 The forthcoming series that will build off of this initial post are all about practical analysis aka supposition and falsification, conjecture and refutation, and/or critical analysis and the if-then proposition. The ultimate if-then proposition is just this: If we want to solve problems, then what are we doing?
5 The many analyses are intended to show the unironic nature of what we are doing when we propagate certain ideologies in lieu of critical thinking and intellectual freedom.
6 The sequential list of papers under the analytical series is intended to show the same thing many different ways in order to substantiating an underlying premise of understanding what exists and understanding what we make of what exists-the existential and the psychological.
7 Last but not least, this publication series are all parts of my forthcoming book, The Theory of Relative Absurdity that began by analyzing the fallacies of deafness-the literal notion of what it means to be deaf some 15 years ago.
Private, 2022
[This letter was originally addressed to members of the American Library Association (ALA) and is... more [This letter was originally addressed to members of the American Library Association (ALA) and is intended to address current issues of race and racism.]
The endeavor of any club, society, association, academic, religious, institutional, state or federal government pursuit is essentially the same in terms of declaration, they all want to solve problems. As information professionals concerned with the facts and opposed to misinformation, disinformation, and pseudo scientific information, it follows that our larger concern should be with the tangible; we are supposed to be the proprietors of tangible facts. The facts themselves are not absolutes; the facts themselves are not good or bad, right or wrong, moral or immoral, they just are... What we make of them is the real differentiator.
As an explicit matter of intellectual freedom, we must first define freedom along with belief and responsibility: We are free to believe whatever we want but we are alone responsible for said belief. It follows that we want to understand belief as the thing that gives way to what we think, say, and do. Ultimately, what we do is the issue at hand. And where does the belief that gives way to what we think, say, and do come from? The same place bias comes from: our life circumstances. Bias is human nature.
American Library Association, 2016
This paper was used to facilitate a member-based resolution that was passed, in a modified form, ... more This paper was used to facilitate a member-based resolution that was passed, in a modified form, in 2017 at the American Library Association (ALA) where I am a member. The paper was written in 2016 and uses the ALA Annual Report of 2015 to illustrate how we can leverage Pubic-Private Partnerships (P3) in order to effect change. In this paper I use a particular community --those otherwise deaf-- as an example but the larger rationale behind P3 systems work the same way for any subject and any community.
This paper has been lightly edited for punctuation and grammar and the original can be found via The WayBack Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20160302135019/http://connect.ala.org/node/249779
American Library Association Conference Accessibility Task Force, 2016
ABC-CLIO, 2023
Chapter Contribution: "Deafness as a Great Equalizer", Chapter 6 pp.129-161 The idea of deafne... more Chapter Contribution: "Deafness as a Great Equalizer", Chapter 6 pp.129-161
The idea of deafness is often confused when people are classified by hearing levels, communication modalities, or culture. Deafness is neither a hearing level, nor a communication modality, nor a culture. Rather, deafness is really about the lack of sound—by any measure. When taken at its simplest meaning using first principles, one should realize that the prevalence of people who are affected by deafness is greater than we might have thought. The World Health Organization (WHO, 2019) says that there are about 466 million people worldwide who are deaf—defined as someone suffering a loss of 40db or more, 30db or more for infants.
ISBN/UPC 978-1-4408-5907-6