Do you need a Baloney Detection Kit?

Carl Sagan was the Professor of Astronomy and Space Sciences, and also the Director of the Laboratory for Planetary Studies at Cornell University. What made him really famous, however, was his book “Cosmos”, which became the best-selling science book ever published in English. The TV series based on the book has been seen by a billion people in 60 countries. He is also well known for his work with NASA during the Apollo Space Program and more recently in the search for extra-terrestrial life. Sadly Carl Sagan died in 1996 of a rare cancer at the young age of 62. By then he had received 22 honorary degrees for his contributions to science, literature, education and the preservation of the environment. His various awards and prestigious positions are simply too numerous to mention.

Recently, on a trip through Botswana and Namibia, I had the opportunity to re-read his last two books: The Demon-Haunted World and Billions & Billions. From the many gems these last works contain, there are two insights that I particularly want to share with you.

First insight: to date there is NO EVIDENCE of extra-terrestrial life! And please note that this comes from the man who convinced fellow scientists to support the search for life in our and other galaxies; and convinced nations to fund such a search. And the reason for his conviction that, as yet, no hard evidence exists is that Sagan was totally committed to the scientific method. He goes to great lengths to examine the claims of the “UFO” proponents – those who claim to have seen or photographed unidentified flying objects or “flying saucers”. He also examines the testimony of those (almost exclusively Americans!) who claim to have been abducted by “aliens”. All the evidence to date shows that these claims are either fraudulent or clever hoaxes or unsupported private anecdotes. None of them meets the rigorous criteria for hard evidence demanded by the scientific method. As a friend of Sagan’s commented: “Keeping an open mind is a virtue, but not so open that your brains fall out!”

When asked: “Do you believe there is extra-terrestrial intelligence?” Sagan gave his standard answer – there are lots of places out there, the molecules of life in their billions are everywhere. It would be astonishing if there weren’t extra-terrestrial intelligence. But, as yet, there is no compelling evidence for it. So we’ll just have to reserve judgement until the evidence is in. So he died longing for some credible evidence to suggest that other intelligent life exists “out there”, but nothing had surfaced. Nor has anything since.

Second insight: because we humans are so incredibly gullible we need a baloney detection kit! Sagan traces the story of human gullibility down through the ages, right to our present time. He shows convincingly that we humans are prone to believe the most astonishing nonsense on the scantiest of evidence (yes, us too!). We tend to live in a “demon-haunted world” in which Sagan suggests that science is a candle in the dark. In the course of their training, scientists are equipped with a baloney detection kit which is brought into use whenever new ideas or claims are offered for consideration. This detection kit may help us to sniff out some of the hogwash that modern society tries to get us to accept. Here are some of the tools for sceptical thinking contained in his kit.

·         Wherever possible ask for independent confirmation of the ‘facts’ being presented

·         Encourage debate on the claim by knowledgeable proponents of all points of view

·         Don’t trust arguments from authority – authorities have made many bad mistakes

·         Quantify whenever you can, as much as you can – measure everything!

·         If there’s a chain of argument, every link in the chain, including the premise, must work

·         Apply Occam’s Razor: the rule of thumb that urges us, when faced with two hypotheses that explain the data equally well, to chose the simpler

·         Ask whether the hypothesis can, at least in principle, be falsified. Claims that are untestable and unfalsifiable are usually not worth much

The Baloney Detection Kit also has a comprehensive list of logical fallacies. Here are a few of the better known ones to watch out for.

·         Attacking the arguer and not the argument! (e.g. Mr Vavi is an avowed communist so his objections to current economic policy need not be taken seriously)

·         Begging the question, also called assuming the answer! (e.g. we must institute the death penalty to discourage violent crime. But does the violent crime rate in fact fall when the death penalty is introduced?)

·          Excluded middle, or false dichotomy – considering only the two extremes in a continuum of intermediate possibilities. (e.g. “Sure, take his side; my husband’s perfect; I’m always wrong.” Or, “either you hate country living or you love it!”)

·         The Slippery Slope, related to the excluded middle. (e.g. if we encourage tourism, we’ll soon have busloads of visitors taking over the entire village)

Sagan’s energy in his last years was passionately focused on encouraging educators to ensure that their charges were adequately schooled in the scientific method and in the tools of rational argumentation. He firmly believed that humanity’s destruction of its own environment will only be halted if sufficient numbers of ordinary people understand the consequences of our attitudes and actions. He saw teaching science and logical reasoning in school as a key way to spread this necessary understanding. He is probably right!

A smorgasbord of universal human knowledge

Ken Wilber is one of the interesting living American philosophers. He is very different from the British Analytical philosophers on whom I cut my teeth. For starters Wilber is not an academic. He is not attached to any university having dropped out after his bachelor’s degree in chemistry and biology. He reads extremely widely and at age 24 wrote his first book, The Spectrum of Consciousness in which he sought to integrate knowledge from various, disparate fields. This has remained his broad goal in everything he has subsequently written (many books and articles) and done (he formed The Integral Institute in Denver, Colorado). The Integral Institute seeks to identify and understand the “moments of truth” and insights of many disciplines, East and West, and to weave these partial truths into an integrated vision of reality.

So, for example, his Brief History of Everything tries to integrate the partial visions of specialists into a new understanding of the meaning and significance of life (no small task!). His book A Theory of Everything seeks to present an integration of Business, Politics, Science and Spirituality. And his book, The Marriage of Sense and Soul strives to reconcile religion and science.

Here are a few of his insights.

First insight: our modern era has successfully differentiated the three major spheres of knowledge (art, morals and science), thus giving us freedom from religious, cultural and political oppression. Pre-modern society did not make this distinction. Consequently, Galileo had the Church censoring his scientific experiments and forcing him to change his tune on pain of death. And Michelangelo was in constant conflict with Pope Julius II about the types of figures he was allowed to represent in his art.

Today the dignity of modernity means that artistic expression is separate from the control of either morality or science. Art has its own rules of excellence. So, too, the field of morality and ethics. Questions of what is the right thing to do are decided by reasoned discussion and dialogue in each culture and society rather than imposed by any ecclesiastical or political institution. Similarly, scientific research takes place according to the methodologies decided by scientists – not by anyone else. 

The early Greeks, always worth consulting, got it right in talking about the Good, the True and the Beautiful, each sphere having its own language of discourse. Beauty (art, individual expression, contemplation) uses “I” language, it is the subjective domain with beauty in the “I” of the beholder. The Good, ethics, uses “we” language; it is part of the inter-subjective domain, of collective interaction and social awareness and justice. Truth, in the sense of objective, scientific truth is described in “it” language. Your brain and your cells are “its” whereas you are a unique “I”.

Second insight: the modern era has also dissociated the knowledge spheres of art, ethics and science; and science has colonised the other two. Wilber calls this the disaster of modernity. He wishes to accept the differentiation and integrate the three spheres of human reality; and he argues strongly against the move to totally dissociate the three, especially when science claims its truth is the sole one.

Like most modern philosophers Wilber is pro-science and wants to integrate its many truths in his vision of reality. However, he also gives full status to each individual’s interior life and argues strongly for our subjectivity and experiences of transcendence as being a valid source of knowledge. Also, morals and ethics are decided by communities and science has nothing to offer in this area of human knowledge because morality has its own legitimate methodology separate from that of science.

The bottom line is this: science is king in its own sphere – it is the only legitimate way of getting at the truth about the objective universe. And morality and ethics are correctly debated and decided by communities’ leaders, political/intellectual/legal, to discover the best way for them to conduct communal affairs equitably for all. Thirdly, artistic judgement and personal meditation have their own reasoned rules – usually encouraging people to act according to the rules if they want to know what is claimed by those who experience this sphere through the eye of contemplation.

Third insight: a universal spirituality requires that both science and religion give up a little. Our modern, current experience may well include deep, direct spiritual union with what we regard as the divine; God, Allah, Yahweh, The Absolute etc. This subjective experience cannot be pushed aside nor overridden by science.

However, pre-modern mythology must be given up if religion is to make sense to modern and post-modern cultures like ours. Moses did not part the Red Sea and Jesus was not borne by a biological virgin. Those claims in the light of scientific knowledge are bogus, and don’t do religion any good. Similarly, science must give up any pretence that the material universe that it deals with is the only reality there is. The spiritual knowledge obtained by direct experience rather than by dogmatic proclamation is an area of human knowledge that can be investigated and the evidence assessed.

Look, Wilber is not an easy cookie! He takes quite a bit of digesting, and as is probably obvious from my attempt to distil some of his essence, swallowing his thoughts is not without effort! But he does provide us with a stimulating smorgasbord of the True, the Good and the Beautiful and his challenge is that we try to experience the universe in all its richness rather than as a monochromatic flatland!

Are you striking the right notes?

Anthony Clifford Grayling is probably my favourite living British philosopher. He is a polymath who turns his razor-sharp intellect to hundreds of different contemporary situations, events, trends, beliefs and attitudes. And his analysis is always a penetrating reflection on whatever topic he tackles. He is Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck, University of London and a fellow of St Anne’s College, Oxford. AC Grayling has written over 20 books and edited 5 more. Although he is a serious academic philosopher, he also believes that philosophers should engage in public debate to bring a philosophical perspective to the issues of the day.

As part of his commitment to engage in public conversations, Grayling regularly contributes to newspaper columns and opinion pieces. These wide ranging miscellanies have been published in a series of books which I strongly recommend to anyone with an interest in how a philosophical approach is applied to life in the 21^st century. Also, his use of English is splendid, a real joy to read – no surprise as he is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature!

Because of the incredible breadth of his writings it is very difficult to pick just a few insights – there are so many. So I shall focus only on his insights into Socrates’ great question: “How should one live?”

First insight: a good life is a melodious one that strikes all the right notes. In talking about morality, Grayling suggests that instead of talking about “ideals” that we should strive for, we could better think of the good that we aspire to as analogous to musical notes which, when well assembled produce a harmony of quality. He suggests that there are at least seven notes that the best lives might seek to sound. These are the notes of meaning, intimacy, endeavour, truth, freedom, beauty and fulfilment. Let’s look a bit more at each of these notes that form the music of a life well-lived.

Meaning comes from identifying the values and goals that are deeply important to you and with which you write the narrative of your life as you live it. Intimacy concerns our deepest personal connections with others, our loves and friendships that sustain us. Endeavour means getting stuck in and doing something about your values and your goals. Truth is the note that entails facing up to the world as it is, not as you wish it would be. Freedom is essential to the good life as it makes us ultimately autonomous and responsible for our own choices. Independence of thought enables the well-lived life whereas dependent, un-free thinking results in us living like zombies. Beauty fundamentally enhances the good life; the quality of the setting in which we live can significantly affect the goodness of the lives we are living. Finally, fulfilment is the integration of the other six notes into a conscious project of trying to live well. In all this Grayling always advocates kindness and care for others as fundamental to the good life, as he sees our species as essentially social in nature.

Second insight: the great moral questions, the most urgent and important ones, are not about sex, drugs, unmarried mothers or gay marriage! They are, instead, about human rights, war and genocide, the arms trade, poverty in the Third World, corruption in high places and the ethical challenges posed by environmental problems caused by the heedless and insatiable rush for economic growth everywhere. These great moral questions are the ones that we should be tackling if we really want to live a good life! While his focus is on the big questions, he is not denying that some parochial concerns are important. For example, the horrific attitude of Zimbabwe to gay rights needs to be vigorously opposed. Also, any hint of child pornography must be rooted out and stopped by moral people everywhere.

Third insight: pleasure and duty are both integral parts of a flourishing life. Grayling’s latest book is titled: The Choice of Hercules. In the Late Renaissance and Enlightenment paintings of the myth, Hercules is approached by two young women, one handsome (Duty or Virtue) and the other beautiful (Pleasure or Vice). Given the morality of the day, he chooses Duty. But Grayling argues rigorously that the choice is a false dichotomy: both are part of a human life well-lived; both have much that is right and much that is wrong. What is clear is that the combination of what is right in both duty and pleasure suggests the essence of a good life.

So, what this great philosopher is advocating is this: see your life as a melodious blend of the seven notes, and ensure that you include both pleasure and duty in each note. And do spend mental and emotional energy addressing and tackling the great moral questions. And I say do look out for his books of collected articles: they are titled The Meaning of Things, The Reason of Things, The Mystery of Things and The Heart of Things. Enjoy!

Help turn your community from a beast to a beauty

I dislike all bureaucracies. Radical, freethinking, independent entrepreneurs all tend to detest the restrictive rules and regulations that seem essential to organisational existence. Equally abhorrent is the political posturing and power playing that consumes much of the energy generated by people in organisations. My past profession entailed consulting to organisations. Too often I got to see their shadow side. I saw good individuals, concerned contributors, even outstanding performers crunched by the crosscurrents caused by over-inflated egos, greedily grasping at positions that wield bureaucratic power and privilege. Evil and corruption sometimes thrive in the organisational beast.

On the other hand, organisations provide us with most of the benefits of an enjoyable life. So, we can detect a beauty in the beast! Without the organisations of the automotive, agricultural, oil, wine, clothing, housing, electrical and electronic, computer, communication industries, and a myriad of service industries, what quality of life would we have? Indeed, without the dreaded municipalities and their much-maligned councils, how would the planet’s ever increasing human population manage to distribute life’s mundane essentials such as water, electricity and sewerage and refuse removal? Our planet is now totally dependent on global and local organisations to provide people with life’s essentials.

The beauty of the beast is also very evident in the large number of excellent people who work tirelessly to deliver on the promises of their organisations, large and small. We see this in our neighbourhoods and communities within South Africa. We have wonderful people who work hard to ensure that our communities are more beauty than beast. Many of them are volunteer-based community organisations. We also tend to have a whole range of businesses that bolster our local economy and enrich our lives. What would we do without our general stores, our coffee shops and restaurants, our watering holes, speciality stores, galleries and movie houses?

Those who contribute time, energy, knowledge and skill to ensuring that our communities are a beautiful social and economic organism deserve the unreserved support of every resident. But every community is also a beast with a dark underbelly. Every social organism is! People can be incredibly painful and bitchy, and can spend more of their time focusing on the negatives than trying to contribute to the positives. They can also be very skilled at criticising without ever personally looking to get involved or contributing to finding the solutions. 

A possible antidote to the dark underbelly of any community is to try to define a common vision and set of values that everyone in the community will support (as opposed to specific laws or policies). A well-defined vision gives everyone a common goal to strive for, and a clear set of common values offers everyone a powerful guideline for acceptable behaviour.

 I feel that we as communities don’t spend enough time defining a vision and set of values that are common to all of us. We rather spend our time focusing on the specific issues that divide us. Just like most organisations, we jump too quickly into the specifics before we have thought through, and agreed, the broader vision and value set.

Now I am not saying it is easy to get a vision and value set agreed within a community, but I am saying it is worth the try (if my experience with some of South Africa’s most successful organizations is anything to go by). Why not try it at your next community meeting? You never know, you may just help transform it from a beast into a true beauty.

Smart thinking in crazy times

Most problems and issues that we face are complex and multi-faceted. Simple, straightforward solutions are seldom sufficient. And when we get into conflict answers are seldom easy and mostly muddled! Is there a way of thinking about our personal and community’s crises and conflicts that is clearer and smarter than most of our standard approaches? I think there is.

Ian Mitroff is a professor at the University of Southern California where he heads up the Centre for Crisis Management. He suggests that all problems display four perspectives; Scientific/Technical, Ethical/Spiritual, Personal/Social and Systemic/Contextual.

These four perspectives can be illustrated with a typical community issue: a dispute between two neighbours. And let’s say that the dispute is about the noise level of the classical music played by one of the neighbours, which he loves to play really LOUD to accompany cooking his Sunday lunch. This drives his next-door neighbours crazy. Their preference is to have a quiet Sunday morning listening to the church service on the radio and then reading the Sunday papers before going out to one of the restaurants for lunch. Clearly a “classical” conflict!

Now hopefully the quiet neighbours will have discussed their problem with the musical maniac and the two parties have amicably resolved their conflict. But what if one of them decided to treat the entire matter in a technical, right/wrong manner and “go the legal route?”

All disputes have a technical/scientific perspective. Some or other regulation will usually apply to an aspect of the dispute.  So, whatever the final outcome, the parties will need to take cognisance of a technical/scientific aspect to their problem. Sadly, most people too, too often only think of the technical or scientific perspective! However, there are always three other perspectives to consider, and if no attention is paid to them a purely technical solution is likely to make matters worse than before.

So instead of just calling in the police to measure the decibels of the offending classical CD’s, the neighbours also need to consider the personal/social perspective to the problem. When the police arrive with their decibel measuring equipment it is highly likely that personal relationships between next-door neighbours will deteriorate into acrimonious accusation and counter-accusation in which the ability to hear the other side flies out the window. And when other friends and neighbours of both parties take sides, the social ramifications of the conflict click in and could poison the neighbourhood vibe. But wait, there’s more!

Every problem, conflict or crisis is always part of a larger context or system. So, the noisy neighbour problem is a sub-set of many broader issues such as noise pollution, cultural clashes and diversity, community values and norms, constitutional rights and duties and eventually even broad human rights. Each of these wider contexts deserves debate prior to any precipitous actions on the part of the battling neighbours. And yes, there’s still more!

There is an ethical/spiritual perspective to every problem. Even though your neighbour is driving you bonkers, have you considered everything that you may have done or may be doing that is inconsiderate on your part, and which is adding fuel to the fire? In the light of this conflict what is the right thing to do? What is right for the longer-term well being of your irritating neighbour, yourself, your neighbourhood and all its people?

Perhaps we can learn something from practical academics like Mitroff. I certainly believe that I can improve my thinking about problems, issues, conflicts and crises by trying to consider all four perspectives. And I suspect that this approach might help all of us avoid the horrendous mistakes we are apt to make in the heat of the conflict moment.

Handling our community conflicts

Roger Fisher is the world’s leading thinker on negotiation and conflict resolution. He is Professor Emeritus of Law at Harvard University and Director of the Harvard Negotiation Project. Roger Fisher helped both the ANC and the National Party Government improve their negotiating approach and skills. He contributed significantly to our miraculously negotiated settlement. Roger co-authored the best book yet published on negotiation: Getting to Yes – negotiating agreements without giving in. It has already been translated into 20 languages and has helped millions of people turn adversarial haggling into constructive joint problem solving. And it’s not aimed at the academic world – it’s written for you and me.

Why do I think Roger Fisher’s insights are relevant to us 17 years after the start of democracy? Well, one just has a look at how much social conflict is currently taking place at the community level to get the answer.

If I use my own village as an example, it is an incredibly cosmopolitan cauldron of contesting cultures and interest groups. Consider our rich diversity of nationalities and cultures: English, Irish, Scottish, German, Dutch, Swiss, American, Afrikaner and African. We also have different racial and economic groups: black, coloured, white; unemployed, working people, middle class and an affluent class. Each of these groupings has its own legitimate interests and a fair number of them have conflicting interests.

A proposed development in what has historically been viewed as communal area is a classic case of conflicting interests. It is a strip of land that many of the poorer community use for grazing for their cattle and horses, while others love walking their dogs there. When the possibility of a new development on this communal land emerged, some groups focused their attention on the job creation opportunities; others on the increased business that could be derived from extra people and services required for the extra houses; others focused exclusively on the environmental impact of this development; and yet others focused on the impact on the currently strained infrastructure, the property market and so on.

Which of Roger Fisher’s many insights are most likely to help us handle these and numerous other conflicting interests? Let’s “cherry-pick” a few.

First insight: “separate the people from the problem!” We all know how difficult it is to deal with a complicated problem without misunderstanding each other, getting angry or upset and taking things personally. Well, Fisher’s advice is to deal separately with the problem or issue in a rational, problem solving way, and deal with the people relationship as an issue worthy of its own focus. Recognise that emotions are perfectly normal and natural, so make them explicit and acknowledge them as legitimate; allow people to let off steam and try not to react to emotional outbursts. Not easy to do! In fact, it’s something I find constantly challenging as certain people have an uncanny knack of hooking me. But when you manage to separate the people from the problem it really works like magic.

Second insight: “focus on interests, not positions!” Imagine two Greytonians quarrelling in the library. One wants the window open and the other wants it closed. They argue about how much to leave it open; a slither, halfway, three quarters. No solution satisfies both. Enter Judy Terry our librarian. She asks one combatant why she wants the window open: “To get fresh air” She asks the other why he wants it closed: “To avoid the noise from the main road traffic” Judy gives it a seconds thought then opens the window in the adjoining Bryan Thomas room, allowing fresh air to flow through but from the quiet side away from the noisy main road. Their stated positions (open or closed) were irreconcilable; but their underlying interests (fresh air and relative quiet) allowed for a mutually acceptable solution. That’s the value of focusing on interests rather than on positions!

Space allows for only one more insight from this world-class thinker, now in his late 70s. It comes from his recent 2005 book Beyond Reason and it reveals his humility and humour. Roger describes a “fight” with his wife Carrie. They had two bunches of roses which, he thought, were for friends they were visiting. En route they bumped into another friend and when this friend admired the flowers, Carrie offered her one of the bunches. Later, Roger expressed his irritation that she had not consulted him first as he had an emotional investment in the impact the two bunches would have had; and also because one of his principles is: “Always Consult Before Deciding” or ACBD for short. Carrie thought about this and countered: “The problem with ACBD is that it often means NGAD – Never Get Anything Done!” Roger conceded; she was right. There is indeed a balance between too much unilateral deciding and too much time spent on consulting. So, he agreed to a modified motto put forward by some of his students: CCBD, or Consider Consulting Before Deciding” And this motto can be safely applied by all of us in all but the most urgent cases.

Lest you feel that Fisher’s insights sound a bit like “be nice to others”, let me assure you that he very firmly rejects simply being nice to an aggressive and attacking person or group. If you give in to unreasonable demands in order to “be nice” or improve the relationship, your aggressor will simply demand more from you next time. So, another invaluable piece of wisdom is that we should always have a BATNA, or a Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement. If you want to buy a house try to make sure that you have identified a viable alternative to the house you are attracted to – otherwise you are vulnerable to paying too high a price for it.

A final thought: our differing viewpoints and legitimate interests are the stuff of the social tapestry within South Africa. How we handle conflicts arising from them is sure to be smoother if we take on board the insights of a specialist thinker like Roger Fisher.

Avoiding the retirement blues

I always thought that a beautiful environment such as Greyton (where I am lucky to live) usually enhances one’s happiness. But now I’m not so sure. Recently someone mentioned that, in her opinion, Greyton has an unnervingly high number of depressed people, many who have struggled to adjust to retirement. I would never have thought so, but then I don’t belong to any of the informal networks that gather and distribute such information.

This got me thinking. Maybe a beautiful environment  where we so often choose to spend our retirement years, presents people with unusual dangers. It can lull us into thinking that spectacular views, rustic charm and the attractiveness of life in the slow lane are the very stuff of a happy retired life. Alas, it seems this is not so.

The danger of retiring in a beautiful village like Greyton is its power to enchant us into believing that context rather than content is the basis of a happy life. However, the sages, saints, shamans and sangomas have all in their own way pointed out that it is purity of soul that brings contentment. Like snails we bring our baggage with us wherever we go. A beautiful place may help, but it’s internal peace that counts.

Depression is an awful and extremely common illness. It hits all of us at some time or another, and is apparently relatively common in retired people. Some depressions are so severe that only serious medical intervention can help the poor sufferer. Less severe depressions are more preventable and may be kept at bay by a few everyday protection mechanisms. The first is the importance of social connections. Two studies reported in the newspapers recently highlighted the importance of regular interaction with other people. The first concerned bridge players. Both the social interaction and the use of the brain seemed, on average, to energize and prolong the lives of bridge players over a random control group that didn’t play bridge (best I start playing bridge)! The other study found that people who regularly drank and socialised (and argued/debated issues!) at their local pub or at friends houses also, on average, tended to live longer than the control group (no need for me to start here - been well practiced for years J).

For those of us who are neither bridge players nor regular social drinkers, relax! The statistics refer to the average, and of course none of us are average. There are many forms of social and intellectual engagement available to us all; we just need to choose the ones that work for us as unique individuals.

Finally, depression seems not to visit us as readily when we have “a reason for getting up in the morning”. Jewish psychiatrist Victor Frankl discovered from his studies of life in Auschwitz that those prisoners (including himself) who felt they still had something important yet to do were the ones who survived the horrors of the concentration camp.

So for those of us feeling anxious that without an engaging work life, we may soon become depressed (even though we have recently bought our dream house in our dream village), there may be some practical steps one can take. First, we can start looking for contentment inside and not just from our exterior environment. Second, we can join or form a social group that preferably engages our brains as well as provides fellowship. Third, we can get involved in making a positive contribution to the future of others and ourselves, something that gives us a reason to get up in the morning. None of this is a certain, easy cure for retirement blues. But maybe it’s worth considering.