Welcome to George H. Smith's Excursions into Libertarian Thought, a production of Libertarianism.org and the Cato Institute, narrated by Daniel Highland. Social Laws, Part 8 Methodological individualism was a dominant theme in Enlightenment social theory, one that was not seriously challenged until after the French Revolution. The Augustinian theory of original sin, the centerpiece of Reformation moral theology, had lost its grip on the European mind. Man's natural impulses were no longer regarded as evil. Even self-interest, long-exoriated as avarice and greed, was rehabilitated and presented as self-love, the creative source of social order. The Enlightenment's stress on reason was inherently individualistic, since reason is a characteristic of the singular human being. The theological mode of explanation, such as the biblical story of the Tower of Babel, which had been used to explain the origin of different languages, was in serious disrepair. Although most philosophers acknowledged the influence of divine providence, the deistic God of nature and Christian rationalism worked mainly from the bottom up, through the voluntary actions of individuals, not from the top down, through the coercive decrees of emperors and kings. Philosophers sought to explain the harmonious order of nature, and here they were profoundly influenced by the discoveries of Isaac Newton, the patron saint of science. Newton set the stage for a good deal of Enlightenment social theory with these words. I wish we could derive the rest of the phenomena of nature by the same kind of reasoning from mechanical principles, for I am induced by many reasons to suspect that they may all depend upon certain forces by which the particles of bodies, by some causes hitherto unknown, are either mutually impelled towards one another and cohere in regular figures, or are repelled and recede from one another. Gravitation was the invisible force of Newton's universe, and philosophers eagerly searched for a moral and social equivalent. Some philosophers, such as Shaftesbury and Voltaire, found the solution in man's natural benevolence, a delicate and generous sensibility, as Kantosset described it. Other philosophers claimed to have discovered an innate moral sense, but self-interest was the undisputed champion of human passions, so here was the leading contender for the moral and social equivalent of gravitation. Here was the force that impelled and repelled human beings and caused them to cohere in regular figures, those social institutions that emerged spontaneously from the pursuit of self-interest. The Dutch philosopher Bernard Mandeville is famous for his theory that private vices produce public benefits, but the same basic idea had been around for a long time before he wrote The Fable of the Bees or Private Vice's Public Benefits, 6th edition, 1729. In 1625, for example, an Englishman argued that original sin had nearly eradicated charity from human nature, but that sinful actions, especially greed, cupidity, are sufficient to fulfill man's reciprocal needs. In order to the supplying these necessities, cupidity hath taken the place of charity and effecteth it after a matter which we cannot enough admire and whereon too the ordinary charity would not arrive. For example, you see spread all over the country, persons who are ready to assist you when you travel. What could be more admirable than these persons were they animated by charity? But it is cupidity which maketh them act. Where is that charity which is contented to build a house for you? Cupidity will do, and cheerfully too. What charity will run to the indies for medicines, stoop to the meanest employments and not refuse the basest and most painful offices? Cupidity will perform all this without grudging. Quoted in J.A.W. Gunn, Politics and the Public Interest in the 17th Century, 1969, page 213. Montesquieu, in his treatment of monarchy, Spirit of the Laws, 1748, compared self-interest to a power of gravitation that connects all parts of the body politic and draws subjects to their king. Thus, each individual advances the public good while he only thinks of promoting his own interest. Enlightenment philosophers repeatedly spoke of invisible chains that link self-interest to the public good. Mandeville referred to the chain of causes that connects the selfish actions of individuals so that they produce social benefits, as naturally as chickens do from eggs. The Scotch-Irish philosopher Francis Hutchison, a teacher of Adam Smith, referred to the secret chain between each person and mankind. Likewise, the Italian philosopher Vico discussed the same eternal chain, a theory that he traced to the ancient Stoics. It is significant that Adam Smith, who also spoke repeatedly of invisible chains, was influenced by Stoicism. Given many similar observations by other Enlightenment thinkers, it is fair to say that Adam Smith's invisible hand, according to which the pursuit of economic self-interest, if pursued within the boundaries of justice, will frequently generate beneficial social outcomes that were not intended by the acting agents, became a common theme in moral philosophy before it became a staple in economic thinking. Consider these remarks by Bishop Butler, sermons 2nd edition 1729. By acting merely from regard, suppose, to reputation, without any consideration of the good of others, men often contribute to the public good. They are plainly instruments in the hands of another, in the hands of Providence, to carry on ends the preservation of the individual and the good of society, which they themselves have not in their view or intention. What implications do the preceding observations have for sociology or a science of society? Let's begin with a passage from a book by William Stanley Jevons, a seminal figure in marginal utility theory. The Principles of Science, a Treatise on Logic and Scientific Method. 2nd edition 1877, page 1. Science arises from the discovery of identity amidst diversity. The process may be described in different words, but our language must always imply the presence of one common and necessary element. In every act of inference or scientific method, we are engaged about a certain identity, sameness, similarity, likeness, resemblance, analogy, equivalence, or equality apparent between two objects. The whole value of science consists in the power which it confers upon us of applying to one object the knowledge acquired from like objects. And it is only so far, therefore, as we can discover and register resemblances that we can turn our observations to account. If the social sciences are to establish uniform relationships in their field of study, they need criteria to decide when two or more social phenomena should be classified as the same thing. As R. S. Peters put it in, the idea of a social science and its relation to philosophy, 1958, page 83. A regularity or uniformity is the constant recurrence of the same kind of event on the same kind of occasion. Hence, statements of uniformity presuppose judgments of identity. This raises the question, by what criteria do social scientists recognize or classify the action of one person as the same as, or similar to, the action of another person? Or by what criteria do social scientists recognize or classify different actions by the same person as essentially identical? According to methodological subjectivism, the ultimate data of the social sciences are the subjective mental states, beliefs, values, etc., of individual human beings. Human action, including social interaction, is purposeful and value-driven. It has a subjective meaning for the acting agent, and the social scientist must interpret this meaning if he is to understand the nature of his subject matter. Thus, according to methodological subjectivism, the subject matter of the social sciences differs radically from that of the natural sciences. We can explain why humans act as they do in a way that we cannot explain the behavior of electrons and molecules. As a human being himself, the social scientist knows that there is far more to human behavior than its external or objective characteristics. He knows that each person carries within himself a subjective world of feelings, desires, beliefs, values, etc. And he knows, or should know, that these subjective factors impart to each action its distinctive identity. F. A. Hayek, in a careful analysis of methodological subjectivism, the counter-revolution of science, pointed out that the social scientist, unlike the physical scientist, must accept his subject matter as he finds it. The natural scientist, on the other hand, need not accept the everyday or commonsensical classification of the objects that constitute his field of study. He is well aware that facts often differ from appearances, that things which appear the same to us do not always behave in the same manner, and that things which appear different may exhibit other similarities that escape the untrained eye. Thus, rather than accept the uncritical opinions of others at face value, the natural scientist must often forge new classifications that will serve his cognitive purpose. The social scientist, in contrast, does not seek to modify or revise the natural concepts that people form spontaneously in their everyday lives. Our subjective ideas about the social world are, for the sociologist, the ultimate data on which all other explanations must depend. Our ideas about society are the irreducible elements that constitute the social world. The social sciences are concerned with social interaction, with the mental relationship between human beings, rather than the physical relationship between things, and those relationships are determined subjectively by how people think about them, rather than by their objective, i.e. external characteristics. Consider the concept of a tool such as a hammer. Such things cannot be interpreted as objective facts or defined in terms of their physical properties, irrespective of what people think about them, since we may use many different things as tools depending on our circumstances. It is our attitude toward an object, how we view it subjectively, that determines whether or not something is a tool. Hence, if a sociologist wishes to study toolmaking in a given culture, he must first try to understand the subjective viewpoint of its members. It would be absurd for a sociologist to define tool objectively, in terms of an object's physical properties, and then conclude that a given culture does not use tools because he can find no objects that conform to his definition. Methodological subjectivism has a long and rather complex history. It was clearly expressed by Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, 1651, who recommended the maxim Read Thyself as the key to understanding social and political behavior. This introspective method is reliable because there exists a similitude of the thoughts and passions of one man to the thoughts and passions of another. We know by looking within ourselves what it means to think, opine, reason, hope, fear, etc. And it is by extrapolating from these subjective insights that we come to understand the thoughts and passions of all other men upon the like occasion. Despite this promising start, however, Hobbes failed to exploit this subjectivist method, opting instead for a mechanistic interpretation that reduces all human action to the positive and negative desires of appetite and aversion. More promising and more influential was the germ of methodological subjectivism found in John Locke's writings. Human action, according to Locke, originates in uneasiness or disquiet of the mind. Mere apprehension of a greater good is insufficient to activate the will. That good must first become an object of desire so that a person feels uneasy without it. Action is motivated by this kind of subjective desire and appraisal. Conclusions similar to Hayek's have been reached by those social theorists influenced by Ludwig Wittgenstein. For example, according to RS Peters, quoted above, social relations are expressions of ideas about reality. If we wish to classify two social phenomena as the same, we must first understand how these phenomena are understood by the people involved. The particular interpretation which is to be put upon the words the same depends on the context in which the question arises. If we are to understand the meaning of a social phenomenon, we must first understand the conceptual rule that guides the interpretation of its participants. Peters, therefore, maintained that the fundamental problems of social science are primarily philosophical. And as such should be settled by conceptual analysis rather than by empirical research. It is only by tracing the implications of the concepts we use that the social scientist is able to proceed in his work. David Hume was an early defender of methodological subjectivism in the social sciences which in his day were called moral philosophy. According to Hume, though men be much governed by interest, yet even interest itself and all human affairs are entirely governed by opinion. It is what people think about a situation, their beliefs and evaluations that determine how they act. Rulers, for example, have nothing to support them but opinion. A government cannot rule by force alone but must depend on a widespread belief in its legitimacy, whether that belief be justified or not. In A Treatise of Human Nature, 1739, after calling for an integrated science of man, Hume noted that those sciences which deal with human action suffer from a peculiar disadvantage relative to the natural sciences. In investigating human behavior, we cannot purposefully mold the social environment in order to conduct controlled and repeatable experiments. The natural scientist, if he wishes to know the effect of one body upon another, need only place himself in the appropriate situation and observe the results. But this option is not available to the person who wishes to understand human behavior. By placing myself in the same case with that which I consider, it is evident this reflection and premeditation would so disturb the operation of my natural principles as to render it impossible to form any just conclusion from the phenomenon. Hence, we must therefore glean up our experiments in this science from a cautious observation of human nature and take them as they appear in the common course of the world by men's behavior in company, in affairs, in their pleasures. Where experiments of this kind are judiciously collected and compared, we may hope to establish on them a science which will not be inferior in certainty and will be much superior in utility to any other of human comprehension. This cautious observation of human nature which takes into account the subjective beliefs and values of individual agents is the essence of methodological subjectivism. Thank you for listening to Excursions. To learn more about Libertarian philosophy and history, visit www.libertarianism.org.


Okay, thank you I'm surprised the full house Thank you for coming This talk is called project necromancy It's about how we my team at Red Hat is trying to Sort of revitalize a couple of upstream projects. I'm Dave Wilde. I'm a senior software engineer at Red Hat My partner in crime Doug Mendez Abel was supposed to be here. I talked to him today. He tested positive For COVID on Friday and so he couldn't come so Best wishes to Doug send him a nice note if you know him. He was pretty bummed that he couldn't come So project necromancy I someone asked me Today or the other day They were surprised to see Keystone kind of in the description of this talk because Keystone is Keystone. It's a vitally important project to To open SAC and to and to other things and they were wondering why why it's in here and And what was happening and that's really Keystone is is the reason for this talk And it's going to be what I'm going to be focusing on mostly a lot of this we're going to Try and implement in Barbican But we haven't and really this is just what we've done to sort of Reestablish Keystone get it in good shape and hopefully if you're involved in a project that's facing similar challenges to what We were facing in Keystone. This will help The problem it was becoming difficult to get new code and bug fixes merged in into Keystone Keystone switched to like a committee PTL type of a thing and Several of the core reviewers were were no longer active. I'll get back and I restate the problem later on and I'll get back into some more details about the problem, but that's really what we faced Lance Bragg's dad, I don't know if anyone knows him. I'm sure you do he's he was he was on our team and We really realized that we had a problem when He he let us know that he was moving to a different opportunity at Red Hat And would no longer be working on open SAC. So while it was sad to see him go I'm really excited for what he's doing and he's really enjoying his new role, but that meant that we had the problem of He was really one of the last Last course one of the last stable cores on Keystone So a little bit about our team We are a we're a small team at Red Hat. We mostly work on integrating security and security and compliance features into triple O FIPS and SR back You can blame a day leave for FIPS Lance and Doug for SR back those are the but those are the kind of initiatives that we work on at Red Hat. So we have a We have a vested interest in Keystone and Barbican Barbican that actually Doug is the PTL for both projects right now. So He's on our he's on our team Yes, we we we really needed to be able to get things into Keystone Um what we have done and what we were doing The first thing that we did was get the weekly IRC meetings going they had kind of they'd kind of fallen off the The radar the weeks would go by where there was no weekly IRC meeting And we felt like this was a good first start to get the get to get the project back in shape So it's a Doug started picking up the IRC meetings a couple of a couple of Things that we we did with the IRC meetings we picked the time use UTC makes it easier Scheduling in your time zone is is rough He updated the Open Dev meetings page It's just a pull request if you go there Advertise that the meetings are back on track and that we hold them every week that we can we didn't hold one this week due to the summit And personally I find the courtesy ping very valuable at your at your neck to the list of names on the etherpad and You'll get ping to help me remember The next thing we did was review with thons I'll go into I'll go into more detail, but We were having a problem in Keystone getting getting reviews From people and there were there were a lot of old old patches hanging out about there So we came up with this idea of review thons and we implemented it in around November of 2021 This is this is where I'm restating the problem. So We realized when Lance was moving on that a lot of people that have worked on Keystone Have moved on careers progress your priorities change And so it's not really it's not really that people wanted to not work on Keystone anymore Interests also change, but it's really that that People had progressed and there was kind of an old guard and they had moved on and so we really needed to Take it over again. The other problem that we had is that Myself and Doug both I think Doug would also admit that we had very limited knowledge of Keystone Especially some of the more complicated inner workings of Keystone So it was it was hard for us to do quality reviews on our own That's a that's a it's a pretty heavy lift the Keystone code base Getting to understand it and be able to provide a a good quality review. So we We started doing these things called a review a thon a review a thon is We have a weekly meeting. We use Google meet. You don't have to Google meet works because it's fairly ubiquitous but a weekly meeting where interested parties can come and we sort of Co-reviewed code together one person will share their screen We go through the review we do research talk about it and Put our comments in the review and What an important thing is Keystone has a bunch of sub projects. I think a lot of the other projects due to We try and touch all the sub projects Every week just to make sure at least that there's there's nothing new that were that we're missing that that can get reviewed Takeaways of review a thon. So we've been doing review a thon since November of 2021 I Think my biggest takeaways that is working. I the Stackalitics only has wallabies. So I just did some Garrett math By my my account. We've we've reviewed 187 patches since November Merged 101 of those and abandoned 39 of those more an abandoning later And we're starting to move through the backlog of patches most of the recent patches have have good reviews and Are you know going through that back and forth cycle of communication via Garrett? The other take another takeaway is the virtual face the virtual face-to-face Google meet. I think is really important it gives the It's a more natural feel than doing this over IRC or something You you get to know the people personally that you're that you're doing these reviews with and there is a I Get a sense of mentorship by doing it virtually I'll talk more about mentorship later And and the other thing that I this is this is a personal one I came up with is the communal sense of ownership of the reviews. I Really feel like I have a I have a much better Sense of ownership of the reviews. I check on them more often than I would if it was just me going through and and reviewing It definitely helps the people that are submitting code to get their code reviewed So I think I feel like it's it's it's really helped to revitalize the community second set of takeaways Keep it light and informal. It's our review with on is very light informal. We chat we talk about other things I don't feel like it should be a it should feel like a chore that you're you're doing this this thing it's it's a it's a Community thing. It's it's doing what we you know We all we all really love open source and part of part of doing open source is Reviewing other people's code and making sure that it gets in there. So it shouldn't feel like a burden or a chore If it's an old patch that needs to be rebased Try the button if that doesn't work try taking five minutes to rebase it manually see if you can It lets people know that you know people are kind of surprised when they get a Six-month-old patch that all the sudden gets reviewed, you know And so we let them know that you're looking at it and if it needs work do the work and we'll get it merged in The other thing is don't be afraid to abandon There's a lot of stuff with with keystone that we found that was just not applicable anymore It had been implemented elsewhere or that bug had been fixed by a different patch So it really helps to feel like you're you're cleaning up an old house You know sweeping out the attic getting rid of those those those old those old patches cover all the projects I mentioned that and the biggest takeaway is Goes back to the mentorship idea that I mentioned earlier is that our project knowledge is increasing because Lance will join when he can Christie also wanted to be here also had a COVID scare They're two core reviewers and they've been doing keystone for a very long time gauge was gauge joined our review of thons early on But he he's moved on But being able to review code with people that have that much knowledge About keystone has been really helpful for for me personally because I I I can ask questions about the about the code about what things are doing and Really learn from someone with that experience rather than diving into it myself and trying to Trying to figure it out on my own it the the reviews would take much longer and feel much heavier of a lift Couple of keys to success about review with thons like I said, I think they're very successful Pick a consistent time just like the weekly meeting it won't work for everyone, but you do your best with your your community We our our team at Red Hat has a Upstream Fridays that we like to do so dedicate at least one day a week to upstream All things upstream and so we do the review of thons on on Friday morning Try to announce them on IRC The other thing that gauges gauge specifically told me this was important was I send out a calendar invite to anyone That wants it that really helped him justify it with his boss that time that he was spending You know his that it helps book that time. It helps remind you I think the calendar invites are a really really good idea And the last key to success is make it happen Just like the weekly meeting sometimes you won't have very much participation. There won't be a lot of people there People travel PTO all kinds of things but be as consistent as you can and make it happen and keep it going when when people aren't there I think that that consistency is is important for To make it a success The other thing that we did was PtL ship. This was This was Doug's slide So I'll I'll go over it. I'll go over it quick. It's really just doing the PTO the PTO job He fell on that sword I'd like to take one of them off of his hands when I'm when I'm able But yeah monitor the IRC channel be available Monitor the mailing lists and complete the liaison tasks you could become the the Default liaison for cross-project efforts when you are the PtL the other the other thing that we're doing is This thing called path to core That we came up with It's it's been on my goals to become a keystone core reviewer I think it's on a couple other people's goals to become keystone core reviewers. And so we wanted to Make it a make it an actual business priority to get core reviewer core reviewers on our team So The the path to core is really commitment to keystone monitoring it answering questions working on it doing doing code reviews And really learning the code and I feel like reviewathons have have been very very helpful in this I'm much further along now than I would have been had I had we not been doing these had I just been been doing it alone Stable core This does not You would kind of think as a PTO you would you would get stable core by default You don't really you have to put in a request. I believe to enter infra To get stable core. It's a little bit the reviews are a little bit different for the stable branches and Doug has stable core now. It took him a little while to get it, but we're gonna start doing reviewathons specifically for stable core back ports Now that now that he has that Future ideas, so here's some some other things that we We'd like to look at look at doing we've done outreach in the past we'd like to pick that up again If anyone knows anyone that's interested in Working on Keystone reach out. We can get them Even if they don't know anything about the code we can get them started on that I was thinking of also doing a virtual style hackathon Google Meet maybe once a month or quarter pick a bug or a feature and pair program on it and CFR we get I think that that'd be a Interesting Fun exercise So that's something else that I'd like to try spec reviewathons Specs are specs are their own beast. I think like a dedicated reviewathon for for going through a big specification We have one for OAuth 2 that neither Doug or I fully understand yet, but we need to get reviewed because people are already trying to land code for it so Those are some those are some future ideas that we have So that actually does it for my talk I wanted to I wanted to save some time For feedback if you guys have any ideas if you have any questions or comments I set up an aether pad It's essentially blank right now, but I'm really curious if anyone has any Comments suggestions questions The the the technician asked that if you do if you're gonna speak please use the mic over there So that it's captured on video Thank you, I'm dead horse just about everywhere IRC Twitter you can reach out to me there Doug is moved to Matrix faster than I did so he's demon D's that you may also know him as red robot From the From his previous IRC days Yes, hello from the ironic team. So it's not a question. Just a few comments Review meetings awesome. We do that. It works for specs. Absolutely. Otherwise people don't review specs You also may want to have fewer specs. That's one of things we are doing We're replacing some trivial specs with storyboard items if it so the questions doesn't really have to be a spec As to stable course at some point we just added all ironic course to ironic stable. It was scary. Nothing broke That's a good idea. Yeah Yeah, just a couple of hints. Thank you Nova team. Yeah, we did the same thing with stable core recently. We just merged the two teams. Okay again scary Nothing's broken yet. All good the one question I had is Me primarily but also other people we take make it took an effort recently in Nova to start stripping back features that nobody's using Whether they're old legacy drivers that no longer testing this kind of thing have keystone Have you guys looked at doing something like this? Is it something you think you'll do down the line? Anything like that basically getting rid of stuff that nobody understands and you don't know if it works We have we have not that's a really good idea I think there are parts of keystone that that no one uses anymore I also know that there are chunks of keystone that that really needs some Some review of the the LDAP back end for for instance, I know that has some there's some dragons in the LDAP code So there there there are definitely Places that that I would like to kind of do a you know refactor a thong to go and and go through those with the fine tooth comb But yeah, that's a that's a really good idea about Killing features that we don't need One other thing as well It's not actually directs it at you But if there's anyone in the audience or anyone watching the video later that knows a lot about sequel alchemy Please ping me an IRC Stephen Finn so I can close out the sequel alchemy in my great migration Hi, so from the TC now You mentioned about I know that keystone was in this DPL distributed PTL Models for some time and if I understood correctly you said that that that was one of the issues and problems with keystone So so can you like explain more? What was the problem with this DPL? Maybe this model doesn't work like it should and like TC wanted it to to work So maybe we will need to change something there Yeah Or it was like like just because in this DPL model you have to have some lieutenants for for Laszons for some different stuff So maybe it was just a problem that there was no those people at all. Yeah, it was kind of it was kind of the latter I think it was that the the the PTLs that were identified just didn't have the bandwidth to Take care of take care of everything and and maybe we're assuming that the other ones were we're handling it So I I don't I don't have any specific answers to to what what our problems were but I know that This and this would be a question that Doug would be able to answer much better But see is the PTL and worked with Lance on on taking over the the PTL ship of it Yeah, I think I think that there were I think that there were Especially on IRC I think that there were there were times when people didn't know exactly who to reach out to a single the single source of contact for For Keystone Okay. Okay. Thanks. Hi. I'm Chris Morgan and I look after the ops operators meetups and we also adopted some abandoned docs and You know, I think that this is Tremendous food for thought because the actual ops meetups team has mostly gone away and The people who said, oh, yeah, we'll we'll help you maintain these docs all kind of went away. So it occurs to me. I'm basically In charge of two bodies So this is actually probably the best talk of the week. So I just want to say thank you so much for the Inspiration because we actually have an ops meetup tomorrow The process is so broken that a lot of people didn't even know about it. So the communication And the predictability of where to find them, etc. Is is fantastic. So thank you very much. Thank you Anything else? I am the I'm the meeting runner for our team and I love to give people time back So enjoy the eight minutes Yeah, thank you. Oh, yeah


Hello everyone, let me welcome you to this the SAAS webinar. My name is Alan Cummings I'm the admissions tutor for our Japanese undergraduate degrees this year and this afternoon I'm going to give you a short talk to introduce our degrees and to give you a little bit of a sense of what studying Japanese at SAAS would be like. I'm sure that you know some of you may have some questions so if you have questions please just type them in the chat and I'll answer those then at the end. So I'll make sure to leave plenty of time to answer the questions. Thank you for thinking about studying Japanese at SAAS. Academics make pretty hopeless salespeople but part of my job here today is to try to convince you why you should choose SAAS over any of the other universities that teach Japanese in the UK. The first thing I'd say is that you know the East Asia Department we have a really amazing concentration of knowledge and expertise on the languages and cultures of Japan and Korea and China and Tibet and so as in general in other departments are also lots of people who focus on the on the research of Japan so people in linguistics and people in politics and people in art and music and economics and history and all these different departments there there's lots of people working on on Japan. So what this means is that at SAAS you've got loads of people who are working on the on the research into Japan. There's a great community of scholarship into Japan and that also means then that lots of latest research that people are doing will be will be fed into the kind of courses the modules that you can that you can take here. So by choosing SAAS you're really choosing to come to teach to be taught by people who are working at the forefront of their different disciplines and who are expanding our knowledge of Japan specifically and East Asia more generally. Another thing I'd point out is the amazing resource that is the SAAS library. Maybe that's not the first thing that you think of when you're thinking about where to go to do your degree but if you choose to study Japanese here as you kind of become more proficient in reading Japanese you suddenly discover that you have access to thousands of Japanese books and academic journals and newspapers. So it's definitely a resource that you come to appreciate more and more as you move through your degree. So the SAAS library is one of the best in the country probably even in Europe we put a vast range of work in English and Japanese and Korean all sorts of topics that you might be interested in addressing. The final thing I would say is of course that you're that SAAS you're going to be right in the in the centre of London and we're just behind the British Museum so your walking distance from all sorts of great attractions if you're interested in any aspect of Japanese culture if you're into the food if you're into music if you're into films there's just so much stuff that's always going on in London. So by choosing to come to SAAS then you also have access to all of that great stuff that's available in this in this city. You know I could I could keep on going for a very long time about what a wonderful place SAAS is. I should probably say at this point that I'm actually a SAAS graduate as well. I studied Japanese here a very long time ago last century I can say. So you know I myself have a very personal experience of what it means to study here and just how special this this university is. But I know that we only have have limited time here today so I should I should probably move on to talk a little bit about the the degree programs that we offer. I know from looking some of you will have looked at our website already but basically we offer two different types of degree at undergraduate level and these can be divided up into into three-year degrees and and four-year degrees. So for our four-year degrees in Japanese the main four-year degree we offer is BA Japanese and this includes a compulsory year abroad spent studying at a university in Japan and if you choose to do BA Japanese you can choose to do it either as a what we call a single subject degree where Japanese is all that you're studying or you can choose to do it as what SAAS calls a joint degree. So you can combine it with some of the other subjects that SAAS offers. So you could do a joint degree for example in BA Japanese and economics or BA Japanese and history or even BA Japanese and Korean studies. There's a big extensive list of all of the all of the different combinations that's available on our website if you look down the on the left hand side if you're on the the East Asia Department website and you go to degrees you'll see the BA Japanese and section and in there you can see all of the different subjects that you can combine it with. So Chinese studies and development studies, economics, English, history, history of art, international relations, Korean studies, linguistics, music, politics, social anthropology, study of religions, world philosophies, those are those are the available options at the moment. So as I say that that BA Japanese degree whether you take it as a single subject degree or whether you take it as a joint degree it takes four years to complete. The other main undergraduate degree that we offer is BA Japanese studies and that's a three-year degree in most cases. The only the only cases where it's not a three-year degree is if you take it as a joint degree with either Chinese or Korean in which case it'll take four years because you have a year abroad in either China or Korea on those combinations. So that's the main difference between those two different undergraduate degrees that we offer. So it's the question of whether you want a four-year degree or whether you want a three-year degree. There are other differences between them as well. The major difference I'd say is that the four-year degree because it has that year abroad one of the things we aim to do on that degree is to provide you with the highest level of competence in the language. So there's a greater focus on studying language on that degree and also the level you will reach at the end of those four years will be higher than the level you will reach if you're doing the three-year BA Japanese study degree. So that's the main difference. So BA Japanese the focus is more on language first, second and third year probably about half of what you do will be language. The other modules will be what we call discipline modules. So modules we are learning about Japanese history or Japanese society or literature and so on. On BA Japanese studies there's a lesser focus on language on that degree. So about a quarter of the courses you take will be language courses and the other courses you take will be discipline courses. I should say a little bit about the structure of the modules that you take. Each year that you're at SOAS you're required to take 120 credits each year and the way that that works there will be some modules which will be chosen for you. So compulsory modules. So for example if you're doing single subject BA Japanese in your first year the modules you have to take will be J1 Japanese and we have two different entry points for that particular module. There's an elementary module if a beginner or a near-beginner and there's an accelerated module if you have a little bit more experience of studying Japanese. This is the core language module that you take. So you're learning about how to write Japanese, how to read Japanese, how to speak and listen and how to translate as well. And that is worth 60 credits. On top of that from next year and this is a we're reforming our curriculum so it's a little bit different to what is on the website at the moment but alongside that you will also take a module called the introduction to the history of East Asia which sort of does what it says on the tin. So it's teaching you not just about Japan but also about the history of China and Korea so you can understand the historical and the contemporary relationships between those three countries in East Asia and the various factors that have sculpted that history. We also have two other compulsory modules in the first year. One of them is called Cool Japan which is looking at different aspects of how Japan is perceived in the world that kind of coolness that you associate with manga and anime and also with Japanese food culture and those kinds of elements. And then finally we'll have a new study skills module which will be aiming to kind of teach you about how do you do research, how do you use the library, how do you write essays, how do you prevent or how do you present an effective argument. So the kind of skills you'll be able to use in all the modules that you take during your time at SOAS. To give you kind of an idea of what the time you spend each week on those modules is like, not J1 Japanese course. As I say it aims to teach you basic speaking, listening, reading, writing and translation skills and on that module you spend around 10 hours per week studying in class. The other modules are generally three hours per week, either two or three hours per week. Two hours may be a lecture and then you may have like an R tutorial or it may be one R lecture and one R tutorial. You can see more details of this of these times and the kind of the assessments and so on. All of that detail is on the website. I need to give you a little bit of a warning here. When I say that you're on that language class, you spend 10 hours in class. What our language teachers say is that for every one R that you spend in class you need to spend at least two or three times that studying the language by yourself. So doing your homework, learning kanji which is something that can take a very long time at the beginning, learning vocab, doing little tests and memory exercises and so on. So it's a very considerable investment of time and effort. If you started studying Japanese by yourself you may already have a sense that Japanese is not an easy language to learn and to begin with you do really have to put in in the time. So that if you're taking B.A. Japanese you have to be aware that that first year course it is going to be a considerable amount of time that you will be working just language maybe 30, 40 hours a week where you're just working on polishing your language skills and trying to bring them up to a usable level. You know this on B.A. Japanese that language course is very very rigorous. For the four years that we have you in that degree we aim to kind of bring your reading and your writing and your speaking and your listening up to Japanese high school or even beginning kind of university level. So it is a considerable investment of time and commitment that you need to be aware of. On B.A. Japanese studies as I say the amount of time you spend in language classes is a bit less usually three or four hours per week. So the pace that you're going to be advancing at on B.A. Japanese studies is also going to be a little bit slower than it would be on B.A. Japanese. The way the program works for the rest of your degree you know as you kind of progress upwards through the second year and the third year of course is the year abroad on B.A. Japanese but as you progress upwards on B.A. Japanese the modules you take for example in your final year you will have more what we call language use modules where you're using the skills that you have already gained and you're starting to read for example literary texts in their original versions or maybe you're reading Japanese classical texts from from the past. You may be from the hand read or before or maybe you're reading Japanese academic texts about history or maybe you're reading newspaper. So we have lots of these kind of language use modules that where you get a chance to use the language skills that you have built up. There's a couple of things I want to say before I move to the Q&A section. The first is about the year abroad on B.A. Japanese. People are always a little bit worried maybe about the year abroad. The way it works is we have exchange agreements at the moment with 21 Japanese universities across the whole country. We have several partner universities in the big cities so in Tokyo and Osaka and Kyoto and Nagoya but also partners in Hokkaido and Kyushu and other places as well. The way that the year abroad works is that most of those partner universities they offer us maybe two or three places. So in your second year you take a placement test and based upon the results of that placement test then you make a first, second, third and fourth preference and depending on how you do it in that placement test then we rank you and that's how we decide how the placement works. Those universities, the programs they offer in Japan, they will generally be a combination of language so you're still working on your Japanese language of course but language and some other kinds of subjects as well but it really depends upon university, specific university what those what those modules are going to be. So there may be modules about Japanese history or Japanese society or Japanese culture, some aspect of that that you will be studying. On Bia Japanese that year abroad is compulsory, everybody has to do it so that is definitely worth thinking about when you're choosing which degree you wish to follow. We do have some scholarships, there's a limited number of scholarships available to students to help with the cost of the year abroad. For example there's a body called JASO which is funded by the Japanese government and they maybe provide 10 scholarships or something like that each year and this is money that then you can help you with the with the airfare and help you with your living costs when you're in Japan. As I say, this is an exchange program that SOS has with our partner universities in Japan and financially the way that it works is for that year abroad you just pay a fee to SOS, a very reduced fee, the current value of that is on the website but it's usually around 1300 or 1400 bonds something like that and that then is the only fee that you pay for the year abroad and that then covers all of your tuition in Japan. Obviously on top of that then you have to pay to get to Japan, you'd have to pay for accommodation, university dormitories and so on and you've always got to pay then for your food and whatever else you do in Japan. I should also say a couple of things maybe about employability. If you take a degree in Japanese or Japanese studies with this we're providing you with lots of transferable skills. There are lots of Japanese companies that are looking to employ foreign students who can understand Japanese or foreign graduates who can understand Japanese. You'll also have opportunities with Western companies that want to expand into Japan and recent graduates from our degrees have ended up working in lots of different areas so that people have gone into Japanese media. One graduate from a couple of years ago has started a fashion magazine in Japan recently which is being supported by Keio University. Some people have gone into game design and localization. There's people working for Sega for example. Other people have gone into different kinds of translation areas working for the Japanese government or working for the automobile industry. People have gone into telecoms or into marketing and research so there's a whole rich array of possible careers that you can possibly go into where Japan or Japanese is going to be very useful to you. Okay, let's see. I think I should maybe look at some of your questions here. The first question that I can see is a question from Guido who says, will there be information on the master's Japanese for those who wish to apply for the dual source and Sophia master's? Unfortunately not. This talk today is for the BA degrees but if you're going to the website there is some information about that master's program that we offer together with Sophia and the best thing to do would be to write to the convener for that program so if you write to Dr. Kirsch she should be able to help you with any questions.