The Architectonic Architeuthis

Cory Doctorow is a phony.

2007-10-16T19:08:00.000-07:00

Well, it's official: Cory Doctorow is a phony. For all his strident activism against net censorship, he has:

1.) Failed to provide a comments section on his post about his actions vis-a-vis the LeGuin controversy, even though the controversy is heavily involved with Doctorow's favorite issues surrounding copyright, and thus is a natural topic of conversation for the BoingBoing community.

2.) Deleted a number of posts, without explanation, in other comments threads in which people discussed the LeGuin controversy.

3.) When I provided links to a thread here, where people could discuss the LeGuin controversy freely, without hijacking other threads at BoingBoing, he deleted all mention of the Architectonic Architeuthis thread. I have asked for an explanation of his actions, and received none.

Moreover,

4.) Although Doctorow has made a big show of purging BoingBoing of all quotes from LeGuin, he has also allowed an anonymous poster to reproduce, in full, the very same LeGuin essay which started this controversy in the first place. Since anonymous posts at BoingBoing must be approved by a moderator before they become visible, Doctorow has, in effect, once more illegally reproduced LeGuin's essay, while trying to pass the blame to an anonymous accomplice.

The Cory Doctorow Contest

2007-10-16T00:44:00.000-07:00

I'd like to announce a new contest:

Find a way to outflank Doctorow's opinions on copyright, by finding a way to use his works- complete with logic-chopping self-justifications- in a way that would be as infuriating to him as his own misuse of LeGuin's work was infuriating to her.

For example: create an ad-free mirror of BoingBoing, with better features, which instantly updates 24/7. Thus, users would rather go to adfreeboingboing.net, and Doctorow would lose ad money. But, since it's a non-commercial use, how can he complain?

Let the contest begin!

The LeGuin / Doctorow controversy

2007-10-15T20:10:00.000-07:00

Over at BoingBoing, net activist Cory Doctorow has posted an apology to science fiction author Ursula LeGuin for copying one of her stories, without permission, in its entirety(!) and posting it to BoingBoing, even though he could have easily linked to a legitimate online copy instead. Moreover, he decided to not permit BoingBoing readers to post comments on that blog entry. As a result, a couple of other Boingboing articles are getting hijacked by boingboingers wanting to dicuss the controversy.

I've invited them here to continue the discussion without further hijack, as I think this is an important issue that needs to be discussed. (For that matter, the hijacked articles also involve important issues that need to be discussed- hence my desire to provide a safety valve for the hijacking.)

For the moment, I've turned off comment moderation, so that boingboingers can discuss the controversy in the comments for this post.

Here is LeGuin's story, which Doctorow copied illegally:

http://www.ursulakleguin.com/Note-ChabonAndGenre.html

Here is LeGuin's original letter:

http://www.ursulakleguin.com/Note-OpenLetter.html

Here is the apology which Doctorow ultimately issued:

http://www.boingboing.net/2007/10/14/an-apology-to-ursula.html

Here is the first of the hijacked BoingBoing threads:

http://www.boingboing.net/2007/10/14/lessigs-anticorrupti.html#comments

Here is the second:

http://www.boingboing.net/2007/10/14/congress-dont-crippl.html

Here's a thread at StarShipSofa about Cory Doctorow, including (in more recent posts) the LeGuin controversy:

http://forums.starshipsofa.com/Default.aspx?g=posts&t=162

(As you can see from that last thread, no, I don't like Doctorow. If you have a problem with that, feel free to discuss it in the comments.)

My Million-Dollar Challenge

2007-03-16T21:43:00.000-07:00

You know what disgusts me? Conspiracy theories. Look at it this way: which of the following represents a greater danger to society? The fact that the mainstream media uncritically repeated Bush's claims about Iraq's nonexistent WMD's, or the fact that so many people think that oil may have played at least a partial role in Bush's decision to go to war? I'm with professional skeptic George Case on this one- only a conspiracy theorist could possibly think oil had anything to do with the Iraq war. In fact, I think it's just bizarre that people are so gullible as to believe that oil ever plays a role in geopolitical calculations. But, fortunately, Case's article explains at length what sorts of brain pathologies lead people to hold these weird political beliefs.

And it doesn't stop there. The fact that so many people believe that oil played a role in the Iraq war is insignificant compared to the fact that a small number of people think that the Queen of England is a shapeshifting pedophile lizard from Zeta Reticuli. How can democracy survive, when small fringe groups are permitted to hold unusual beliefs?

Well, I've had enough. The fact of the matter is that evil men simply do not use secrecy as a cover for coordinated illegal actions, not ever. It's just not physically possible. And when it does happen, it is inevitably exposed. And since the public is having so much trouble grasping that fact, I now proudly announce the Wintermute Bookbinder Million Dollar Challenge.

I, Wintermute Bookbinder, will pay a million dollars cash to anyone who can provide conclusive evidence of any conspiracy theory of any kind whatsoever. It's really that simple. And when, after a few years pass and not one single person has claimed the prize money, we'll be able to point to the challenge as proof that conspiracies are in general impossible.

Are you a friendless, paranoid nut who would like to apply for the challenge? Fear not- I have compiled a brief FAQ for applicants. Please read it in full before bothering me. Let me also remind you that you are insane. Thus, you may want to have a lawyer or a non-insane friend read the FAQ for you.

1. Is the challenge really open to all conspiracy theories?

Yes.

2. Really?

Yes. All conspiracy theories of any sort whatsoever.

3. Are you sure?

Yes, dammit, no exceptions. The fact that no one has claimed the prize money will one day stand as proof that all conspiracy theories are false. Obviously it would be pointless to open the challenge to some conspiracy theories but not others.

4. How do you define "conspiracy theory"?

The term "conspiracy theory" is surprisingly difficult to define. Not all claims of nefarious acts plotted by multiple actors in secret are "conspiracy theories."

If you have any questions about whether your claim is a conspiracy theory, please email it to me and I will happily tell you if it is, in fact, eligible for the challenge, long before my money is at risk.

5. Does (this) qualify as a conspiracy theory?

The best way to answer this is to apply a list of things that people commonly apply for.

For purposes of this challenge, the following DO NOT count as conspiracy theories:

The JFK assassination. The assassinations of RFK, MLK, or X. The Illuminati. Claims that the government is storing a UFO at Roswell. Watergate. MK-ULTRA. Operation Stargate.

For purposes of this challenge, the following DO count as conspiracy theories:

Bat boy. Hillary Clinton killed Vince Foster mid-coitus, either a) by crushing him between her steely thighs at the moment of orgasm, or b) using a poofy, 1960's style machine-gun bra. The belief that vampires have killed your wife and replaced her with an identical impostor. Elvis is alive, and working under the stage name "Michael Jackson."

Theories regarding the JFK assassination are not eligible for this challenge because- unlike claims regarding Bat Boy- they have already been conclusively proven false. Claims regarding the Illuminati are not eligible because, if true, they would expose claimants to dangerous reprisals. Watergate is ineligible because it's a real conspiracy, not a conspiracy theory.

Some claims are clearly too ridiculous to be worth further scrutiny. Thus, MK-ULTRA and Operation Stargate are not eligible for the challenge because not only is the government too incompetent to engage in a conspiracy, it is also far too wise to waste money on bizarre schemes to develop psionic and mind-control weapons.

6. How is the challenge to be judged?

I do not serve as the judge for the challenge. Instead, applicants to the challenge must devise their own criterion of proof which will make the truth or falsity of their claim self-evident, without requiring formal judging. My only involvement in the process is to reject criteria of proof which do not meet my standards of academic rigor.

Clearly this is a fair rule, and slanted towards the applicants- after all, they get to serve as their own judges. Moreover, since the criterion of success is mutually agreed upon, neither side can be forced into doing something they don't want to do. It's potentially easy for the challenge to degenerate into finger-pointing once you fail. This rule is meant to ensure that finger-pointing will have no merit.

7. Can I be disqualified from the challenge because of my atrocious behavior?

YES. I can cancel your application at any time if I deem your behavior to be unacceptable, and it will be all your fault, and you will have no one to blame but yourself, you... you... you nasty little child, you!

The following behaviors can result in your being disqualified and permanently barred from the challenge:

Profanity. Obstinacy. Unwillingness to cooperate. Criminal libel (especially insistence that I, Wintermute Bookbinder, am narrow-minded or dishonest, or insistent criticisms of the terms of the Million-Dollar Challenge.)

8. Is there a judge to whom I can appeal my disqualification?

NO. The decision will be made purely by myself, with no possibility of appeal.

Please understand that as I am an eminently fair and reasonable person, you cannot hope for any better judge than myself. I will only use my unilateral power to cancel the challenge under the most extreme circumstances. After all, it is not my goal to reject your claim. While I feel that beliefs such as your own are so inane that I often publicly speculate that they must have their origins in an undiagnosed brain tumor, I nonetheless have no greater interest than giving your beliefs a full and fair hearing, and am perfectly willing to pay out $1 million should they turn out to be true. Surely you understand that criticisms of my challenge or my character constitute criminal libel, and thus it is only reasonable that anyone making such criticisms be permanently banned.

9. Can I only be banned for criticising the challenge while I am being tested, or am I forbidden to make any public comments criticising the challenge at all?

You will be permanently banned from the challenge if you ever claim that the test is unfair, or that I am dishonest, in any place, at any time.

In particular, visitors to the online forum of the Wintermute Bookbinder Educational Foundation should remember that the forum exists solely to further free and open debate. It does not exist to provide you with a platform for criticising me or my challenge. While you are free to offer brief or tepid criticism of the WBEF and its challenge, bear in mind that it shouldn't get out of hand. Remember, the WBEF exists to further my crusade against conspiracy theorists such as yourself. And while open debate is a healthy part of that crusade, the fact remains that the WBEF does not exist to further the crusade of conspiracy theorists against me.

What a real million-dollar challege looks like

2007-03-14T23:25:00.000-07:00

Note: Blogger seems to be screwing up the formatting of this post. I've contacted tech support, but in the meantime, the text will look a little screwy.

James "the Amazing" Randi's million-dollar challenge has long been one of the prominent features of faux Skepticism. It was originally open to "any person or persons who will demonstrate any psychic, supernatural or paranormal ability of any kind under satisfactory observing conditions." Then he dropped the "of any kind." Now he's finally downgraded it to an invitation-only event.

I maintain that Randi's challenge is, quite simply, fraudulent. In fact, it has to be fraudulent, because the thing it's aiming to prove- that the paranormal does not exist- is an inherently meaningless statement. And in promoting a fraudulent challenge, Randi is, like so many Skeptics, using sensationalism and media stunts to make sure that people believe the right things, while eroding their ability to think critically.

First, what would a real million-dollar challenge look like? Look no further than the X Prize foundation. They have extremely well-defined, clear-cut challenges. What the claimants are being asked to do, and what constitutes successful completion of the challenge, are straightforwardly and unambiguously defined in detail and in advance.

If the X Prize foundation were to offer an X Prize for telepathy, it might look (in part) like this:

"Claimants will be placed in two windowless rooms in separate buildings. They must be able, without using any technological device, to transmit a string of 30 Zener cards with 90% accuracy in one hour in order to claim the prize."

Suppose someone figured out that telepathy was real. I'm not saying telepathy is real. I'm just asking that, for the sake of argument, you accept the science fictional premise that someone discovers a "radio gland" in the human brain, and learns how to use it to send and receive messages via radio to other properly trained people. And, that the scientific community as a whole comes to accept that this phenomenon is real. I think it's reasonable to think that they could win the X Prize outlined above.

But what about Randi's challenge? I maintain that they would never, ever be able to win Randi's $1 million, any more than an evolutionist could ever win Kent Hovind's $250,000 challenge. Randi could rig the challenge without breaking the rules as stated.

First of all, Randi could declare that telepathy isn't paranormal, but is instead an established part of science, and thus isn't eligible for his challenge. (Remember, I posited that telepathy had already passed extensive peer review.) If he wanted to be a little more subtle, he could claim that brain radio isn't telepathy as traditionally understood, and point to old writings by pseudoscientists who claimed that telepathy was a faster-than-light phenomenon, or was the result of quantum entanglement, etc.

He could also insist on a test beyond the known capacity of telepathy. For example, he could insist on the transmission of information more complicated than Zener cards. After all, the test is made up on a case-by-case basis, and must be agreeable to both Randi and the claimant. Usually Skeptics hoot about claimants who demand favorable test conditions, but the sword cuts both ways.

Lastly, Randi has a catch-all escape hatch. If all else fails, he can unilaterally declare that he doesn't like your attitude, and that the test is over. That's right- the stated rules actually grant Randi the right to take his marbles and go home. In fact, I have already forfeited my right to participate in the challenge: "The following are some examples of the type of behavior than can result in the rejection of your claim... Making Libelous Accusations (such as insisting that the Challenge itself is a Sham/Fraud or that Randi himself is a liar and a cheat who will never award the prize money even if the Applicant Passes the Tests)."

Sound farfetched? Actually, Randi has already disqualified a number of phenomena on the grounds that they supposedly aren't paranormal:

The following things have been ruled NOT paranormal and/or NOT eligible for the Challenge in the past:
UFOs. "Bigfoot" & "Yeti" (or other legendary creatures). Anything that is likely to cause injury. "Cloud-busting". Claims of a Religious or Spiritual nature. Exorcism and/or Demonic Possession. The Existence of Chakras. The Existence of God[s]. Reincarnation. The Existence of the Soul or "Astral Bodies".

UFO's aren't pararnormal? You could have fooled me! Randi explains further:

Many of the NOT PARANORMAL claims are listed as such solely because they cannot be properly tested for.

...

There are some claims that are far too implausible to warrant any serious examination, such as the "Breatharian" claims in which the applicant states that he can survive without food or water. Science conclusively tells us all we need to know about such matters, and the JREF feels no obligation to engage applicants in such delusions.

How interesting! So the claims really are paranormal. But Randi is redefining them as "not paranormal" because he can't test for them, or thinks they're ridiculous. Why would he do this? Why not simply state, "The following paranormal claims are not eligible, because we cannot properly test them"? Because then Randi wouldn't be able to claim that the challenge is open to "any psychic, supernatural or paranormal ability of any kind." And if he did that, it wouldn't be nearly as impressive a media stunt. (Imagine how ludicrous an honest description of the challenge would be: "Randi offers $1 million to anyone who can demonstrate a paranormal phenomenon that he doesn't find ridiculous.")

More interesting is his rejection of crop circles:

Other claims, such as "Crop Circles" and UFO's are rejected because they have been definitively proven to be the result of hoaxes or mass hysteria.

Randi's claim is, in fact, demonstrably untrue. A number of meteorologists posit that while the more complex crop circles are clearly hoaxes, it may be that a rare natural phenomenon can flatten simple circles in fields of grain. Those meteorologists publish peer-reviewed papers on their findings. I personally think crop circles are a long shot, but the fact remains that the question is more open than Randi claims.

By contrast, Randi declares that the following phenomena do count as paranormal. Presumably, they have, in Randi's mind, not been "definitively proven to be the result of hoaxes or mass hysteria."

Dowsing. ESP. Precognition. Remote Viewing. Communicating with the Dead and/or "Channeling". Violations of Newton's Laws of Motion (Perpetual Motion Devices). Homeopathy. Chiropractic Healing (beyond back/joint problems). Faith Healing. Psychic Surgery. Astrology. Therapeutic Touch (aka "TT"). Qi Gong. Psychokinesis (aka "PK"). The Existence of Ghosts. Precognition & Prophecy. Levitation. Physiognomy. Psychometry. Pyramid Power. Reflexology. Applied Kinesiology (aka "AK"). Clairvoyance. The Existence of Auras. Graphology. Numerology. Palmistry. Phrenology.

Personally, I don't know of any serious scientists who are writing peer-reviewed papers asserting the reality of pyramid power, perpetual motion machines, or auras. And yet, these supposedly have more validity than crop circles, which are supported by peer-reviewed research. If Randi is being honest about his challenge, that would suggest that the head of the James Randi Educational Foundation is himself ignorant of the available research on the subjects he's preaching about.

On the other hand, if the challenge is just a media stunt, the explanation is obvious. Randi knows that his $1 million is safe if he offers it to dowsers and faith healers. But crop circles are a different matter. They're in the same position meteorites were once upon a time. They're rare, they're extremely difficult to explain in terms of contemporary science, and researchers had to rely heavily on eyewitness testimony that meteorites really fall from the sky, just as modern meteorologists have to rely on eyewitnesses who claim to have seen crop circles forming. It may be a long shot, but there is nonetheless a slim possibility that crop circles might pan out. Not only would Randi lose $1 million, but the dowsers and faith healers would never let him forget it. Best to claim- falsely- that crop circles are conclusively disproven, and therefore "not paranormal," and keep the money safe.

Not only is Randi's challenge fraudulent, it necessarily must be fraudulent. The problem is that Randi is trying to prove that the "paranormal" doesn't exist. But Randi himself admits that the term "paranormal" has no clear-cut definition. (But don't worry- just submit your claim, and Randi will tell you whether or not it's eligible long before his money is in any danger.) And if the term "paranormal" isn't a clearly defined category, then statements like "the paranormal does not exist" are meaningless.

Yes, there are plenty of phenomena like dowsing or pyramid power that are unambiguously paranormal, and unambiguously false. But there's also a big grey area. Ball lightning, for example, shares a lot of qualities with paranormal phenomena. It's rare, it was for a long time considered false, research into it relies heavily on eyewitness testimony, it has resisted explanation for a very long time, and it appears to violate the laws of physics. (Specifically, a ball of hot gas should cool quickly, and should rise due to buoyancy. Ball lightning does either, and thus seems to violate the laws of conservation of energy and universal gravitation.) Is ball lightning paranormal? Of course not. If it were, Randi would have to pay someone $1 million. What about the Tunguska event? Also not paranormal. The floodgates would really open if Randi were to open the challenge to cryptozoologists. Yes, the Loch Ness Monster is unambiguously nonexistent. But, the giant squid and the coelacanth are unambiguously real. If Randi opened the challenge to Bigfoot and Nessie, he would have to draw a line somewhere. And not only would he have to justify including Bigfoot but excluding the giant squid, there's always the possibility that he would draw the line in the wrong place, and end up having to pay out the challenge once the Flores man controversy is settled. Nonetheless, for a "not paranormal" subject, CSICOP sure spills a lot of ink over it in Skeptical Inquirer.

And remember when I said that Randi could always declare brain radio to be, technically, not the same as telepathy? He's already done it. "Palmistry" and "physiognomy" are eligible for the challenge. But geneticists have found correlations between facial and hand features and traits such as susceptibility to heart disease. (By the way, there's nothing particularly astonishing about this, if you know how chomosomes work.) Presumably, if you can look at someone's hand and declare that they have a 22% greater chance of dying of a heart attack, that's palmistry. So why hasn't Randi declared that the paranormal is real, and paid out his challenge? Simple- the genetic correlations between hand and face shape and heart disease are not quite the same thing as palmistry. For that matter, scientists can levitate small animals using magnetic fields, but that doesn't count as levitation. Call it Randi-mandering, because Randi has extensively gerrymandered the definition of "paranormal" with one goal in mind: keeping that money safe in its vault.

In the absence of any clear-cut definition of "paranormal," the challenge becomes not only fraudulent, but meaningless. Why is Randi so eager to test the paranormal, if he can't even tell us what the word means? The answer, as I've said several times before, lies in the fact that Skeptics aren't really skeptical. Teaching true critical thinking is hard. Much easier is snookering people into believing things that happen to be true- snookering them using the same kind of sensationalism and media stunts that people like Uri Geller use. And, having done so, Skeptics like Randi can pretend that by indoctrinating people into their catechism, they have taught real critical thinking. If Randi were to genuinely educate people about critical thinking, and abandon his stance on the meaningless category of "the paranormal," he wouldn't be able to stand in front of a camera and grandly declare that he has $1 million available to anyone who can demonstrate any paranormal phenomenon whatsoever. Skeptics wouldn't have a ready supply of sadly deluded fools to sneer at, and might have to look at their own thinking instead. Randi's job would be much harder- but it would be much more honest.

Update:

While researching Randi on the web, I found this interesting tidbit:

For example, CSICOP founding member Dennis Rawlins pointed out that not only does Randi act as "policeman, judge and jury" but quoted him as saying "I always have an out"! (Fate, October 1981).

There is some controversy over what, exactly, Randi means by this. Some claim that it means Randi has an "out" as a safeguard against cheating.

This is, of course, one of those odd, self-damning excuses. We're supposed to believe that Randi is entitled to an "out" (and he clearly has one, as detailed above) because someone might cheat. But that means, in effect, that the test really means that Randi will give away $1 million at his discretion. Randi is in effect admitting that he is cheating at his own challenge, and justifying it on the grounds that the other side might cheat, too.

My beef with Skepticism, in a nutshell

2007-03-14T22:31:00.000-07:00

I recently received this nice comment from Mike Shaw (in response to "Skepticism: What's the difference?"):

Very elegantly constructed, as with all of your posts, but please could you offer a summary paragraph for the hard of thinking? (like me).

I am very much in sympathy with your implied concerns about Skeptic; it always reads like a religious tract, and I often find myself put off by the sheer evangelism of the writing. This is a pity, as it's clearly written by well-meaning intelligent humans. Why is Fortean Times, with its lack of peer-review, legions of crazy people and absence of critical thought so much more fun to read?

My position is very simple: I think that we need a movement promoting critical thinking. But unfortunately, so such movement exists. Even worse, a number of people have co-opted the terms "Skepticism" and "critical thinking" to describe their own subculture, even though their subculture has nothing to do with critical thinking, beyond their rhetoric. As a result, the public becomes even less able to learn about genuine critical thinking. Thus, the first step in promoting critical thinking has to be exposing the fraud of "Skepticism."

The "Skepticism" movement is indeed a subculture, even though its members deny that. They will self-identify as "Skeptics" both in conversation and in print, and they have an array of "Skeptical societies." They have their own publications, like Skeptical Inquirer and Skeptic. They have their own heroes and luminaries, like Michael Shermer and James Randi. The "Skeptics" would have you believe that a "Skeptic" is merely a person who thinks critically. But are all critical thinkers so fascinated by the paranormal and by conspiracy theories? If a critical thinker believes that his time is better spent scrutinizing media coverage of Bush's WMD claims, would he spend his time reading the hundredth article debunking Bigfoot in Skeptical Inquirer?

Genuinely promoting critical thinking- or even genuinely engaging in critical thinking- is difficult. It's much easier to pretend to promote critical thinking. In the case of "Skepticism," this pretense is accomplished through use of what is, in effect, a catechism. If you believe in evolution, and don't believe in Bigfoot, UFO's, or telekinesis, and have the right beliefs on a number of other issues, you're a Skeptic. Getting people to believe the catechism is much easier than teaching them to think critically, because the "Skeptics" are free to use sensationalism and propaganda techniques, as I've explained before. And since the catechism is generally well-proven by science, it can be very hard to convince Skeptics that having the right beliefs is not the same as critical thinking.

But, in order for the catechism to work, the Skeptics have to be careful to not step outside its bounds. This is why Skeptics frequently make statements like, "...I was dismayed in 1976 by the rising tide of belief in the paranormal and the lack of adequate scientific examinations of these claims." (Why not be troubled by a lack of critical thinking in general?) Or take the James Randi Educational Foundation, "an educational resource on the paranormal, pseudoscientific and supernatural." (Why doesn't James Randi, or any other "Skeptic," found an educational resource to help people skeptically examine the news media?) The defining attribute of Skepticism is not critical thinking, but opposition to a vague enemy called "the paranormal," which even James Randi admits cannot be defined clearly. And of course it can't. It can't, because it's a bogeyman, an incoherent grab-bag of scientifically disproven beliefs that Skeptics have seized upon as a monolithic enemy. And they need an enemy, because if they don't actually stand for critical thinking, then they have to define themselves as being in opposition to some external foe. They cannot stand examining themselves against a yardstick of real critical thinking, so they assure themselves that at least they are smarter than the people who believe in Bigfoot. Even worse, straying outside the catechism would mean facing issues that aren't settled yet. That would mean genuine critical thinking, and the possibility of one day having one's beliefs disproven.

And this is why Skeptic is so much more boring to read than Fortean Times. Skeptical publications devote themselves to endlessly rehashing the catechism. How can anyone be entertained by yet another tired trip to the same old foregone conclusions? How many articles debunking Bigfoot can one stand? The message of "Skeptical" publications, drilled home over and over again, is that there's nothing to see here. Yes, they make token comments about how science doesn't have all the answers and how the universe is full of wonders- but those are just formulas. How many articles do "Skeptical" publications devote to unanswered questions? Approximately zero. Take ball lightning, for example. Ball lightning was for a long time dismissed by science. Now it's proven to be real, but it has resisted explanation for decades. It appears to violate both the laws of gravity and of conservation of energy. In short, it is a demonstrably real paranormal phenomenon. Has Skeptical Inquirer ever run an article on it? No. Their only interest in ball lighting is in using it to explain away UFO reports. If you read the books of William Corliss, you'll find countless inexplicable phenomena attested to in the pages of esteemed peer-reviewed scientific journals, including Science and Nature. And yet, my experience has been that "Skeptics" mock Corliss, and I have seen not one single article in any Skeptical publication admitting that any of these phenomena are real.

Or take the RFK assassination. The evidence makes it blatantly clear that RFK was killed by a conspiracy. There's nothing particularly outlandish about that claim. After all, three people can kill a senator, just like three people can rob a liquor store. But the problem is that "conspiracy theorists" are one of the imaginary enemies that "Skeptics" need in order to define themselves. So while you will find endless rehashes of the JFK assassination in skeptical publications, you won't find a single article on RFK.

That, then, is why the Fortean Times is entertaining, and "Skeptical" publications are not. Skeptics pay lip service to the wonder of the unknown. The Forteans- for all their flaws- embrace it.

What went wrong with Star Trek

2007-03-12T23:08:00.000-07:00

I've been a big fan of the original series of Star Trek ever since childhood. Even now, I catch it on TV when I get the chance, even though I've seen all episodes several times (with the exception of "Space Seed," which, strangely, was the one episode my local TV station would never, ever show when I was a kid.) On the other hand, I watched Star Trek: the Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Enterprise for a while, but lost interest long before the ends of their runs. (Voyager I hated from the start.)

In my opinion, the problem is that the people making the new Star Trek series never quite managed to grasp the fact that what made the original series so special was its sense of intellectual adventure. What scenes from TOS stick out most clearly in my memory? Spock cursing himself for a fool, because he forgot to use his tricorder to record the centuries of history being revealed by a time portal. Or later in the same episode, when Spock, stranded in the 1930's, used vacuum tubes to repair his broken tricorder. Scotty draining people's phasers into the fuel tanks of a downed shuttle, trying to get enough power for orbit.

Roughly speaking, there are four kinds of intellectual adventure. Either it's about using your brain to get out of a jam, or using your brain to play a joke on someone, or cooking up an elaborately cerebral way to make money, or finding a treasure whose value is cerebral rather than monetary. In Apollo 13, when an engineer dumps a pile of detritus on a table and says, "This is what's inside the command module- now figure out how to turn it into an adapter for the air filters," that's intellectual adventure. In Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman, Feynman used his brain to make adventures for himself. In The Mad Scientists' Club, a group of adolescents played elaborate scientific pranks on the citizens of their small midwestern town- and the book, while obscure, secures a permanent place in the hearts of its fans. The engineers from The Eudaemonic Pie tried to beat the casinos by building a computer that could predict where a roulette ball would land. Finding King Solomon's Mines is regular adventure. Finding the Library of Alexandria is intellectual adventure.

Part of the key to intellectual adventure is that the audience has to be able to understand what's going on. That's what makes ST:NG so tiresome. On the old series, Spock repaired his tricorder with vacuum tubes. On ST:NG, Geordi just blathers about reconfiguring the warp coil. Imagine if the air-filter scene in Apollo 13 had been replaced with engineers jabbering about how they have to retro-oxidize the samarium-231 ortho-nebulizer. Or what if Feynman's practical jokes had all involved finding eigenfunctions of the n-topic quark manifold? Nobody would care. And that's why I don't care about ST:NG.

Of course, the writers of ST:NG did have a vague sense that they needed to be intellectual. That's why we had endless trial episodes, typically involving a relatively bloodless discussion of some philosophical point. Even worse, the philosophical debates would be so heavily skewed towards one side or another as to destroy any curiosity on the part of the audience. (What fan is going to say that yes, Data is just a robot, and can be killed with impunity?) Even worse, their philosophical stances would flip-flop wildly, depending on the demands of the episode. In one episode the Prime Directive is so sacred that Wesley's life has to be sacrificed for it. In another, the Enterprise crew finds cloning so offensive that they upend a society of clones by forcing them to have sex with unwashed rural hicks.

I can't help but feel that the writers of ST:NG were conflicted on the question of how intellectual the show would be. The show declared itself- at times quite explicitly- to be more intellectual than the old series. When Kirk battled a being with godlike power, he would gamble the Enterprise on a hand-to-hand duel. When Picard battled a being with godlike power, he poured himself a cup of tea and sipped it in his armchair while he quietly waited for death. Excuse me? Who the hell wants to watch an old man wait for death? And yet, the writers seemed to have no faith in the intelligence of the audience. Otherwise, why would they resort, week after week, to the deus ex machina of reconfiguring the warp coil? And in the end, we got neither intellectualism nor adventure.

The generally anti-intellectual attitude of ST:NG led to all kinds of silliness, repeated week after week. Once Geordi and Data beamed down to a planet and found alien technology which surpassed anything available to Starfleet. Did they take it back to the Enterprise for study? No, of course not. It's not like they're explorers or anything. No, they just made some appreciative noises, and then moved on to the next shiny object. Time and again, the Enterprise crew would find something that, in theory, should completely change their society, and yet it would completely disappear with no trace once it had served its purpose in the plot.

This found its silliest expression in the Disposable Deus Ex Machina. For example, in one episode, Dr. Pulaski and a number of other members of the crew got infected with a virus that made them age quickly. In the end, they fixed the problem by using the transporter to revert their bodies back to the way they were before they got old. Got that? They didn't solve the problem by coming up with a cure for the virus. They solved the problem by coming up with a cure for aging. For centuries, people have tried to find a way to stop aging- and Dr. Pulaski does it in a few days during a race against senility. Not that it makes any difference. Apparently no one in the ST:NG universe wants longevity anymore, because never again in any subsequent episode of that or any other Trek series did anyone mention that aging had been abolished.

It makes a kind of weird sense, in a way. Between 1870 and 1970, we went from covered wagons to men on the moon. What technological advances and societal changes have taken place in the 100 years between ST:TOS and ST:NG? Faster warpdrive, smaller communicators, and plusher spaceships. When even their explorers have no curiosity,
can you blame them for having a stagnant society?

Where has all this led? It led to Star Trek: Enterprise, in which all presense of intellectualism has been abandoned in favor of tepid gunfights and cheesy T&A. I imagine that the producers decided that if people didn't like the "intellectualism" of ST:NG, then the audience must just not be that cerebral. But if they would just try presenting problems with real solutions, instead of bombarding us with treknobabble, or show the characters displaying any interest whatsoever in exploring the universe, instead of using exploratory missions to comets as an opportunity to make snowmen...

Ideology in a nutshell

2007-01-04T18:17:00.000-08:00

If you spend much time on internet debate fora, you’ve probably seen the following exchange take place:

Atheist: All the great atrocities of history are the direct fault of religion!

Christian: What about Nazism and Stalinism? Wasn’t Stalin an atheist? Isn’t atheism responsible for atrocities too?

Atheist: That just proves my point, because Nazism and Stalinism were kind of like religions too!

Clearly there’s a problem here. The problem is that the atheists who make this claim are (just like everyone else in internet debate fora) just a bunch of monkeys who want to fling their poo at the other monkey tribe. They’ve decided that the other monkey tribe is the “religion” tribe, and so naturally they have to prove that everything bad is somehow the fault of some ill-defined thing called “religion.’

If you’re really interested in figuring out why atrocities happen- instead of just using the death of six million Jews as a stick to beat anonymous people on the internet with- you’ll forget silly labels like “religion” and ask what the followers of Torquemada, Hitler, and Stalin had in common. I personally think it’s something that I will, for the sake of argument, call ideology.

For purposes of this discussion, I’m going to define “ideology” as the belief that a single idea or system of ideas has already provided us with all the answers. And as it turns out, the book The Truth Machine by James L. Halperin happens to provide an example of ideology in a macrocosm. Halperin has few if any followers who are as enthusiastic as he is, and he seems pretty harmless (for now…) but by golly, is he ever convinced that he already has the answers to everything. His book posits that in the next decade or so we will be able to build a 100% reliable lie detector (the “truth machine” of the title,) and it will, by its very nature, automatically solve all our problems and produce a utopia. Clearly this belief is reasonable: we already live in an era in which neither computers nor airplanes ever crash, banks never make mistakes, and election machines are never rigged, so why not believe that we can build a lie detector which will never, ever fail under any circumstances? Halperin takes his idea very seriously, even going to far as to recommend that people send copies of his novel to their Senators, in the hopes of starting a “Manhattan Project” aimed at producing a working truth machine.

It would be one thing if Halperin argued, for example, that a 99% reliable lie detector would cut down the crime rate, since police could reliably interrogate suspects. But what he actually argues is that we will have a 100% effective lie detector that will cut the crime rate to zero. What about crimes of passion, committed without regard for the consequences? What about serial killers with no connection to their victims- how will the police find suspects to interrogate? No matter- the truth machine will revolutionize psychotherapy, too, so there will be no more crimes of passion or serial killers. Remember, in order to be 100% effective, the truth machine must not only detect conscious deceit, but must also alert the interrogator whenever the subject is lying to himself. In Halperin’s view, psychotherapists will hook their clients to the machine and force them to face the truth about themselves, with the result that everyone will end up consummately well adjusted. But if someone is in denial, won’t they just declare that their therapist’s truth machine is broken? Don’t be silly- everyone knows the machine is absolutely 100% foolproof. And besides, when they claim the truth machine is broken, it will immediately brand them as a liar for saying so!

You might at this point wonder whether the truth machine would unleash a nightmare of political repression, in which the government audits people’s minds, looking for subversive thoughts. But don’t be silly! Presidential candidates would be audited by truth machine, so everyone would know which candidates planned to ban subversive thoughts. But couldn’t the government use a rigged truth machine, which would let them conceal their plans? No, silly- the truth machine is 100% reliable! But what if the public wanted the government to go after people with unpopular views? No, because the truth machine will put an end to cheating in schools, so everyone will have to study hard, and everyone will make an A in civics class, and will understand that political repression is bad. (No, I am not making this up. Halperin actually argues this.)

Halperin has already illustrated the first principle of ideology. The ideology has to do everything. The truth machine can’t just verify that people are testifying accurately in court. It has to eliminate all crimes, all mental illness, all cheating in schools, all marital problems, all political repression, in short, every problem society has. This is the same thing we saw, on a more tragic scale, in Lysenkoism. The Soviets believed that not only did Marxism hold the answers to questions of economics, but it had all the answers to questions of genetics as well. So, they bred new strains of wheat according to “Marxist” genetics, producing a predictable famine.

Halperin’s book also illustrates the second principle of ideology: the ideology may create problems, but it claims to solve every problem it creates. This leads to chains of reasoning in which a problem is solved by the ideology, thereby producing another problem, which is also solved by the ideology, inadvertently producing another problem, which is also solved by the ideology, and so on, until finally the ideology solves the last problem, and the ideologue declares victory. And yet, if the chain breaks at any point, all the problems come crashing down on our heads, and we have no solutions. Think of the example of political repression. What if eliminating cheating doesn’t enable every kid to make an A? (After all, most of them can’t make an A even when they do cheat.) What if the government- or FOX news, for that matter- does produce a rigged truth machine? What if psychotherapy doesn’t work the way Halperin thinks it does, and a frustrated populace decides to take out their frustrations on homosexuals, or socialists, or atheists? You can see the same chain of reasoning at work most clearly in libertarianism. Libertarians keep telling me that the answer is to throw all government restraints to the wind, and let everything sort itself out. But what happens when landlords are allowed to discriminate on the basis of race? No problem. No rational landlord will discriminate, so long as he can make money renting to racial minorities. But historically, hasn’t the absence of antidiscrimination law led to landlords gouging racial minorities? Yes, but only because society wasn’t libertarian enough. Real libertarianism, we are told, will produce a boom in the housing market that will make housing affordable for all, eliminating the gouging of minorities. But what if the boom in the housing market allows local landlords to become so rich and powerful that they can corner the housing market, and they decide to gouge? Simple: minorities are free to move to a different city, where the local landlords don’t discriminate. But what if they don’t have enough money to move to a new city? Don’t be silly- libertarianism will make everyone so rich that they can freely move cross-country to whatever city suits their desires.

The third principle of ideology should be obvious at this point: whenever the ideology fails, its failure is attributed to a lack of ideological purity. When I point out to libertarians that Marcus Garvey tried to put their recommendations into action, in the absence of antidiscrimination law, and failed because racist whites sabotaged his businesses, they retort that no true libertarian would sabotage someone’s business, and that in a truly libertarian society Garvey would have succeeded. If the Soviet Union wasn’t the utopia promised by Marx, that’s just because true Marxism hasn’t been tried yet. And if the government used a rigged truth machine to cover its wrongdoing as it jailed subversive thinkers, Halperin could just declare that a rigged truth machine isn’t 100% foolproof, and therefore his ideology hasn’t been tested. Never mind that the reason their ideologies haven’t been put into practice is because they are so deeply flawed as to be utterly unworkable. Their very impossibility shields them from disproof in the mind of the ideologue. And this is precisely why Halperin has to posit such stellar performance on the part of the truth machine. If it only detected conscious attempts at deliberate deceit, it wouldn’t be absolutely, positively, 100% effective, and his ideology would fall apart. So, he posits that it catches every unconscious act of self-deceit as well.

Lastly, we come to our original question: why does ideology lead to atrocity? The answer is simple. Ideologues believe that their ideology already has the answers. It can solve all problems. And if it ever fails, it’s because people didn’t embrace the ideology enthusiastically enough. Embracing the ideology 99% may have already thrown us into hell, but that’s only because we failed to achieve the 100% that would take us to heaven.

Naturally, anyone who disagrees with the ideology will only hold us back at 99%. They are dangerous, and must be eliminated.

Remember the Muslim general who ordered the destruction of the Library of Alexandria:

A book that disagrees with the Koran is blasphemous.

A book that agrees with the Koran is superfluous.

Burn them all.

What passes for 9/11 skepticism?

2006-09-19T22:50:00.000-07:00

On the fifth anniversary of 9/11, Democracy Now! ran a debate between Dylan Avery and Jason Bermas, the makers of the film Loose Change, and James Miegs and David Dunbar, who were two of the editors at Popular Mechanics responsible for the book Debunking 9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories Can't Stand Up to the Facts. In case you've been living in a cave, Loose Change is the most popular film questioning the official version of the events of 9/11, while the Popular Mechanics study is the most prominent defense of the official version, receiving the imprimatur of "Skeptics" everywhere. (Michael Shermer, for example, gave it the thumbs-up in his own piece on 9/11 for Scientific American.)

The Loose Change folks were, sadly, shrill and incoherent. They rely heavily on what I've come to think of as "The Behe Maneuver." It goes like this: present a lot of arguments that clearly point in one and only one direction, but disavow any responsibility for the obvious conclusion. You know, like the way Michael Behe goes on and on about how his evidence supposedly proves that life on Earth was created by a superhuman intelligence of unlimited power which transcends space, time, and physical law... but gosh, he's not trying to imply anything about who that creator might be, and it's so unfair of the evolutionists to say that he's talking about God by another name. Avery and Bermas do the exact same thing. They claim that the World Trade Center was pre-rigged with demolition charges, that a missile was shot into the Pentagon, and that Cheney gave a stand-down order which prevented the planes from being shot down before they hit the WTC. Does that mean they think Cheney deliberately blew up the WTC with explosives and ordered a missile to be shot at the Pentagon? Oh, heavens no. Wherever did you get that idea? They're just saying that there are a few holes in the official story which suggest that we need to investigate further.

Meanwhile, the editors at Popular Mechanics are predictably condescending and dishonest by turns. Let's look at what passes for skepticism these days:

JASON BERMAS: ...in June of 2001, Cheney signs a DOD memo putting shoot-down orders in his hands, Rumsfeld' hands and Bush's hands alone, where it was standard operating procedure if colonels were to intercept these planes and they saw a threat, they could do the shoot-down order.

JAMES MIEGS: ...We're not a political magazine. We're about facts. We're about what happens when airplanes crash, how buildings are built, and so we're not going back to conspiracies that might have been hatched, you know, during the Kennedy administration or other eras, but we are looking for physical evidence, positive evidence for any of these claims. Every time we get into detail on one, they fall apart...

(emphasis added)

So, Bermas is tracing the events leading up to 9/11- specifically, something that happened a mere three months before. Miegs replies by declaring that ancient history like the Kennedy administration isn't relevant to people like him, who are only interested in the facts. Not only does he get to put words in Bermas's mouth, he gets the extra bonus of irrelevantly dragging JFK into a conspiracy debate.

So that's what has Michael Shermer all excited! And it isn't even the only time Miegs grossly misrepresents his opponents. To wit:

AMY GOODMAN: And who do you believe blew up Building Seven?

DYLAN AVERY: We don’t want to try to implicate anybody. We’re just trying to tell people to go out and research for themselves. But, I mean, you have to ask yourself, who could have possibly placed explosives inside Word Trade Center Building Seven, secretly without anyone noticing, and especially the Twin Towers?

JASON BERMAS: Especially because the CIA, the DOD, the Secret Service are all located there.

DYLAN AVERY: Yeah, I mean, that building was a government hotspot.

AMY GOODMAN: Ten seconds, Jim Meigs.

JAMES MEIGS: You know, conspiracies have a way of constantly expanding. You just listed a whole range of government agencies. Apparently the fire fighters we talked to, we at Popular Mechanics, other journalists, our friend David Corn at The Nation is accused to being part of this massive cover-up. The fact is, there are always little details that don't always add up until you finish your research.

Avery and Bermas point out that a number of government agencies are potential suspects. Miegs responds as if they had claimed that all those agencies were involved. But, of course, that's an entirely different claim. Agatha Christie novels routinely present multiple suspects for a crime- but only in one case did Poirot claim that all of the suspects were collectively guilty. Not content with that bit of misrepresentation, he then falsely accuses Avery and Bermas of claiming that the editors of Popular Mechanics are part of a deliberate cover-up. He accuses them of claiming that the firefighters are part of the cover-up, even though Bermas specifically stated that he trusted the testimony of the firefighters. He even throws in David Corn, whom no one had previously mentioned in the debate at all!

A few other high points:

"This is not a movie."

"People died. We're talking about real human beings here, you know. This wasn't a movie. This isn’t a parlor game."

Isn't that just grotesque? I think I'll have to start using that one. Any time someone disagrees with me on a subject of importance, I can just tell them this isn't a parlor game, and thereby wrap myself in the mantle of the victims.

"In the world of paranoid conspiracy theories -- there are no coincidences.'

"...we're not going back to conspiracies that might have been hatched, you know, during the Kennedy administration or other eras..."

"You know, this is a wonderful example of how conspiracy theories work. Any time there’s a little bit of doubt, a little bit of area where we don't know everything, then the answer immediately is, well, someone must have blown it up. It’s a form of argumentation that’s also used by creationists. If they can find one little gap in the evolutionary record, they say evolution’s a hoax. Or Holocaust deniers -- Holocaust denial works with very similar --"

Remember, kids- pathologize, pathologize, pathologize! Miegs and Dunbar believe in a conspiracy theory. Avery and Berman dared to critique it. Ergo, Avery and Berman are the real "conspiracy theorists," and therefore are paranoid, and therefore have no more credibility than Holocaust Deniers, so there's no need to pay any attention to them, children.

While we're on the topic, let me note that a number of my readers like to routinely accuse me of pathologizing dissent. Their argument goes like this: "We Skeptics are just pointing out that conspiracy theorists and creationists are wrong because they're always driven by the same pathological thought patterns. But you routinely claim that Skeptics use bad thinking too! You have a total double standard!"

Since some of the primates apparently need it spelled out for them, let me explain in words of as few syllables as possible:

The Skeptics are using a fallacy called "refutation by labeling." They believe in conspiracies like Watergate. They believe that a shadowy, worldwide conspiracy called Al-Qaeda was behind the events of 9/11. Some people believe in conspiracies that the Skeptics don't believe in. Some people even dare to question the conspiracies that the Skeptics do believe in. The Skeptics respond to this by making an imaginary category of "conspiracy theorists," to whom they assign all those people they disagree with. Then they declare that the "conspiracy theorists" are sick people, no different from creationists and Holocaust Deniers. And, having thus pathologized dissent, they don't need to think so much. The next time someone questions the Skeptics' beliefs about conspiracies, they can just say, "Oh, these conspiracy theorists are all crazy."

I, on the other hand, look at a subculture of people who have self-identified as Skeptics. I can't help but notice that these people exhibit pathological thinking- and they're nasty, rude little trolls to boot. It has nothing to do with their beliefs. Oftentimes I agree with their conclusions, however much I disagree with their logic. I happen to believe that WTC7 was not, repeat NOT rigged with explosives. (And as I say that, I have the sinking realization that, as usual, a few illiterate skeptics will fail to see the "not" in that sentence.) That doesn't change the fact that James Miegs is a lying, snotty little sack of excrement.

The difference between Skeptics and me is pretty simple:

When I criticise Skeptics, they routinely say things like, "Oh, you must believe in UFO's or Bigfoot or something. That's the only conceivable reason someone would criticise us."

That's pathologizing dissent.

To which I respond, "Actually, I agree with you about Bigfoot and UFO's. What we disagree on is the fact that you're an asshole."

That's pathologizing being an asshole.

Do you understand the difference now?

Paul Kurtz reminisces

2006-06-27T21:02:00.000-07:00

Paul Kurtz, founder of CSICOP, has written a reminiscence about the early days of that organization. To put it into perspective, think of this:

Suppose there were a prominent creationist organization called "the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of Evolution." To celebrate the 25th anniversary of the founding of CSICOE, the founder wrote an essay reminiscing about the history of the Committee.

How do you think the "Skeptics" would respond if he were to write the following? (Which, by the way, I've patched together with sentences taken from Kurtz's essay.)

"It is well known that I am the culprit responsible for the founding of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of Evolution. Why did I do so? Because I was dismayed in 1976 by the rising tide of belief in evolution and the lack of adequate scientific examinations of these claims. I was distressed that my students accepted abiogenesis and other aspects of the theory of evolution without the benefit of a scientific critique.

It is within this cultural milieu as background that I decided to convene a special conference to discuss 'The New Irrationalisms: Evolution and Pseudoscience.' I invited many of the well-known critics of evolution to this opening session- Duane Gish, Michael Behe, and William Dembski among them. Historically, there have been many efforts to examine the claims of evolution, but most of these groups mainly attracted believers who were predisposed to accept evolution; the skeptics in their midst were few and far between. Thus CSICOE was the first body made up predominantly of skeptics, who were willing to investigate the alleged evolutionary phenomena.

There were a number of strategic issues that CSICOE had to address at its founding. First, what would be our approach to such phenomena? Would we simply be debunkers out to show by ridicule the folly of the claims that were made, or would we be serious investigators concerned with research into claims, dispassionate, open-minded inquirers? The answer was clear: Our chief focus would be on inquiry, not doubt. Where we had investigated a claim and found it wanting, we would express our doubt and perhaps even debunk it, but this would be only after careful investigation.

I should say that although most skeptics believed that there was considerable trickery afoot or self-deception in "evolution research," I was not certain whether evolution was true or not. My skeptical colleagues insisted that such phenomena were unlikely, but I decided to investigate for myself, to satisfy my own curiosity. I did this by teaching a course, 'Philosophy, Evolution, and Origins' at the university. My plan was to work closely with students on various experiments in order to test psychic and other claims. I repeated the course four times over eight years, and had over 250 students enroll. They conducted nearly 100 independent tests. The thing that absolutely stunned me was the fact that we never had positive results in any of the many tests conducted. I have never published these findings, for I did them basically to satisfy my desire (and that of my students) to ascertain whether anything paranormal could be uncovered."

By the way- let's also suppose that this creationist had made a career of writing for creationist magazines about his "crusade" against evolution, which he consistently described as an enemy of Christianity and as being a great threat to society.

How likely is it that the "Skeptics" would take his claims at face value? Would they accept that he was genuinely openminded and undecided about evolution at the time he founded CSICOE? Would they accept CSICOE as a genuine research organization, when it has so clearly stacked its membership and its rhetoric towards one side of the debate? And yet, Kurtz describes the founding of CSICOP in precisely those terms- I've done little other than to substitute "evolution" for "paranormal". Look closely at what Kurtz is saying:

* Just as creationists muddy the distinction between abiogenesis and evolution, Kurtz and his fellow skeptics routinely lump together Bigfoot, conspiracy theories, and other non-paranormal issues with psychics and astrology: "I was distressed that my students confused astrology with astronomy, accepted pyramid power, Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster, Kirlian photography, and psychic surgery without the benefit of a scientific critique." According to the Skeptic's Dictionary, "An event or perception is said to be paranormal if it involves forces or agencies that are beyond scientific explanation." You know, like psychic powers, or radiation before Einstein explained it. There's nothing paranormal about a giant ape, or a conspiracy, or for that matter extraterrestrials.

* Kurtz is not a scientist, and has zero published research papers. Nonetheless, he points to his own extensive "research" with his students as proof that paranormal phenomena don't exist. It would be nice if his "research" were subjected to peer review, or if he were even to describe what, exactly, their experiments consisted of. But, alas, Kurtz's work cannot be subjected to a scientific critique, because he won't tell us anything about it, at all, except that it disproved the paranormal.

* "Would we simply be debunkers out to show by ridicule the folly of the claims that were made, or would we be serious investigators concerned with research into claims, dispassionate, open-minded inquirers?" Why was this ever a matter for debate? Who took the position that CSICOP should ridicule claims before investigating them, and why are they in CSICOP, when their position is so clearly antithetical to critical thinking?

* Just like Michael Behe, Kurtz is willing to speak out of both sides of his mouth. On the one hand, he's trying to present himself as an open-minded investigator. On the other hand, he writes articles with titles like, "Two sources of unreason in democratic society: The paranormal and religion." (Annals of the NY Academy of Sciences 775: 493-504 1996) and "Humanists crusade against parapsychology", (Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research 72 (4): 349-357 1978.)

* For that matter, just look at the title of the conference at which he first proposed CSICOP: "The New Irrationalisms: Antiscience and Pseudoscience." Are we really to believe that he was undecided about the paranormal? Or that CSICOP was meant to be devoted to serious, open-minded scientific research?

Most problematic is the fact that when these kinds of statements are made by their own side, the "Skeptics" are unable to see any problem with them. In response to my earlier claim that Skeptics problematically blur the distinction between research and media advocacy, and gerrymander their interests to fit their agenda, I got the following response from Mikkel at factsforum.org:

"Well, most conspiracy theories share a common denominator with magical, paranormal, supernatural, religious and metaphysical claim. They are considered Absolute. That is what denotes Believers. They start with an Absolute and then 'fit' or invent the facts."

And this, of course, encapsulates the entire problem. "Skeptics" view the world as divided betwen themselves and capital-B "Believers." Why does Skeptical Inquirer deal with such a crazy-quilt of issues, rather than sticking to its avowed mission of investigating the paranormal? Because anyone who holds those opinions is a pathological Believer. It's reasonable for Skeptical Inquirer to lump them all in the same boat, because all the bad guys think alike anyway. And thus the "Skeptical" ideology is automatically self-reinforcing. Like Penn and Teller say: bigfoot is bullshit, UFO's are bullshit, and, by the way, global warming is bullshit too. Everything that Penn and Teller disagree with is bullshit, so it's perfectly natural for them to get a TV show on which to grind a diverse array of personal axes, having nothing in common except for the fact that Penn and Teller want to grind them. And, to the "Skeptics," the fact that "Skeptics" disagree with something marks it as part of the undifferentiated mass that the "Believers" believe in.

Don't believe me? Look at Barry Fagin's article "Skepticism and Politics" in the May/June 1997 issue of Skeptical Inquirer. It's pure propaganda, and predictably concludes that the only legitimate political belief for "Skeptics" to hold is libertarianism. The real question, though, is why is Skeptical Inquirer devoting space to a discussion of libertarianism at all? Shouldn't they be investigating the paranormal? The answer is simple: Paul Kurtz happens to be a libertarian. So, just as is the case with Penn and Teller, there's nothing unusual about Skeptical Inquirer promoting "skeptical" viewpoints on "skeptical" subjects, and "skeptical" is defined to fit Kurtz's pet issues.

Skepticism: what's the difference?

2006-06-20T21:56:00.000-07:00

Carl Sagan once wrote an article on the non-existence of God, in which he asked what kind of universe we'd expect to see if God didn't exist. He described such a universe (which looked exactly like our own,) and then asked, if God really does exist, how is that any different from God not existing? It's a nice rhetorical technique, and today I'm going to do something similar with "skepticism."

What would a magazine look like, if it were genuinely devoted to spreading the ideas of critical thinking? That's not too hard to answer- just look at a good critical thinking textbook. They warn the reader about common fallacies that they could fall into, and draw examples from a range of fields- politics as much as the paranormal. They don't pathologize particular beliefs and speculate about "why people believe weird things," for two reasons. First, their focus is on methodology, not ideology: critical thinking lies in how you arrive at your beliefs, not in holding the right beliefs. Secondly, the entire point of a critical thinking textbook is to help the reader spot their own fallacies, not to help them feel superior to others.

What would an organization and its magazine look like, if it were genuinely devoted to investigating the paranormal? Again, you don't have to look far for a model: it would look like a scientific journal. Authors would be able to publish articles on the paranormal regardless of the conclusions they reach, so long as they followed the proper methodology. Authors with different points of view would scrutinize each other's work and engage in healthy debate. Many articles would analyze paranormal phenomena and come to only tenative and fragmentary conclusions. There would be little rehashing of old ground, unless there was something genuinely new to say.

What would an organization look like if it were a media advocacy group? Organizations like FAIR and Media Matters for America point out inaccuracies in the media, and provide arguments to prove their case. Other organizations frankly declare that they want less sex and violence on TV, for example. In each case, their mission is clear: they declare themselves to be media advocacy groups, and that's exactly what they are.

On the other hand, suppose the Skeptic subculture were driven not so much by a desire to advocate critical thinking and open-mindedness, nor to perform scientific research, nor to conduct media advocacy, so much as a desire to feel smarter than everyone else. We already have something of a model in creation science. Jack Chick's Big Daddy is just one example of a common motif in fundagelical urban legends: a Christian student humiliates an atheist professor. (Another variant has the professor saying "If God really exists, then he can miraculously keep this chalk from breaking when I drop it," only to have it bounce safely off his shoe. In each case, the professor flees the room in a panic, leaving the student to preach to the class.)

Of course, the creationists have a problem. They want to feel smarter than everyone else, but their strategy is to embrace a dogma which is totally out of kilter with reality. A much better strategy is to embrace a dogma which is largely correct. Of course, being right doesn't make you a critical thinker: thumping your chest and asserting "the earth is round" doesn't test your skepticism at all. But if you're really concerned with the methodology of critical thinking, that puts a damper on feeling smarter than everyone else, because when you think critically you realize that you oftentimes can't reach a definitive conclusion on important issues, and you can never reach a state in which you no longer have to scrutinize your own belies. Substituting ideology for methodology lets you use some of your pre-existing beliefs as the touchstone of truth, so that you can pretend that you've already arrived at your goal.

When people aren't honest about their objectives, their mission starts to get fuzzy. When Michael Behe speaks to universities, he declares that he's just a scientist, and is more than willing to leave the question of "Who is the Designer?" to the theologians. When he speaks to churches, he talks about how his research will convert people to Christianity. The Institute for Creation Research is ostensibly a scientific institution, but when they're challenged on the loyalty oath which they demand of their "researchers," they reply that they're an advocacy group. Similarly, one expects pseudo-skeptics to claim to be devoted critical thinking in general, but one might find that mysteriously they focus on the paranormal at the expense of media criticism. No problem- they can just declare that they're really a paranormal research institute. If challenged on the fact that they only publish people who agree with their ideology, they can declare that they were really devoted to media advocacy all along.

Naturally, this strategy of substituting ideology for methodology depends on making sure that the ideology is hard to challenge. Genuine research involves attacking the most difficult and unresolved problems, but we would expect pseudo-skeptics to avoid genuinely unresolved paranormal issues like strange rains of fish from the sky, giant pinwheels of light in the oceans, hydrometeors, etc. Instead, it would be in their best interests to stick to rehashing issues that are already well-debunked (Ogopogo, for example,) no matter how unimportant they may be. If your self-image depends on setting up your ideology as a touchstone of truth, it pays to pick your battles well.

We also expect a certain fuzziness of definitions, in addition to the aforementioned "mission creep." Pseudo-skeptics would claim to be interested in the "paranormal," but their real interests would be gerrymandered to fit their ideology. Thus the Loch Ness monster would be "paranormal," because they can prove it doesn't exist. Coelocanths and the colossal squid aren't "paranormal," because they aren't demonstrably false. Conspiracy theories aren't really paranormal at all, but one would expect pseudo-skeptics to spend a lot of time attacking them, since it's in their interest to pick enemies that they can make look silly. And the term "conspiracy theory" can itself be gerrymandered to fit their ideology: Iran-Contra and Watergate don't count as "conspiracies," while the Illuminati and JFK do. Whether these conspiracy theories are correct is beside the point: like Ogopogo, the more ridiculous the claims appear to "skeptics," the more attractive they would be to the self-proclaimed investigators of the "paranormal", despite the fact that no one claims that JFK was shot by a Sasquatch.

If the entire point of pseudo-skepticism were to feel smarter than other people, then we would expect a lot of pathologizing of dissent, just as "Big Daddy" portrays the atheist professor as a contemptible figure. Again, ideology would trump methodology: the mere fact that someone disagrees with the "skeptics" would be enough to mark them as being fundamentally different and inferior. Much ink would be spilled on asking why people disagree with "skeptical" ideology, and establishing a difference between "skeptics" and a chimerical group of "true believers." Instead of a focus on "watch out, here's a fallacy that can slip you up," we would see endless analyses of why those other people, the "true believers," believe "weird things." And, of course, one would expect pseudo-skeptics to declare themselves to be "Skeptics," and to appropriate that term as a general term or members of their movement, thereby blurring the lines between ideology, methodology, and advocacy while simultaneously flattering themselves and emphasising that they are a group apart from everyone else.

It's obvious that my "hypothetical" example is really a description of the modern "Skeptic" movement as I see it. And maybe they're really motivated by a desire to feel smarter than everyone else, and maybe they aren't. But, as Sagan would say, the question is this:

If Skeptics aren't driven by a desire to feel smarter than everyone else, how is the current situation any different than if they were?

What's wrong with internet fora?

2006-06-08T22:34:00.000-07:00

Back in the early days of the Internet, cyber-libertarians declared that since people were free to make their own rules online, all online problems would magically resolve themselves as a thousand electronic communities evolved whatever rules worked for them.

As it turns out, Internet debate fora are, with vanishingly few exceptions, run as dictatorships. And within the limits of the medium, those dictators wield something approaching absolute power. In fora where people exist solely as their words, moderators can silence people completely, or retroactively alter their words without any sign of tampering. In theory, they could even ban a user and keep his avatar going as their puppet, turning a critic into a literal mouthpiece of the party line, and no one would be the wiser.

Predictably, the results are less than satisfactory. In general, users have told me that while they think the mods and admins of their messageboard are nastily corrupt, there's no point in leaving because nowhere else would be much better. So, they tough it out in order to stick around with their fellow users, despite the abuses of the mods.

The frustrating thing is that it's so easy to change all that. Mysteriously, popular messageboard engines are programmed to give moderators powers for which there is no legitimate purpose. A few tweaks to the code, and 75% of moderator abuses disappear, and most of the rest will vanish if users stand up for clearly defined standards.

Messageboards are a pink-collar hobby.

Suppose I complain to a waitress about her grumpy behavior. She replies that she's grumpy because she works long hours at a difficult job for low pay in order to put her kids through school.

She has my sympathies. She's clearly doing the best she can with a difficult set of circumstances.

Suppose I complain to a moderator about her grumpy behavior. She replies that she's grumpy because she's working long hours at a difficult job for no pay.

Excuse me? Being a moderator is a hobby. Any quasi-intelligent person will change their hobby if they don't like it. And yet, I can't tell you how many moderators have justified their behavior to me by whining about how hard it is to be a moderator.

The fact of the matter is that messageboards are a service industry. If you become a moderator, your hobby is to serve the users by providing a congenial environment for discussion. Unfortunately, the enormous power given to moderators tinges the whole situation with echoes of the Stanford prison experiment. Moderators get it into their heads that they're the mature adults who have to discipline the users, who are unruly children.

Don't believe me? Just tell a moderator that you consider yourself to be their equal, and want to work with them, adult-to-adult, to make the messageboard a better place. See what happens.

Editing without a trace

There are legitimate reasons why a moderator might need to edit a user's post. But there is never any legitimate reason whatsoever for a moderator to edit a user's post, and not announce that he has done so. Nevertheless, I know of one messageboard where the users had to fight long and hard to get the rules changed so that any edit had to be accompanied by a notice saying "This post edited by such-and-such moderator on such-and-such date."

I know of one creationist messageboard where this kind of editing was taken to ludicrous heights. If the mods saw any message which questioned creationism in the slightest, they would ban the user and silently edit the message into a ringing endorsement of creation science. They even edited messages by young-earth creationists who were asking about creationism simply because they wanted to learn more about it! Ridiculous though that may sound, remember: whoever programmed the messageboard software had a choice, and they chose to let admins do that kind of thing whenever they please.

Secret parking tickets

Only in the most brutally repressive states can you imagine being exiled for revealing that you were charged with a misdemeanor. And yet, messageboards in general have a policy that no user may reveal any official messages or warnings that they receive via private message.

In one case, I asked a moderator for an official rules clarification, which she gave me. Later, I quoted her clarification in public, and was immediately threatened with banning if I ever revealed an official communication again. One might naively think that the moderators have an interest in making sure that everyone plays by the rules, and thus would want official clarifications of the rules to be available to all. (In case you're wondering, I asked her whether moderators could be stripped of their duties if they were caught lying in an online discussion. In reply, she stated outright that moderators could lie freely in debates without fear of punishment.)

At another messageboard, moderators responded to my criticisms by declaring that I had violated the rules, and that I would be banned if I didn't admit my guilt and promise to be good. When I asked them to specify precisely which rules I had broken, they refused to do so, saying only that on a particular date I had received a private message which had specified the rules I had broken. Of course, they were lying, and the message contained no such thing. I could have easily proven it by posting the contents of the message- but that would have given them an immediate pretext to ban me.

The most ridiculous thing about all this secrecy is that moderators consistently justify it by pretending that official communiques contain deeply personal revelations, given in the strictest confidence to people whom they don't even like. The fact is that there is no legitimate reason whatsoever why users can't reveal anything that mods tell them in their official capacity, and it's silly to pretend otherwise. Perhaps we need a rule like the U.N.: no agreement is binding unless it is conducted in public.

The ostrakon

Unfortunately I don't remember what brilliant soul thought of the ostrakon. An ostrakon is a special forum for "banned" users, who are forbidden to post anywhere else.

An ostrakon serves all the legitimate functions of normal banning, but removes most of the abuses. If a troll is creating trouble, just send him to the ostrakon. Then nobody has to deal with him unless they choose to. And if someone wants to criticise the mods, they can't silence him by banning him, since anyone who thought he had a valid point is free to continue the discussion in the ostrakon.

The ostrakon could potentially have beneficial effects even when the moderators aren't corrupt. Decisions to ban are often controversial, but anyone who would miss a banned user is free to do so in the ostrakon.

Remember, too, that much of the force of banning as a punishment comes from the fact that the banned user is immediately cut off from the community. If he's sent to an ostrakon, he can announce that he's moving to a different messageboard, and people are free to meet him there if they wish. For that matter, simply letting people give a single goodbye message upon being banned would serve the same purpose- but the moderators' illusion of authority rests on the idea that everyone they ban is a reprehensible troll, who has no right to speak and whom no one would want to follow.

Extend the ignore list to moderators

One of the perks of being a moderator is that no one can put you on their ignore list. Mods justify this by saying that users need to be able to hear comments made by the mods in their official capacity. That would be more convincing if they didn't spend so much time stressing that there's a difference between comments made when they have their "[Moderator hat ON]" and when they have their "[/Moderator hat OFF]". There's no reason why official comments from a moderator couldn't be made to circumvent the ignore list. For that matter, you could do it without reprogramming vBulletin. A moderator could have two accounts, for example "MrBinky" for when he's speaking as a user, and "MrBinkyMOD" for when he's speaking as a moderator. "MrBinky" can be ignored like everyone else, but "MrBinkyMOD" cannot.

The other argument presented against my proposal is that anyone who wants to put a mod on their ignore list must be some kind of weakling, since they are free to just skip over the mod's posts. Horse hockey- if that's the way you see it, then you shouldn't have an ignore list at all. If it's legitimate to have an ignore list at all, then no one should be exempt from it. (And if you don't believe in ignore lists, then I firmly hope that someone writes a virus that randomly inserts "YOU SUCK! HAHAHAHAHAHA!" into every webpage you ever read. After all, you're free to skip over those parts, if you don't like them.)

The hidden subtext here is that the moderators don't believe that there's any legitimate reason for someone to want to ignore a moderator. Like I said, there's a touch of the prison experiment here. The moderators assume that they're the mature, intelligent people, because after all, they're moderators. Maybe someone would want to ignore a user. But a moderator? Never.

I could provide some examples of moderators who deserve to be ignored, but that would be beside the point. Nobody has to justify their ignore list. There is no God-given right to impose yourself on people who don't want to listen to you, and they don't need to justify themselves to you in order to be left alone. And if you're going to have an ignore list at all, then no one deserves to be exempt from it.

What now?

Internet messageboards have a lot of potential, and there's no reason why we have to empower a bunch of jerks to spoil them for us. Write Jelsoft and demand that the next version of vBulletin incorporate features that make it harder to refuse. And most of all, stand up for your rights and roundly ridicule any mod who pretends that official moderator notices are deeply personal love letters.

A crisis of non-skepticism... at CSICOP

2006-06-07T09:31:00.000-07:00

I used to claim that I could pick up any issue of a creationist publication, chosen at random, and find an article that I could not only debunk, but demonstrate to be self-evidently silly, if only its readers had stopped to think. I'm beginning to feel the same way about Skeptical Inquirer and Skeptic. It's not like I even scour them cover-to-cover looking for pseudo-skepticism. I skim Skeptic on occasion when I go to the grocery store, and inevitably find grist for this blog.

Here we have an article by Howard Gabennesch from Skeptical Inquirer. Bear in mind that this is an article written by a university professor, vetted by the editors of CSICOP, and not only that, the editors were so proud of it that they put it front-and-center on their webpage.

Gabennesch decries a widespread lack of skepticism in his field, sociology:

Amazon.com lists more than 2,000 titles on critical thinking. Haven't we largely ironed out the conceptual fundamentals by now?
Apparently not. Here are some indicators from my discipline of sociology that illustrate some of the work that needs to be done. I draw these examples from four mainstream, college-level introductory sociology textbooks, three of which are best-sellers in a crowded market. As is true in virtually all such texts, the preface and promotional material of each book explicitly assure instructors and students that the book attaches much importance to critical thinking.

But when we look at Gabennesch's examples, we find that in fully half of his examples he provides no critique whatsoever of the writers' methodology. His claims that they are unskeptical quite literally rest on nothing more than the fact that they dare to disagree with him. Is Gabennesch scraping the bottom of the barrel to prove his point, or does he just not realize that "skepticism" means something other than "agreeing with Gabennesch"?

Of course, the pathologization of dissent is par for the course for these people. Gabennesch wants to pretend that he's not just another guy with an opinion, so he wraps himself in the flag of "Skepticism." Naturally, anyone who disagrees with a Skeptic must be practicing badthink. And if you want to get published front and center by CSICOP... now you know what to do.

I have a theory about the conservative noise machine

2006-05-27T06:14:00.000-07:00

I think that periodically the GOP spinmeisters come up with screwy neologisms just to see if they can get the Kool-Aid drinkers to follow along. Remember back in the 90's when conservatives all started talking about the "Democrat Party"? Not just talking heads, mind you- one day all the conservatives I argued with just started saying "Democrat party". Even more amusing is the fact that after a while they all just stopped, once the spinmeisters got tired of the joke. You would think that if all the conservatives had started saying "Democrat party" because they thought it made sense or something, then they wouldn't have all stopped in lockstep like that. Maybe there would be a few stragglers, if they were actually thinking for themselves. Stay tuned for the "Gree party".

Even better is "homicide bomber." The ostensible logic is that calling them "suicide bombers" is too sympathetic and touchy-feely, so we need to call them "homicide bombers" in order to remind everyone that these people are murderers. But the problem is that Americans have always been really been creeped out by the suicide angle. It's not like "suicide" in this context really brings to mind a depressed teenager making a desperate call for help. The media is full of discussion of what drives people to become suicide bombers because in American culture, the idea of embracing certain death in order to advance a cause just doesn't add up. This is true even when you divorce suicide attacks from the context of terrorism. Kamikaze pilots are a source of enduring fascination for Americans, but aside from the suicide angle, they were soldiers just like our own troops were. The suicide, and suicide alone, marks them as crazy. Using the term "homicide bomber" is not only redundant to the point of silliness, it actually defuses the reality of the situation. It's like saying, "You liberals think these are Kamikaze pilots? Ha! Real Americans call 'em Japanese Air Force pilots!"

Hence the conclusion that "homicide bomber" was actually proposed by the spinmeisters as a bar bet. If they really wanted to demonize terrorists, they'd call them "suicide fanatics" or something like that. But "homicide bomber"?

The brilliance of WaPo continues unabated.

2006-05-11T20:07:00.000-07:00

From a recent online chat with Dana Priest on 5/11/06:

Anonymous: Dana - How does the NSA data "drift net" that
was exposed today differ from the Total Information Awareness (TIA) program led
by Poindexter that was supposedly disbanded? Did the Pentagon just continue the
program under a different name?

Dana Priest: That's a possibility. We don't know yet.

From Newsweek, 2/8/06:

Yet today, very quietly, the core of TIA survives with a new codename of
Topsail (minus the futures market), two officials privy to the intelligence
tell NEWSWEEK.

Of course, those who read liberal blogs already knew that, since Rumsfeld openly bragged about how they were going to keep TIA going under the radar, and all that.

Remind me again how Dana Priest earns her paycheck? Isn't a journalist supposed to know all about big, controversial front-page issues?

If Bush is not impeached, then America is no longer a democracy.

2006-05-11T18:07:00.000-07:00

The Democrats are now reduced to proposing new laws saying Bush has to follow the old laws. If they're passed, Bush will simply sign them into law- along with a signing statement saying that he doesn't have to follow them, either.

The simple fact is that Bush is the only President ever to openly admit to committing an impeachable felony. Impeachable offenses are humdrum, workaday behavior for Shrubco. On over seven hundred occasions Bush has written signing statements in which he signs a new bill into law- and then amends it, unconstitutionally, to say that he doesn't have to follow the law.

If Bush isn't impeached, then America simply isn't a democracy. It's a dictatorship, and no amount of bicameral window dressing will change that fact, however much it may help the average American sleep at night. Remember Sinclair Lewis and It Can't Happen Here: the first thing President Buzz Windrip did was to reduce Congress and the courts to an "advisory capacity." A bit of garnish, like parsley, with no nutritional value, but it makes the plate of rat poison look so very pretty.

The fact of the matter is that it's shameful that the Democrats haven't done anything, and the fact that they haven't proves that they aren't interested in democracy, or even in personal power. The Democrats are the Alan Colmeses of Congress- they are happy to warm seats as whipping-boys for the Nazanderthals. The fact that they are in the minority means nothing. African Americans were in the minority in the 1960's south, and unlike the Democrats, they weren't pampered. And they won. What are you people afraid of? That Karl Rove will say nasty things about you? Then what will you do when they bring out the police dogs?

When the President has become a dictator, you stop him. I don't care if you filibuster every single bill that comes before Congress. I don't care if you chain yourself to the podium. You just do it.

My plan is simple. The Democrats get one last chance, because I'm grasping at straws. When they win both houses of Congress in November, they impeach Bush and Cheney. Period. And if they don't do that, we never vote Democrat again. Why throw away our votes on parsley, when we could vote Green?

If you want your democracy back, make one thing clear to your representatives in Congress: once they're the majority party, either Bush is impeached, or the Democratic party and the Greens are going to trade places.

Let Suemageddon begin!

2006-05-11T17:13:00.000-07:00

Peter Swire and Judd Legum at ThinkProgress have an important observation on the recent revelation that the telecom companies have been helping Bush commit millions of impeachable offenses*:

"The penalty for violating the Stored Communications Act is $1000 per individual violation."

(Actually it turns out to be a $1000 minimum.)

Hey guys- free money!

It reminds me of those movies in which someone foils the bad guys by tossing a fistful of money in the air, so that all the bystanders immediately glom together into an impassable crowd. Surely, surely there are some ambulance chasers out there who are willing to bring a series of class-action lawsuits that could drive these fascist toadies to bankruptcy.

* You know, I've seen a graph of Bush's approval rating over time, and a graph of fluctuating gasoline prices, but isn't it time for a graph of impeachable offenses? We could have two versions: one for impeachable offenses per month, and another for his cumulative total over time.)

Pathologizing Dissent, revisited

2006-05-08T17:11:00.000-07:00

Don't miss Paul Krugman's article on "loony conspiracy theories," excerpted by Atrios. It has a great deal to say about how the pathologization of dissent has become part of the landscape of political discourse. (And don't miss the excellent comment left by an anonymous reader of Archie-Archie.)

Two-headed cerberus, part 7: No true Scotsman

2006-05-06T01:30:00.000-07:00

One of the recurring debates of the Internet goes like this:

Fundagelical: Christians are more moral than atheists.

Skeptic: Torquemada was a Christian.

Fundagelical: He wasn't a true Christian. Maybe if you had read the Bible, you would know that already.

Skeptic: You're just using the No True Scotsman fallacy.

If you ask me, this isn't so much a case of the No True Scotsman fallacy as a case of comparing apples and oranges. The No True Scotsman fallacy involves ambiguity of definitions. To the fundagelical, there is no ambiguity: Torquemada simply wasn't a Christian. The real fallacy is comparing apples and oranges: "Christian" is defined as "everyone who follows my teachings, which I pretend originated with Jesus," while "atheist" is defined as "anyone who doesn't believe in God." One could similarly declare- legitimately- that a "Secular Humanist" is anyone who truly follows the Humanist Manifesto, and conclude- illegitimately- that Secular Humanists are more moral than theists.

Even granting that the fundagelicals are identifying the N.T.S. fallacy correctly, the Skeptics have no real understanding of the fallacy. Their understanding is that when they hear the trigger phrase "Torquemada was a Christian," they reflexifely cry "No true Scotsman!"

You want proof? Here's another little debate that plays itself out time and again, particularly in the days immediately after 9/11:

Fundagelical: Islam isn't a religion of peace- just look at Osama bin Laden!

Skeptic: Osama isn't a real Muslim.

How stupid do the Skeptics have to be in order to say that? All along they've been attacking the fundagelicals for saying that Torquemada wasn't a Christian. Doesn't it give them pause to say that Osama isn't a Muslim? No, not a bit. Remember: they aren't thinking at all. They're just operating on reflex, coughing up canned replies in response to the appropriate keywords, just like Eliza. If they were really thinking, and were really honest about what they belive, then they would declare that most Muslims are shocked by 9-11, just as most Christians are shocked by the bombings of abortion clinics. But, unfortunately, that would require conscious thought.

And don't forget that I'm criticising the Skeptical subculture on the grounds that so many of its members aren't really skeptical. How do you think the Skeptics will rebut my argument?

"I do imagine, however, that there are plenty of people out there who dislike religion or fundamentalist versions of religion, and who happily parrot people like Dawkins, but who’ve not done the analysis of evidence and so on, and who, ultimately, take it on faith that that biblical fundamentalists are wacky. They’re not skeptics, though. They’re just people with axes to grind."

Two-headed cerberus, part 6: Three-way shootout

2006-04-25T00:30:00.000-07:00

Creationists are fond of an argument that, once you send it through the Architectonic Decoder Ring, translates into this:

If there are two people in the world who disagree with me, but also disagree with each other on any issue, then I'm right.

We'll call it the argumentum ad bonus, malus, et turpis. (i.e. the Fallacy of Argument from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, because it posits that the mere existence of a three-way shootout automatically proves the creationist right.)

For example, paleontologists disagree on whether birds are descended from dinosaurs or from some other, non-dinosaurian reptile. Creationists point to that disagreement as proof that evolution is false. The most prominent grist for argumentum ad b. m. & t. is, of course, the disagreement between phyletic gradualists and the proponents of punctuated equilibrium.

Needless to say, "Skeptics" are so well-versed in creationist silliness that they know to steer well clear of this fallacy, right? No. George case wrote this article on "conspiracy theories" in which he included the following gem:

"The blunt truth is that conspiracy theories very seldom make a solid case. Either they play on pre-existing prejudices (how corrupt you already take the government / the media / big business to be), or contradict each other (if the Iraq war is all about Halliburton contracts, then it can’t be about Judeo-Christian millennial fanatics within the Bush administration; if the Mafia killed JFK, then the Freemasons are off the hook)..."

Yes, not only does George Case point to the mere existence of multiple JFK conspiracy theories as proof that they are all wrong, he also states that logically, it is impossible to kill two birds with one stone. Thus we can't have Bush (a known Judeo-Christian millennial fanatic who has, in fact, stated that God told him to attack Iraq) steering corrupt contracts to Halliburton (who is known to have received corrupt contracts.)

What is a "conspiracy theory", anyway? Run it through the Decoder Ring and we get:

"Any conspiracy that a 'Skeptic' doesn't believe in."

Take Watergate, for example. Case believes in that, so it's not a crazy conspiracy theory. On the other hand, he's a conservative, so if you pay attention to the news and remember the time Bush said God told him to invade Iraq, you're crazy.

Given Case's supersonic flight from all logic and facts, can we expect him to be criticised by the Skeptics for using the same arguments that creationists use? No, he's actually a recurring writer for Skeptic magazine, in which his conspiracy piece first appeared. And the Skeptic's Dictionary website makes favorable mention of him as well.

Remind me again, what is Skepticism supposed to be about, precisely? Isn't it supposed to have something to do with critical thinking?

Two-headed cerberus, part 5: pathologizing dissent

2006-04-22T09:12:00.000-07:00

I remember I once thought Jim Jones must have been really brilliant to figure out how to brainwash all those people into following him. Then, when I read a book on Jonestown, I was surprised to find that Jim Jones' brainwashing techniques were essentially the same ones that the evangelical Christians used on me back when I attended an evangelical high school. The full story will have to wait for a later blog entry, but for now let me point to one of the key brainwashing techniques used in both cases: pathologizing dissent.

If you want to make sure that people don't leave your group and don't question the dogma, it's very important to make sure that they never believe that reasonable people could disagree on the dogma. Everyone who disagrees- everyone who is not a member of the group- is not merely incorrect, but is laughable, wicked, and sick.

For example, we were always told that atheists were silly, neurotic people who denied Christ because they wanted to have license to sin, and were trying (and failing) to fool themselves into believing that God wouldn't punish them for it. My history teacher once warned me that any book on Egyptian history which didn't explicitly mention the parting of the Red Sea was actually covert anti-Christian propanda written by atheists who were hell-bent on the destruction of Christianity. There's also a set of Sunday-school stereotypes of "why people reject Christianity," loosely based on the parable of the sower. If you read Left Behind, the protagonists have little personality beyond these stereotypes: there's the guy who thinks Christianity sounds too dumb for a cool guy like him, the guy who goes to church but isn't really committed, etc. Nowhere do they admit the possibility that reasonable people simply might disagree on whether Christianity is true. This is a nice way to make sure people don't leave the cult: tear down everything outside the cult so that your followers don't think there's anywhere else to go.

Where do Skeptics fit into all this? Here's Richard Dawkins:

"It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid, or insane (or wicked, but I’d rather not consider that)."

Like I said: the evangelicals teach that everyone who dissents is laughable, wicked, and sick. The Skeptics have actually made a cottage industry of pathologizing dissent. They don't write books with titles like, Why We All Make Mistakes. They write books like, Why People Believe Weird Things, and they have pat answers to explain away the fact that people disagree with them just like the Christians do. It's always the other guy who has a problem, and the problem is so spectacular that instead of merely rebutting it, the Skeptics need to analyze the underlying pathology that motivates people to disagree with the Skeptics. Remember the Skeptic I quoted before:

"Logical people are skeptics. True believers don't look at facts and inference, but authority figures to decide what to believe."

Skeptics use logic. Always. Non-Skeptics are "true believers" who don't look at facts and inference. Ever. They let authority figures decide what they believe. Always.

Why not phrase it like this?

"People get scammed because even the best of us can get fooled- nobody's perfect. Unfortunately, it's easier to get fooled if you don't know about critical thinking, and schools just don't teach that kind of thing."

How often do we see Skeptics admit that they themselves can think illogically at times, or admit that non-Skeptics often do quite well at thinking logically with regard to some, but not all, of their beliefs? They can't admit that, any more than the fundagelicals can admit that reasonable people can disagree about Jesus. If they ever admitted it, the wall between "us" and "them" would crumble, and they would have to see themselves as midpoints on a continuum.

The pathologization of dissent gives the fundagelicals and the Skeptics an easy way to dismiss people who disagree with them. If dissent can only be motivated by pathology, then the very fact of dissent proves that there is no point in listening to the dissenter. I've had Christians tell me "I'm not going to listen to your story of why you left Christianity- the Bible already tells me why you left, and if you have a different story, that just proves you're in denial." I've also heard them say, "Oh, you're for gay rights- you're one of those people who wants to have gay sex, so you attack Christianity because we're the world's one bastion of morality." Similarly, Skeptics believe- and oftentimes explicitly state- that anyone who attacks Skepticism is someone who believes in a Weird Thing, and since Weird Things are never true, the only way they can defend their belief is to attack the world's one bastion of rationality, Skepticism. Thus when I criticise Skepticism as a subculture, they roll their eyes and declare that I must believe in some kind of "alternative thinking," or they bring up 9/11 out of the blue. They beg me to read The Demon Haunted World and to embrace critical thinking, just as the fundagelicals beg me to read the Bible and embrace Jesus, even though the only evidence that I haven't already done so is the fact that I dare to criticise them.

Two-headed cerberus, part 4: No room for improvement

2006-04-22T09:05:00.000-07:00

Inherent in the us vs. them thinking of "Skeptics" and Christians is the idea that they have already arrived at their goal. "Christians" label themselves as the official Believers in Christ. Everybody else needs to get in touch with what Jesus expects of them, but Christians are already there.

Now, take this quote from a Skeptic:

"Sure. For any scammer, the vast majority in the audience has little ability to use logic. Logical people are skeptics. True believers don't look at facts and inference, but authority figures to decide what to believe. As long as the authority figure has an answer, any answer at all, to an objection, the true believer can not be budged."

"Skeptics" refer to themselves as "skeptics." Not as "people who advocate skepticism," or "people who try to be skeptical," but "Skeptics," people who already have an inherent tendency to exercise Goodthink in every aspect of their lives, completely different from the True Believers who haven't accepted the truth of Skepticism.

Two-headed cerberus, part 3: Movement vs. ideal

2006-04-22T09:04:00.000-07:00

"Skeptics" and fundagelicals both have an inability to separate their movement from their ideal. Thus, any criticism of fundagelicalism is taken to be a criticism of Jesus himself, rather than a criticism of the movements which claim to follow him. Similarly, "Skeptics" will, without fail, interpret criticisms of the Skeptical subculture as being a criticism of the very idea of rational thought. Take what one self-proclaimed "Skeptic" told me:

"...yes, I know you think that means I'm turning a blind eye to "alternative thinking" or whatever. So be it. I read comic books and an occaisional science fiction novel; that's all the escapism I'm interested in with my literature."

What prompted this attack? Nothing more than the fact that he made a claim, and I asked him for a cite to back it up. Skeptics are, if anything, more thin-skinned than the fundagelicals, in my experience, and this example is hardly unique. Once I asked a Skeptic for a cite, and she told me that the very idea that anyone would ask her for a cite made her too angry to type in a reply.

Naturally, this kind of mindset leads to us vs. them thinking. If someone criticises the movement, they're criticising the ideal, and therefore they must be Stupid and/or Evil. If you dare to ask a Skeptic for a cite, you must embrace some form of "alternative thinking" worthy of nothing but mockery. I've had fundagelicals tell me outright that one day, my lifestyle of sex and drugs will pall, and I will realize that true happiness can only be found in Jesus. Bear in mind that I'm neither a drug user nor a libertine, nor did the conversation up to that point have anything do to with sex or drugs. But if you criticise fundagelicalism, they assume you must fit their stereotype of a wild heathen. So, too, with the Skeptics. I once pointed out that people frequently seem to have an irrational tendency to dismiss conspiracy theories out of hand, without even looking at the evidence. I was told:

"If you want to suggest that there's something wrong with me because I don't believe the twin towers were really destroyed by Donald Duck or a cabal of basket-weavers, then I'm happy to disappoint you."

Of course, I had mentioned nothing about 9/11. But "Skeptics" imagine that everyone who disagrees with "Skepticism" is part of a morass of "True Believers" who believe in weird conspiracy theories, particularly involving 9/11.

The confusion of movement and ideal is exacerbated by the willingness of both Skeptics and fundagelicals to appropriate generic terms for their movements. Christians in general appropriate the term "God" to refer to their tribal deity, Jehovah. One frequently sees them claiming that the Ontological Argument for the Existence of God proves the existence of Jehovah, even though it clearly does no such thing: the Ontological Argument says nothing whatsoever about the crucifixion, for example. Sometimes you even see the more ignorant fundagelicals saying that Christianity is superior to Islam because Christians believe in God, while Muslims only believe in Allah. More frequently, you see them making claims like, "I'm not religious, I'm just Christian," or "Religions are man-made lies, like Islam or Buddhism. Christianity isn't a religion, it's just reality."

Similarly, "Skeptics" have appropriated the term "skepticism" for their little subculture of people who are interested in Bigfoot but don't believe in him, and then they pretend that all people with an interest in critical thinking are as interested in Bigfoot as they are. Extra!, for example, is clearly a publication that is devoted to critical thinking, but I've never seen it hailed in the pages of Skeptical Inquirer. It's difficult for me even to discuss the Skeptical subculture as something separate from genuine skepticism, because there isn't even a separate word for it. That's why I capitalize "Skeptic" and put it in quotes. Naturally, that always arouses the intense ire of "Skeptics" because they don't like to be reminded of the fact that joining a Skeptical Society doesn't necessarily make you a real skeptic. In other words, they object to my phrasing, but their real objection is to what I'm trying to say.

Two-headed cerberus, part 2: I.P.U.

2006-04-22T07:58:00.000-07:00

Frequently when Christians argue for their beliefs online (typically fundagelicals, simply because those are the only ones who bother to argue for their beliefs) you find the Skeptics shooting back with the Invisible Pink Unicorn. The Christians, naturally, will complain that the I.P.U. is clearly meant to mock Christianity by dragging it down to the level of silly fairytales. Wikipedia is reasonably honest about this, but at many places- particularly the SDMB- the Skeptics will insist that no, the I.P.U. is merely meant to humorously illustrate the concept of Popperian falsifiability. If an idea is immune to all possibility of disproof, then it's not worth taking seriously, because there's no way to know whether it's true or not. For example, I once saw Michael Behe presented with the claim that such-and-such gene clearly shows evolution being driven by random mutations, thus disproving Intelligent Design. Behe replied that the mutations were actually directed by God, but that God had disguised them to make them appear completely random. To this, a good Skeptic will shoot back, "I'll believe in Intelligent Design, but only if you can prove that the Invisible Pink Unicorn doesn't exist." Sure, all evidence shows that the I.P.U. doesn't exist- but that's just because the I.P.U. works so hard to remove all traces of her existence.

So, do Skeptics really value Popperian falsifiability? Not really. It's just a convenient stick with which to beat the fundagelicals, but they don't really believe in it. Just raise the question of conspiracy theories, and sure enough, some Skeptic will say, "Don't be silly, every conpsiracy is revealed sooner or later." This very obviously violates Popperian falsifiability. How can you possibly disprove it? The only possible counterexamples are things no one will ever hear about. The very act of learning about a counterexample destroys its validity as evidence! I've tried to point out that many conspiracies have, in fact, managed to stay hidden for a very long time: MKULTRA stayed undiscovered for 25 years, was only discovered more or less by freak accident, and 90% of the activities involved in the program will never be uncovered, because the files were shredded. Needless to say, the Skeptics point to that as proof that every conspiracy will always be revealed in all its details sooner or later.

Even worse, the Skeptical rebuttal doesn't even make sense. Obviously if I'm presenting a conspiracy theory, I'm claiming that that theory has been uncovered. It's like saying "I had a hamburger for lunch today," and being told, "Don't be ridiculous- all hamburgers get eaten sooner or later." But don't wait around hoping that the Skeptics will mock one of their own kind with the I.P.U. They don't really care about Popperian falsifiability, any more than the creationists do. They're like the little mechanical figures on a clock, programmed to march out and strike the bell with a hammer every hour. Except in this case, they're programmed to smack creationists with the I.P.U. every so often. Smacking conspiracy deniers with the I.P.U. simply isn't part of their programming, so you'll never see them do it.

The two-headed cerberus, part 1: Joining the club

2006-04-19T23:11:00.000-07:00

Today we begin our look at the two-headed Cerberus: ORGANIZED RELIGION and ORGANIZED SKEPTICISM.

Have you ever noticed that all the people who call themselves "Kantians" actually know, understand, and believe in the things Kant believed? That's because the only way to actually be a Kantian is to hold beliefs that have some similarity to what Kant taught. On the other hand, suppose we made a Kant Club, all of whose members were called "Kantians." Then it would be possible for someone to be a "Kantian" without actually believing in Kant. All they have to do is to send off for a membership card! And suppose the Kant Club promulgated the idea that everyone outside the club was a moron. Then there would be a real incentive for people to join the club and call themselves "Kantians." But ostensibly you have to believe in Kant before you can join the club, right? Don't be a doofus. Joining the club only requires that you say you believe in Kant. If people can do that, nobody is going to bother actually reading Kant.

Now, suppose that Christian churches simply didn't exist. Then the only people who would call themselves "Christians" would be people who actually believe in the stuff Jesus taught. If you can't get baptized, then there's really no other definition of the word "Christian" than someone who actually is, in fact, a follower of Jesus! The problem is that 99.99% of Christians don't even pretend to believe anything remotely like what Jesus actually taught. How thoroughly have they perverted the message of the Gospels? They tell us that the central message of Christianity is "faith." What is "faith"? It means you believe in Christianity. Amazing! The central idea of Christianity is that you have to be a Christian. Well, that certainly sets Christianity apart from Islam. The Koran clearly states that you do not, in fact, have to be a Muslim in order to be a devout Muslim. In fact, I've known plenty of devout Muslims who were, in fact, Presbyterians.

If you actually bother to read the Gospels, minus the obscuring fog of two thousand years of DENIAL, you find that Jesus was simply teaching a message that most people can't hack. Jesus described "faith" as being like the Trust Game, in which you fall over backwards and a friend catches you before you hit the ground. Jesus tells his followers to give up their jobs and give everything they own to the poor, because hey, why not? God will take care of you. Jesus says that if a man sues you for your hat, give him your cloak as well. Why not? God will replace them, if you trust him to do it. Jesus even says that if your country is invaded, you shouldn't fight back. Just trust that the invasion is part of God's plan. When was the last time you heard a Christian talk about settling out of court for more than you got sued for?

The fact is that most "Christians" don't want to fling themselves backwards, because they don't trust God to catch them. So, they have to redefine "faith" so that instead of meaning true trust, it just means being a member of the Jesus Club (tm). Presto! No more need to believe in Jesus's bothersome teachings. And the end result is Rush Limbaugh and his dittoheads deriding the Christian Peacemaker hostages and their "idiotic theory" (i.e. Christianity,) and openly rooting for the terrorists who are threatening to kill them.

Now, what about skepticism? Well, suppose you wanted to pretend you were smarter than everyone else. But, you aren't comfortable with the idea of being exposed to new ideas and having to occasionally change your mind. Simple! Just subscribe to magazines like Skeptical Inquirer or Skeptic, or buy The Skeptic's Dictionary (aka The Skeptic's Catechism, in handy alphabetical order.) Join your local Skeptic's Society. Be sure to preface your opinions with "I'm a skeptic, so naturally..." As in, "I'm a skeptic, so naturally I don't believe in Bigfoot." If you're Michael Shermer, you can even write an article in Scientific American entitled "Skeptic", so that all your readers will know how skeptical you are, as opposed to all the gullible crap that fills the rest of Scientific American.

Now, I know what the Skeptics are saying at this point. "But we deserve to call ourselves Skeptics, because we really are skeptical!" Yeah, just like Pursuit of Excellence Institute is really an exemplar of excellence in all its forms. Look, two paragraphs ago all the Christians were whining, "You're taking Jesus out of context! We really are Christians!" If you were really so skeptical, then people could figure it out without you having to slap "SKEPTIC" over yourself and all your magazines.

Still not convinced? Just wait. This is only the end of the beginning.