Cory Doctorow is a phony.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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?