The Perfectly Lazy Blog

Logical Fallacies: Changing the Subject

2012-12-18T15:30:00.001-08:00

True to form, most of the examples I plan to use here will be from the right, but I plan to start out with one very prominent example from one very prominent figure on the left. Observe:

1:14:03-1:14:55

Did you see that? One second, the subject is the poverty in Canada, the next, it’s the unemployment rate. The subject changed. This is Michael Moore, either mistakenly assuming that the one counts as an accurate reflection of the other, or counting on his audience to make this mistaken assumption. Now I will be the first to admit that my understanding of economics, while probably better than the next guy’s, has its limits, but I understand perfectly well that, depending on the breadth and quality of a country’s social programs as well as several other economic or socio-political factors, being employed does not necessarily mean living above the poverty line, and living above the poverty line does not necessarily mean being employed. A country’s poverty rate and its unemployment rate can have very little to do with one another.

According to my own admittedly cursory research, the homeless rates of the two countries are comparable, percentage wise, so I rather suspect that the poverty rates are comparable as well, but if this scene, which I’m about to play, is any indication, then being impoverished in Canada is not such a big deal.

1:20:00-1:20:42

So in Canada, being poor does not necessarily mean being indigent. Canada is a country in which being poor is not so bad. It’s not luxurious by any means. You’re not exactly loving life, but it’s not hopeless, desperate, or squalid.

Now the documentary I got this footage from is called “Bowling for Columbine,” and I recommend it, especially for conservatives. A lot of conservatives have probably dismissed it out of hand thinking they already know the case it tries to make; that guns are bad, and that gun restrictions are necessarily good. But in fact, Moore himself is a card-carrying member of the NRA and emphasizes quite clearly that gun restrictions in Canada are not significantly different from those in the US.

01:14:54-01:16:50

So although the rate of gun-related crime in Canada is significantly lower than in the US even after you account for the differences in our populations, Moore does not attribute this to tighter gun restrictions. In fact, in the course of the film, he presents a much more subtle cause. Clearly, the reason Canadians are not shooting each other nearly as much as we are is that it’s so frickin’ cold up there. You see, you can’t shoot someone if you can’t aim, you can’t aim if you can’t hold the gun steady, and you can’t hold the gun steady if you can’t stop shivering.

No, actually, he attributes it mostly to the atmosphere of fear fostered and maintained by the media in the US, but not the media in Canada. He also attributes it to differences in social programs, but due to this change of the subject, this documentary de-emphasizes the differences in the way the two countries treat their poor, and in my humble opinion, this does a little too much of a disservices to this particular factor.

This is an example of a logical fallacy called “changing the subject.” I have a problem with what is usually given this title on the sites I can find about logical fallacies. I find it tends to be referred to as just another word for “red herring,” when it seems to me that this is more accurately a specific form of red herring; an especially subtle form. Observe:

“Homosexuality is wrong because it is unnatural.”

“How can it be unnatural? It’s found all through nature. Every animal species we have ever studied with two distinctly different genders has had the occasional exhibition of homosexuality.”

“Well you know what else is found all through nature? Pedophilia. So that’s a bad argument.”

“Hold the phone. Let me see if I understand here. You are not, in fact, saying that homosexuality is unnatural, even though a moment ago, you were? Are you saying that homosexuality is wrong because it is unnatural, or in spite of the fact that it is natural? Could you make up your mind?”

Do I find the sexual assault of a child (not the same thing as pedophilia, by the way) every bit as offensive as the next guy? Absolutely. Does this have anything whatsoever to do with whether it is natural? Not in the slightest. But what else is found all through nature? Heterosexuality. So if homosexuality and heterosexuality are each found all through nature, then this cannot be used as a basis for declaring one of these wrong. Why does the “wrong” label apply in the one case but not in the other?

We’ve got two lists here: the list of things that are offensive because they are allegedly unnatural and the list of things that are offensive in spite of the fact that they are natural. One moment, the subject is the first of these lists. The next moment, it’s the second.

But I’ll tell you what’s unnatural. Homophobia. Humanity is the only animal species we have ever studied in which a member of the species can expect to be seen as some kind of threat just for being gay. This is not found anywhere else in nature. If anything can, indeed, be called unnatural, surely this can be.

Next example:

“If the workers at a factory decide they want to strike until they can get better wages, hours, working conditions and benefits for themselves, who is the Government to step in and tell them they can’t?”

“Well now, it seems to me that walking off the job means not getting paid. Isn’t that a bad idea?”

“You are changing the subject.”

“No I’m not.”

“The subject is whether striking should be a right; not whether it’s a good idea. Whether striking is a good idea depends on the circumstances, but the issue is who gets to assess those circumstances and make that determination. I say the employees get to, you say that no one gets to. That’s the subject. Make the case one way or the other or admit that you are changing the subject. We don’t use ‘it might not be a good idea’ as a reason to make something illegal, because by that logic, everything becomes illegal. Do you really want the government to be able to make something illegal just on the grounds that it might not be a good idea? Do you really want the government to have that kind of authority?”

Next example:

(subject: abortion rights) “I am pro-choice.”

(subject: abortion) “How can you condone infanticide?”

(subject: abortion rights) “…I don’t. I support choice and body-autonomy. I support the woman’s right to decide for herself whether to terminate her pregnancy.”

(subject: abortion) “Don’t you realize, if your mother had practiced your ethic, you would not be here today?”

(subject: abortion rights) “My ethic that a woman should be free to choose? She did practice this ethic. She made her choice and here I am. I am a choice. I’m not talking about abortion; I’m talking about abortion rights. The rights. Get on the subject.”

(subject: abortion) “But if the woman’s not at a point where she can afford to support a child, she could just put it up for adoption. You know, there are many loving parents waiting for the chance to adopt.”

(subject: abortion rights) “That is a reason for her to make the choice a certain way, not a reason to take the choice away from her.”

(subject: abortion) “But if she can’t support a child, she could just leave it at the door of a firehouse in complete anonymity. The firefighters will take it in and turn it over to an adoption agency.”

(subject: abortion rights) “Which is another reason for her to make the choice a certain way, not a reason to take the choice away from her.”

(subject: abortion) “But any given pregnancy has incredible potential. By terminating her pregnancy, she could be denying humanity the next Steve Jobs.”

(subject: abortion rights) “Well now, be that as it may, that is, at most, yet another reason for the woman to choose not to have an abortion; not a reason to take the choice away from her. Do you see the pattern, yet? Why do you insist on offering arguments against the act as arguments against the right? Don’t you believe in individual rights? What happens to all your high-fallutin’ rhetoric about the dangers of big government when it comes to laws that presume to dictate to a woman what she is and is not allowed to do with her own frickin’ internal organs? If this does not constitute big government, what the hell does?”

Sarah Palin and her daughter, go on national news after the birth of her grandson to say that they are glad they chose life. I have to wonder how many people realize that they would not have been able to choose life if they had not had the choice to make. No one in this debate can be pro-life because no one in this debate is anti-life. Whether a woman should abort her pregnancy is one subject; whether the decision should be left up to her is another. Clearly, “pro-life” is a euphemism for “anti-choice.” By coming to the table with a “pro-life” label and a “pro-life” platform, the anti-choicers seek to change the subject, and so maneuver the pro-choicers into defending a position we don’t actually hold.

Same problem with calling themselves “anti-abortion.” This is a thinly veiled effort to maneuver us into defending a “pro-abortion” position, as if the case we are making is that a woman who discovers that she is pregnant should get an abortion. “Pro-abortion” is one position; “pro-choice” is another. “Anti-abortion” and “pro-life” are both codewords for “anti-choice.”

Careful. It’s a trap. In the comments on one of these videos, I don’t remember which, I encountered someone identifying himself (or herself, I don’t know) as “pro-gay.” I explained that, no, you are pro-gay-rights. You are not making the case that people should be gay, but that people should be free to be open about it if they are.

“Now look. Higher taxes on the wealthy do not create jobs.”

“That would be a valid point if someone here were proposing higher taxes on the wealthy to create jobs, but as far as I know, no one is. The argument is for higher taxes on the wealthy as part of a plan to balance the budget.”

Now this is something that irritates the crap out of me regarding conservative hypocrisy. I remember just a few short years ago leading up to the invasion of Iraq. Conservative pundits switched back and forth constantly, frantically, between the act of supporting the invasion and the act of supporting our troops, making it look as if the two are the same. Every figure in this country who dared to express any opposition to the invasion of Iraq was maligned for allegedly “hating those who defend our country.”

Now I’m sorry to say that I supported the war myself at first. I was taken in by all the malarky about WMDs, proliferating democracy and being welcomed as liberators. I believed then, and I still believe that the rights and freedoms which, in my country, are outlined in the Bill of Rights are inalienable human rights, and the entitlement of every man, woman, and child, and I honestly believed that delivering these rights to the people of Iraq was what the toppling of Hussein was about, but even then, I understood the difference between supporting a war and supporting our troops.

But to make matters worse, it was on Dubya’s watch that that whole imbroglio at Walter Reid happened. What business does a political party that lets a thing like that happen on their watch have criticizing anyone else for being allegedly unpatriotic?

Patriotism means supporting or troops, but patriotism for a democratic nation means loyalty to the principles of democracy, which means recognizing that war is sometimes justified and sometimes not and that the act of pointing that out does not make someone a traitor. Supporting our troops means taking care of our troops, especially our veterans, especially our disabled veterans, especially our permanently disabled veterans, especially the veterans who became permanently disabled in service to this country. People who cannot be bothered to see to that don’t have any business lecturing anyone about patriotism.

Pressing the patriotism button to get what you want, changing subjects back and forth between talking about support for the war and support for our troops to create the impression that they are the same thing and that there is no way to support one without also supporting the other while letting veteran support programs go to shit is hypocritical and absolutely fallacious.

But of course, programs to take care of our veterans require money which requires a balanced budget, and how can we keep a balanced budget when we are giving tax cuts to the people who need them the absolute least? People who profit from war, if they sincerely care about this country, should have no objection to paying higher taxes in order to generate the necessary funds to take care of our troops and our veterans. If we truly are the wealthiest country in the world, we should be able to afford that.

I’ve digressed, but I believe I’ve made this one as clear as I can reasonably expect to.

Logical Fallacies: Biased Language

2012-12-15T14:42:00.000-08:00

Opinions are important, of course, but the act of mistaking opinion for fact is recipe for hazard, and so deliberate effort to encourage others to make this mistake is especially dishonest. I don't know for certain if this is an official fallacy, but I have been encountering it so often that I figure, surely, it must be, and if so, it's probably the fallacy of opinionated language, or perhaps, biased language. Consider, if you were to see three people, one exhibiting firm behavior, one exhibiting obstinate behavior and one exhibiting pigheaded behavior, how would you tell which is which?

It cannot be done, because these three terms all describe exactly the same behavior. The only difference between these terms is the opinion of the person using them. "Firm" conveys approval, "pigheaded" conveys disapproval and "obstinate" is neutral.

A fair question would be "Do you object to said party's obstinate behavior?" An unfair, quite loaded question would, instead, be "Don't you have a problem with someone being so pigheaded?" This is a loaded question because it relies on an unwarranted assumption: that the person being asked would, indeed, characterize the behavior in question as "pigheaded." The act of asking, "Don't you object to pigheaded behavior?" is the same as asking, "Don't you object to obstinate behavior that you object to?" Of course I object to pigheaded behavior, or I would not call it "pigheaded," but by asking me to describe it as such, you are not asking me to venture an opinion, but to adopt one. How do you figure that the kind of behavior you regard as pigheaded I will regard the same way? Why do you assume that I will disapprove of the same thing you disapprove of? The act of saying "I object to pigheaded behavior" is redundant, and so the question, “Don’t you object to such pigheaded behavior?” is a trap.

“Don’t you object to such pigheaded behavior?”

“Um… no.”

“Oh. So you admit, then, that it is pigheaded?”

See? It’s a trap.

It's not quite the same as Weasel Words, the objective of which is to confuse and obfuscate with vague language. Deliberately vague language is one thing. Biased language is quite another. A given argument can be an example of both, but they are, nonetheless, not the same.

If you see two people, one being childish and the other exhibiting child-like behavior, how do you tell which one is which?

Do you want people to favor the continuation of a certain practice just because it has been going on a long time? Call it "time honored" and so commit an appeal to tradition. Do you want people to adopt a certain practice and/or program just because it has not been going on a long time? Call it “revolutionary,” and so commit an appeal to novelty.

Do you want the general public to oppose a certain program that requires government funding just because you and/or your sponsors would profit more without it? Call it "wasteful," or "reckless" and be sure to withhold any other details about why you call it that, lest you end up aiding the efforts of the general public to decide for ourselves. Our assessment might disagree with yours, after all.

Do you want people to accept your religion's shpiel uncritically? Call it a "message of love" or a "religion of peace," in spite of the fact that, in any case, you are, in fact, talking about unquestioning, dogmatic acceptance.

Personally, I'm wondering where to find the "religion that lends itself to skeptical scrutiny and holds up under it."

Do you want people to accept your religion's mandates unquestioningly? Call them "teachings" and cherrypick the less objectionable ones until you have people in the habit of accepting them, then bring out the more authoritarian ones.

Do you object to being asked a certain question? Call it "gay."

Do you want people to just accept certain restrictions on their behavior? Call the list of restrictions a "moral code" or a source of "moral guidance." Call the failure to accept them "libertine," "immoral," or "depraved," and call the impetus to carry out the behavior in question a "lustful appetite."

Did something highly improbable happen that you are really glad about? Call it "a miracle."

Do you want people to relax their scrutiny when it comes to your shpiel? Call them "close minded" until they do.

Don't like a certain set of government regulations because they inhibit the unrelenting profit of you and/or your sponsors? Call them "big government."

Do you want society to accept restrictions on homosexual rights? Call them "accountability."

Do you want society to oppose a congressional effort to enforce federal regulations the violation of which led to the explosion of an oil rig, the deaths of several workers and millions of marine animals and plants and the ruination of dozens of coastal, local economies? Call the effort "a shakedown."

Do you object to paying taxes? Call it “stealing” or “punishing success.”

Don't feel like brooking disagreement? Call it "dividing the house with petty infighting."

Do you want local business owners to furnish your organization with regular kickbacks lest their failure to do so compel you to send your thugs to rough 'em up and break some of their stuff? Call the kickbacks "protection money."

Don't like labor unions? Call them "big labor." Call their members "union thugs." Call their leaders "union bosses."

"Yeah. See? Those 'big government' thugs nabbed Capone."

You probably get the idea.

Logical Fallacies: Correlation/Causation

2012-12-03T14:28:00.001-08:00

The act of understanding this fallacy depends on understanding the concept of correlation, so first I have to take some time to explain that. Variable A and variable B are two numbers or characteristics that can be varied. If changes in one coincide with changes in the other a high percentage of the time, this establishes a correlation. If increases or decreases in one coincide with the same in the other, this is a positive correlation. If, on the other hand, each coincides with the opposite in the other, this is a negative correlation.

On the Earth’s surface, the further one is from the equator, the lower the temperature. Therefore, distance from the equator and temperature are negatively correlated. The higher the education level of the people surveyed, given a proper sample, the smaller the religious percentage of that group of people. Therefore, education level and religiosity are also negatively correlated.

Education level and unemployment rate are also negatively correlated, while education level and median income are positively correlated.

With any given planet or moon, the more mass it has, the heavier a given object will be on its surface. Thus, mass and gravitation are positively correlated. Planets and moons with more mass and thus more gravitation tend to be more spherical, because their greater gravitation limits just how far geological structures can protrude before being pulled back in by the force of their own weight. Mars, having less gravitation than the Earth, has structures protruding further. Its mountains are significantly higher and its valleys are significantly deeper. So on the surface of a planet (or at least a rock planet), gravitation and average mountain height are negatively correlated.

The correlation is positive, though, when it comes to gravitation and atmosphere thickness. Mars, having much less gravitation than the Earth, has a thinner atmosphere. In fact, its atmosphere is so much thinner and its mountains extend so much higher that the peak of its highest mountain, Pavonis Mons, actually extends just above its atmosphere the way an island extends just above the surface of a body of water. Indeed, I often wonder if that might be a good spot to land a rover. But I digress.

Positive correlations:

The higher A, the higher B. The lower A, the lower B.

Where A is, B usually is as well, and where A is not, B usually is not either. Presence of A tends to coincide with presence of B and absence of A tends to coincide with absence of B.

Negative correlations:

The higher A, the lower B. The lower A, the higher B.

Where A is, B usually is not, and vice versa.

But observe that, so far, I have yet to utter a single word about causation, and there’s a reason for that. You see, when a correlation has been identified between A and B, there are three possible explanations for it. It could be that the changes in A are causing the changes in B, it could be that the changes in B are causing the changes in A, or it could be that the changes in both are being caused by something else entirely; an extraneous variable; that is, a variable that the study in question just did not happen to account for.

Statistically speaking, one in fifteen women is going to attempt suicide at one time or another. If, on the other hand, we narrow the sample specifically to women who have gotten breast implants, it becomes one in five. Women with breast implants are three times as likely to attempt suicide. That is a positive correlation.

One way to interpret this is to suggest that the change in variable A causes the change in variable B; that somehow, the act of getting the implants makes these women more likely to contemplate suicide, but personally, I find it more plausible to suggest an extraneous variable. I find it more likely that each change is being caused by another factor that the study in question just did not happen to account for; an extraneous variable. The factor I suspect is low self esteem. I find it much more likely that low self esteem compels women both to get implants and to contemplate suicide. The woman comes under the impression that this particular surgical augmentation is going to make her feel better about herself, and for a little while, it does. Then her spirits drop right back to where they were before. This drastic act did not have lasting benefits because it focused on the symptom, not the underlying problem, but again, I digress.

Now this is a problem I had with Thunderf00t shortly before I unsubbed from him. In one video, I don’t remember which, he pointed out (assuming that this is true) that a disproportionately small percentage of the world’s scientific breakthroughs come from the parts of the world in which Islam is the predominant religion. He tried to use this to argue that there is something about Islam particularly intrinsically antithetical to scientific progress; more so than other forms of dogmatism. I don’t remember who, but someone called him on that in the comments, explaining that correlation does not establish causation.

Tf00t responded by pointing out how absurd it is to suggest that the higher rate of cancer among smokers is not caused by tobacco use.

I then called him on the strawman. What this guy said is not that correlation negates causation, but that if fails to establish it. Do we know about the causal connection between tobacco use and cancer? Of course. Do we know about it just from the correlation? No.

Remember, when a correlation has been observed between variable A and variable B, there are three possible explanations: the changes in A could be causing the changes in B, the changes in B could be causing the changes in A, or the changes in both could be caused by something else entirely; an extraneous variable.

Now given the previous comprehension of science Tf00t had exhibited, and given the fact that, in any field of science, this much is covered in the first semester, he does not really have any excuse for not understanding this.

Consider that most of the people in the world for whom rice is a staple food have dark hair. Does this mean that looking in the mirror and seeing straight, dark hair somehow makes one more likely to want rice? Does this mean that there is something in rice that turns one’s hair dark? I suppose these are both possibilities, but I, for one, don’t find either especially likely. No, much more likely, it’s because people for whom rice is a staple food are usually from the orient, where dark hair is the norm. The extraneous variable is the state of being from the orient.

When tobacco companies were confronted with this correlation between tobacco use and the occurrence of cancer, they insisted that it was probably just because the sort of person who was already more likely to develop cancer was also more likely to take up tobacco use. In other words, they insisted on an extraneous variable.

So what is the scientific response to a correlation? To test these different possibilities. If one sets up a controlled experiment that enables one to manipulate A and observe B, and the changes one makes to A coincide with the very changes in B that the correlation suggests, then this demonstrates that A causes B. If they don’t, then this possible explanation is ruled out. One then needs to set up an experiment that enables one to manipulate B and observe A. If this produces the predicted changes, then this explanation is proven, but otherwise, this possible explanation is also ruled out, and the only explanation remaining is the extraneous variable.

In response to this claim by the tobacco companies, the scientific community took a collection of mice and sorted them randomly into two groups; an experimental group and a control group. Let me emphasize that. They had to be very careful to sort them randomly to ensure the accuracy of the test results. Then they kept the two groups of mice living under environmental conditions that were as close to identical as they could get them, to make sure that any subsequent changes could not be attributed to any other environmental differences. Then they gave the mice in the experimental group regular exposure to tobacco but not those in the control group, and monitored both. The tobacco exposure had to be the only significant difference between the two environments.

I don’t remember whether it was just a few months, or a few years, but over this time, only the mice in the experimental group (the ones who had been exposed to tobacco) developed cancer. This was the proverbial smoking gun (no pun intended). Here was the irrefutable proof. Confronted with this, the tobacco companies could only respond by doing everything in their power to persuade the general public to either overlook these test results, or deliberately ignore them.

Correlation is only one ingredient in establishing causation. True, it is an essential ingredient, but far from the only one. To get from correlation to causation, testing at least two of the three possibilities is necessary. Ideally, this is done with a controlled experiment, but sometimes, such is prevented by practical or ethical limitations. In this case, all one can do is ask oneself, in each case, “What evidence should exist if this is true? What evidence should exist if it isn’t?” or more concisely, “How is it verifiable if true? How is it falsifiable if false?” and then look for evidence from both lists.

Now be careful here. You have to have answers for both (and the more, the better) before you begin your investigation or you are in danger of confirmation bias and nonfalsifiability which are both fallacies I explain earlier in the playlist.

Logical Fallacies: Cherrypicking

2012-11-28T16:40:00.002-08:00

I used to make videos about logical fallacies, but then I took an arrow to the knee.

A while ago, I made a cursory study of economics, and in this, there were a few books I found quite helpful; among them, Economic Literacy by Jacob De Rooy, Economics for Dummies by Sean Masaki Flynn, and The Undercover Economist by William J. Harford. I found them helpful because of the pattern they followed.

"Here we have term A, here's what it means, and here's what it amounts to. Here we have term B, here's what it means, and here's what it amounts to. Here we have term C, here's what it means, and here's what it amounts to. Now let's look at how concept A, concept B, and concept C relate to one another."

Other books on the subject I found not so helpful. Basic Economics and Applied Economics, both by Thomas Sowell. These followed a different pattern.

"Here we have an instance in which increased government regulation was followed by bad events. Here we have an instance in which decreased government regulation was followed by good events. Here we have another instance in which increased government regulation was followed by bad events. Here we have another instance in which decreased government regulation was followed by good events."

Clearly, this fellow is trying to support (without actually making) the claim that more regulation is intrinsically a bad thing and less regulation is intrinsically a good thing, without exception. First, in omitting any of the downsides of the instances in question, he is counting on us to assume that there were none. Second, in carefully selecting the instances he relates (his anecdotes), he is trying to support this conclusion—this correlation—with purely anecdotal evidence. These two problems we run into even if we assume that each of these anecdotes are related accurately which could be a pretty big assumption to make.

Consider a popular practice at white supremacist rallies. A presentation is made, and it begins with various slides and anecdotes of someone who just happens to be black and just happens to have a history of violent, gruesome crime; the more gruesome, the better. This continues for twenty minutes and then it switches to a litany of slides and anecdotes of another such person who also happens to be black and to have a history of violent, especially heinous crime. This practice continues for three straight hours, switching to a different person every twenty minutes. Interestingly enough, each person they talk about just happens to share these two characteristics; being black and having a history of violent, horrifying crime.

The accounts of violence disgust and horrify the audience, and since each person they are shown while in this state of disgust and horror just happens to be black, they learn to associate the two characteristics. After this, seeing someone ethnically African will have a tendency to bring them back to this state, as per Classical Conditioning, especially if such is not an everyday occurrence.

The idea in this case is to get the audience to accept that, since such is the case in 100% of the cases presented, such is the case 100% of the time. Instances of this can usually be identified when someone hates a certain party with a passion and can’t explain why. The reason they hate this party is not because the party in question has necessarily done anything wrong but because they have been trained to associate this party with all manner of horrifying things and so experience horror every time this party comes up. Of course, they tend to have trouble understanding why others don’t experience the same horror.

Ann Coulter once made a presentation in which she listed one terrorist attack which just happened to have been carried out by Muslims, and then another terrorist attack which just happened to have been carried out by Muslims, then another and another, and then she referred to this as a "100% correlation," counting on her audience to conclude that, since such is the case in 100% of the accounts she has related, such must be the case 100% of the time.

Omitting one or just a few important details in a misleading manner is known as a lie by omission, but continuously, deliberately including the details that support a certain conclusion while deliberately excluding the ones that go against it, counting on your audience to assume that the details that go against it don't exist is known as cherrypicking.

It's cherrypicking when one selects the evidence which appears to support one's conclusions while overlooking the evidence that goes against it. It's like confirmation bias, but deliberate. One form of cherrypicking is the act of trying to demonstrate a correlation with what is known as anecdotal evidence, so I'll take a moment to talk about that, specifically.

I've known a few people in my day with fairly dark eyes and fairly light hair. I've also known a few people with whom it was the other way around. If I were to go searching, surely, I could find quite a number of such people in the world. Would this prove that such is the norm? Of course not, but why not?

Because correlations are not established by cherry-picked anecdotes. A key consideration in correlation is percentage. What percentage of the time do the two characteristics in question go together? If you are not keeping track of both the percentage of the time they do and the percentage of the time they don't, you are clearly not striving to answer this question, so you are not establishing correlation.

Correlation, however, does not establish causation, but that is a subject for a different video.

Logical Fallacies: The Broad Brush

2012-01-01T01:55:00.000-08:00

Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pUrinqgFSA

           When I was in High School, one thing we made a study of was Native American history. One incident we examined, I don’t remember what it was called, entailed white settlers angry because, apparently, when harmed by a white man, the natives had a tendency to retaliate against any white man. But as the natives in the conflict in question were glad to point out, the reverse was true as well.
           Joseph Stalin was a brutal tyrant. There is some evidence to indicate that he was an atheist. Therefore, all atheists are blamed for his brutal tyranny, as if we all had a hand in it.
           A group of white supremacists demonstrates, carrying signs displaying statistics about how many times in the previous year a certain brutal crime was committed by members of a certain ethnic group. This is, of course, offered up as proof that this ethnic group is intrinsically more violent than theirs.
           Someone who happens to be gay commits a rape and when local media report the event, they emphasize his sexual orientation over and over again, as if that particular characteristic is somehow more responsible for the fact that this individual committed this crime than any of his or her other characteristics. Of course, someone responds by suggesting that this means that homosexuals in general are more likely to commit rape.
           Mexican drug cartels have a practice of covertly planting cocaine fields in sparsely-populated, seldom traveled parts of the United States near our southern border. Critics describe this as "what those Mexicans are doing now," as if all Mexicans, or even a significant portion of them are participating.
           A band of Muslims hijacks four planes, leading to the deaths of about 3000 citizens of the United States. Afterward, all Muslims are blamed, as if all the Muslims in the world had a hand in it.
           More recently, a single Muslim organization threatens the lives of the producers of an animated comedy. Yet again, all Muslims are blamed.
           A single person, or a single party, commits a certain injustice and the blame for that injustice is applied categorically to all people who share, or allegedly share, a certain characteristic with that person or party. I give you the negative side of this particular fallacy. There’s also a positive side.
           A comment taken from the correspondence of George Washington can be interpreted (without much stretching) as an endorsement of Christianity. Subsequently, Christianity is credited with winning the Revolutionary War, and subsequently, all Christians are heralded, in the name of patriotism, for practicing such a triumphant religion, as if every last one of them lead the revolution. Nevermind that the vast majority on the British side were also Christian.
           By the same token, the Mujahedeen, a Muslim organization, successfully drives the Soviet occupation out of Afghanistan. All of Islam is credited for this accomplishment, and subsequently, all Muslims pat themselves on the back for practicing such a triumphant religion.
           But in each case, it’s the same problem. How do we know, assuming it’s true, that Stalin’s tyranny is any more attributable to his lack of god beliefs than to his mustache? How do we know that the violence of the members of the ethnic group in question is due directly to their ethnic group instead of, perhaps, the best effort of members of that group to survive and cope in the niche society has shoehorned them into? How do we know that this individual’s commission of rape is due to his or her sexual orientation instead of, perhaps, Mercury being in retrograde? How do we know that the drug cartels are planting the cocaine because they are Mexican, instead of just because it is profitable? How do we know that the Muslims carried out the hijackings because they were Muslim, and not just because they had been manipulated, through their beliefs, into seeing those in the Twin Towers and the Pentagon as evil? How do we know that the Muslim organization in question made the death threats just because they were a Muslim organization, and not just because that one particular organization has some trouble grasping the manner of treatment any given religion receives in the democratic world?
           How do we know that the religious beliefs of Washington had anything whatsoever to do with his victory in the Revolution? How do we know that the religion of the Mujahedeen played any part whatsoever in their victory against the Soviets?
           We don’t. None of these conclusions are supported by these bases. This is a kind of hasty generalization known as the Broad Brush.
           A certain group belonging to a certain religion applies the same label to everyone who does not practice that religion. Then two groups to whom this label can be applied, that is two groups who do not practice this religion, express differing views and the original group belonging to the religion paints this as one group contradicting itself and subsequently losing credibility instead of two distinctly different groups just expressing differing views, which in and of itself, is hardly surprising or unreasonable.
           A billionaire made his fortune by developing innovations. This segues into the practice of calling all billionaires "innovators," as if such is the only way to make or increase one's fortune.
           It happens, sometimes, that one group of scientists will rely on radiometric methods to date a layer of rock strata and use the results to suggest the age of the fossils contained therein. Young-Earth-Creationists indicate this and say that scientists determine the age of fossils based on the age of the strata.
           Other times, another group of scientists will rely on radiometric methods to determine the age of the fossils within a certain layer of rock strata and use that to suggest the age of that layer. Young-Earth-Creationists then indicate this and say that scientists determine the age of the strata based on the age of its fossils.
           "So," says the YEC, "they use the age of the rock to determine the age of the fossils and the age of the fossils to determine the age of the rock. So this whole notion of an earth that existed billions of years ago is based entirely on circular reasoning."
           This last is an example of the Strawman, the Lie by Omission and probably Quote Mining as well, but the road to it is paved with two strokes of the Broad Brush.

Societal Attitudes toward Marriage and Divorce

2011-08-31T02:36:00.000-07:00

Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lO2FUpVEApE

Jay Leno once joked that, if conservatives want to punish people for being gay, the best way to do it, surely, is by letting them get married, since after all, same-sex marriage is bound to become the number one cause of same-sex divorce, and then they'll be sorry.

I once had a co-worker who joked that, the next time he thought about getting married, he would save time by just finding some woman who hated his guts and buying her a house.

I once heard the joke that, after a few years of marriage, the only type of sex the couple is having is hallway sex, which basically just entails the husband and wife walking past one another in the hallway and saying, "Fuck you!" And of course, after that, comes courtroom sex, where the wife and her attorney screw the husband for all he's worth.

I, myself, have observed the very curious similarity between the Spanish word "casado," which means "married" and the word "cansado," which means "tired." I once asked a Mexican lady about that and she said they were the same thing. She was joking, but I wonder.

Once, thumbing through a dictionary, I came across the word "fiancé," with one "e" (masculine), then "fiancée," with two "e"'s (feminine), and then the word "fiasco," in that order. I wonder.

In my more credulous days, I caught an episode of Dr. Phil in which he rattled off a few marriage statistics. I don't know how accurate these are, so I recommend taking them with a grain of salt, but he said that 50% of first marriages end in divorce, 60% of second marriages, and 70% of third.

Even at this more credulous point in my life, it occurred to me just how misleading this use of these figures might be, even assuming they are accurate. It looks as if it's saying, "If you can't make it work the first time, it's only going to get more difficult. You will be cursed."

But consider this for a moment. Let us assume a random sampling of 1000 people destined for marriage. Let's also assume monogamous marriage to people outside the sample. If 50% of first marriages end in divorce, and all 1000 of these people get married, that means that about 500 are eventually bound to get divorced.

Now let's assume that all the people in this sample are determined to keep trying until they get it to work. This means that all 500 are going to get married again. If 60% of second marriages end in divorce, that makes it sound like 60% of the original 1000, which is 600, when in fact, it's 60% of the 500 who got divorced from their first marriages, which is only 300.

So what if those 300 then go on to get married again? Well, 70% of 300 is 210. If 70% of third marriages end in divorce, that's only 210 of the original 1000 people. That's barely a fifth who have not managed to make it work by the third attempt.

So if 50% of first marriages, 60% of second marriages, and 70% of third marriages end in divorce, that means that 50% of the people have made it work on the first attempt, 70% by the second, and almost 80% by the third, if we assume that 100% of those who make the first attempt are determined to keep trying until they succeed. Of course, in real life, it's bound to be a little less than that.

But even so, so what? Dr. Phil, like much of the programming in the US is predicated upon the completely unwarranted assumption that divorce is necessarily some sort of failure. Such is about as absurd as a notion can get.

First of all, most marriages that end don't end in this huge, stereotypical, Hollywood style, hyper-drama. That's a stigma. Most marriages that end end with both people genuinely regretful that it just didn't work out. That does not necessarily mean that there's someone to blame for it, and there's no particular reason why two people have to become the most vitriolic of enemies after getting a divorce. Sometimes, two people just grow apart. Sometimes, two people just realize they are not in love anymore. Sometimes two people just realize that they got along better before they tied the knot. Sometimes, with the ever-increasing life expectancy, "until death do us part" is too long to wait. How much sense does it make to insist on making two people prisoners of one another, resentful of one another, perhaps even enemies of one another, when they would be able to get along if they were to split?

The fact is that people are human beings, and as such, we sometimes make mistakes. I have encountered the obsevation that this is the reason there are rubber mats around spitoons. People make mistakes, and sometimes, one of those mistakes is getting married. Maybe the mistake was the person one chose to marry. Maybe it was the act of taking oneself for the marrying type. Maybe it was just one's assessment of the circumstances at the time. Maybe the mistake was assuming that just because you and another person have a tendency to get along, that you should marry each other. But given the fact that people can make mistakes, what could be more absurd than to regard the admission of it as some sort of failure?

That is what you are doing, after all, when you get a divorce; admitting that you made a mistake; that you are human. If getting married was, indeed, a mistake, it was a mistake whether you admit it or not, so by refusing to admit it, you're only causing yourself, your spouse, and any children you may have undue distress.

Star Trek, the Transgendered, and Pronoun Trouble

2011-08-31T02:29:00.000-07:00

Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiPNi0Xl5Jo

As most of my subscribers are, no doubt, aware, I am a Star Trek fan. One of Star Trek’s most popular authors is Peter David. Let me emphasize, these are authors I’m talking about, not screenwriters. One finds their work in print, not on the screen.

In Star Trek: The Next Generation, two of the main characters are Commander Riker and Counselor Troi, who apparently had a romance before TNG’s pilot episode. In one of the novels for which Peter David is famous, called Imzadi, he delves into this tumultuous romance.

Now just to explain, Counselor Troi is half Betazoid, meaning that her home planet is Betazed, and "Imzadi," is a Betazoid word which doesn’t translate precisely. Apparently, "Imzadi" is a sort of pet name one applies to the first person with whom one reached a certain level of intimacy that entails a telepathic component; the first person with whom this level of intimacy was both physical and mental.

It has to do with Riker being assigned to Betazed as a lieutenant where one of his first official duties entails attending a Betazoid wedding.

I have a number of subscribers whom, I know, are fans enough themselves to begin deriving a little amusement at the idea already. You see, at Betazoid weddings, it’s the custom for the bride, the groom, and all the assembled company to be nude.

Apparently, Riker doesn’t know about this in advance, and so is caught a little off guard when, suddenly, everyone around him starts stripping down, but not one for modesty, and not shy, as soon as this custom is explained to him he decides to join in. He steps out of the room long enough to find a place to store his uniform, then returns to his seat, and a Betazoid woman on her way past pauses to contemplate him and says, "You human men are certain hairy. Why is that?"

Without missing a beat, Riker says, "Traction."

That’s what Peter David’s writing is like. Well apparently, after a few years, Peter David got tired of playing in the sandboxes of existing Star Trek series and decided to start one of his own. This is a series found in the novels only. It’s called Star Trek: New Frontier. Its events revolve around the Starship Excalibur and a number of characters Peter David created himself, but also a number found elsewhere in Star Trek though mainly as secondary characters who have only appeared once or twice, whom, evidently, Peter David found interesting enough to bring in and make main characters. This includes Commander Elizabeth Shelby and Dr. Selar.

The Excalibur is assigned to patrol sector 221-G, the territory of the late Thallonian Empire, the collapse of which has left a power vacuum. Their mission is basically just to prevent any given conflicts from becoming violent and possibly escalating into all-out war. Apparently, Starfleet thought one ship would be enough for that.

The Captain is a fellow named McKenzie Calhoun, whose actual name I’m not sure how to pronounce, but this is its spelling: Mk’n’zy. He’s from a planet called Xenex whose population he previously organized in a successful revolution against another race that had occupied the planet. In negotiating the final truce after their withdrawal, they appealed to the Federation to arbitrate and that’s how McKenzie met Picard.

After the arbitration is complete, Picard asks McKenzie what's next for him, and when he doesn’t know, Picard recommends service in Starfleet.

His first day at the Academy, an upper classman tries to have a little fun at his expense and makes the mistake of starting in on his father. He then regains consciousness three hours later in the medical bay with a broken jaw and McKenzie earns himself the nickname "One-Punch Calhoun" which follows him all the way to graduation.

Calhoun turns out to be a bit of a cowboy. He’s very reminiscent of Jim Kirk. The author here seems to be very good at finding at least one opportunity in every book for him to lay someone out with one punch. In one book, it takes two, and then Calhoun complains about getting old. Yes, he is very reminiscent of Kirk, yet monogamous. In book after book, he only has eyes for Shelby. Only three times has the notion surfaced of him being intimate with anyone else. One of these times was before he met her, another was when he had been out of contact with her for months and she thought he was dead, and the third seems to have been in a book in the series I have yet to come across.

Calhoun is the only Xenexian to have ever served in Starfleet, and apparently, since this makes him something of an outsider, he prefers to compose his entire crew of outsiders; that is of people who are a little out of the ordinary, and subsequently, don't normally fit in, anywhere, except together.

One good example is his chief of security, a fellow named Zak Kebron, who is the only Brikar to have served in Starfleet. Kebron is a towering hulk of a figure who has a knack for being mistaken for a rock formation if he stands the right way. It’s funny, because over and over, Kebron is introduced into the story from someone else’s perspective.

"Shelby came around the corner and bumped into a mountain range. She looked up... and up."

Apparently, in Starfleet Academy, Kebron was roommates with Worf who introduced him to the hardboiled detective novel. Worf hated it just because, by his assessment, the detective’s approach as well as the approach of each person he dealt with wasn’t warrior-like enough.

But apparently, Kebron loved it, and one reason was that, in his words, "...the detective always had all the subtlety of a hurricane in a feather factory."

Another outsider in the crew is Soleta, who was apparently conceived in an act of nonconsensual sexual contact between a Vulcan mother and a Romulan father. She basically has to make her way through every book with this grim spectre hanging over everything she does, grappling with her own highly conflicted heritage the whole way.

There's also Dr. Selar, whom we met in an episode of TNG. She is characterized by an aversion to intimacy which is high by even Vulcan standards, and apparently, this is because she was married once, and she and her husband, in the act of mating, also bonded telepathically, both being Vulcan, of course, and while they were like that, the husband had a heart attack. She realized it and started trying to disentangle herself so she could do something about it, but apparently, this takes a moment, and by the time she was done, he was gone. As a Vulcan, Selar tries to be detached, but as a doctor, she blames herself, since afterall, if she could have come out of the meld a little faster, she probably could have saved him.

But the reason I’m bringing all this up is the approach Peter David takes to the difficulty of gender-neutral pronouns with one particular character; the Chief Engineer and later First Officer, a Hermat named Burgoyne 172.

As I recall, it was a fourth season episode of TNG which introduced us to a race with no gender, in which every single person is neither male nor female. The Hermats, on the other hand, are both. Every single one of them has both male and female organs, internally as well as externally.

It was funny, because for a while, it appeared that the doctor, Selar, was pregnant by Burgoyne, while Burgoyne was pregnant by the helmsman, a human named McHenry. That was how it seemed. It turned out not to be so, but that was how it appeared.

The Hermats, being both male and female encounter pronoun difficulties whenever they make contact with another race, because usually, that race has two distinctly different genders, and sometimes more. So one of the most urgent orders of business when this happens is for a team of Hermat linguists to sit down with a team of linguists from the other race and hash out in all that race’s most common languages a group of non-gender-specific pronouns.

In English, instead of "he" or "she," it’s "s/he." Instead of "him" or "her," it’s "hir." Instead of "himself" or "herself," it’s "hirself."

Clever, I think, but awkward. Peter David, while a very skilled author, is not much of a linguist. How come we in the English-speaking world can’t just rid ourselves of this manner of difficulty in establishing gender-neutral pronouns? How hard can it be for someone with the right expertise?

It’s fair, unless speaking of a particular person, to say "he or she," "him or her," etc. It is fair, but incredibly monotonous. That is one sort of pronoun trouble we run into here.

This is not going to seem immediately related to this, but bear with me. I find the company of transgendered people uncomfortable. It’s not fair, and I recognize that, and I offer my apologies for whatever they are worth, but I think, in my case anyway, most of the discomfort stems from pronoun difficulty. Clarity, utility and accuracy are very important to me. I don’t like language that is vague or ambiguous, because although it can be quite emotional, it doesn’t actually provide anything for reason to work with and scrutinize. A preference for it when clear language is available is dishonest.

A common objection I have to political discourse is that, all too often, the person in question talks up a storm without actually saying anything. I don’t like discourse that describes two distinctly different groups of people (homosexuals and child molesters, Muslims and terrorists) or two distinctly different acts (defending the religious liberties of Muslims and paving the way for Sharia Law) as if they are the same. Clear, useful, meaningful, accurate language strikes me as honest and so I have an aversion to situations in which such is not an option. That’s the other sort of trouble we run into here.

But it doesn’t make sense to me for something like this to remain such a consistent problem, given the fact that any given language is always undergoing change. Why can’t we just develop gender-neutral pronouns? Why can’t we come up with one word that means either "he" or "she," either "him" or "her," etc? Why can’t we just bring a team of linguists together to figure this out? First and second person pronouns as well as plural are not gender specific; at least not in English. Why do third person, singular pronouns have to be?

The Psychology of Belief and Bias

2011-08-31T02:21:00.000-07:00

Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3ZGRW8ESb4

Two of the most well known concepts in Psychology are Classical Conditioning and Operant Conditioning. The first of these is attributed to a fellow named Ivan Pavlov, who was, interestingly enough, not a psychologist, but a physiologist, but I digress.

Pavlov is the fellow you have probably heard of who ran experiments on dogs. His famous experiment entailed fitting dogs in captivity with an oral tube to measure their rate of salivation and then subjecting them to two sensory stimuli: first, the sound of a bell, and second, the sight and scent of meat powder.

Of course, the salivation rate of these dogs increased when the meat powder was presented. This is what is known as an unconditioned response; that is, an innate response. This is a way the dogs responded without having been trained to respond this way.

But, over and over again, as this exercise was repeated, the presentation of meat powder followed the ringing of the bell, a sound the dogs were not exposed to at any other time during the experiment. This was the sequence over and over again, until there came a point at which Pavlov only rang the bell and the salivation rate of these dogs increased without the meat being presented.

The salivation rate increasing in response to the presentation of meat powder is an unconditioned response. The same thing happening in response to the ringing of the bell is a conditioned response; conditioned as in learned.

If one can find a friend who is game, one can duplicate this experiment. One can have the friend sit in a room with no especially attention-grabbing stimuli, ring a bell and then shine a flashlight in the friend’s eyes.

What is the unconditioned response to the bright light in the eyes? Shrinking pupils, of course. So if one does this a few dozen times, in this order, one will reach a point at which one can ring the bell without shining the flashlight in the friend’s eyes and those pupils are going to shrink anyway.

If one instinctively responds a certain way to stimulus B, and stimulus B has a tendency to follow stimulus A, one can expect to learn to respond much the same way to stimulus A. There are many ways this particular concept manifests.

A cat who consistently hears a can being opened in the kitchen right before being given food soon begins to come trotting into the kitchen at the sound of the can opening.

A young man who responds to pornography by becoming aroused and resorts to looking at pornography whenever he is bored soon finds himself becoming aroused in response to the boredom as well. I can personally testify to this one.

A child who responds to being spanked with fear, sobbing and the need to escape, when the spanking is usually preceded by shouting, shortly finds himself responding this way to the shouting as well whether it is followed by spanking or not. I am sorry to say I can also testify to this one.

Someone who grows up in a situation which leaves him consistently at the mercy of authority figures whom instinct compels him to trust but who are abusive learns to associate trust with abuse and regret. Years later, after growing up and having outgrown that instinctive trust, the conditioned association between trust and regret remains and this fellow has difficulty cajoling himself into any situation which depends on trust, including social situations, dating, and intimacy.

A woman who happens to be white is called to undergo vetting for jury duty, but since the defendant in the case in question happens to be male and black and the woman was raped years earlier by someone who likewise held both characteristics, she is disqualified from sitting on the jury.

But in order for Classical Conditioning to produce a conditioned response, it must have an unconditioned response to begin with; a response that is already part of the behavior of the animal in question. Operant Conditioning is different, and for this, it causes me more concern. This manner of conditioning is actually able to introduce new behavior. This school of thought was pioneered by B. F. Skinner who was able to use it to train pigeons to play ping pong; a behavior far from typical of pigeons.

Operant Conditioning relies on three main concepts: positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, and punishment. Of these, the first is best understood by the general public. When a certain act coincides with a favorable stimulus, that act tends to be repeated. A dog who rolls over on command, and afterward is rewarded with a dog biscuit, is more likely to remain willing to roll over on command. A mouse fitted with an electrical lead which provides a charge to the pleasure center of the mouse’s brain whenever a certain button in his cage is pressed subsequently presses that button until exhausted by the exertion. One who has ways to make a workout routine fun tends to have a lot less difficulty finding the necessary motivation to keep that routine going. One who enjoys videos made by a certain YouTuber tends to seek out additional opportunities to do so. An act that has a tendency to be followed by positive stimuli tends to be repeated. That one’s pretty straightforward.

Now here, personally, I have to hand it to people like J. K. Rowling, Gary Paulsen, Beverly Cleary, Sidney Sheldon, and of course Peter David. These people contribute to literacy by writing books that are fun to read. When people enjoy reading, they do more of it, and subsequently, their skill for it is honed, their literacy is reinforced, which opens the door for them to branch out into reading other subjects and being exposed to new ideas. But reading about a certain subject is different from watching videos about it, because reading depends on mental exertion. Reading depends on thought. People who do more reading also do more thinking, and so get better at both. But I digress.

Punishment is also usually well understood.

A cat which accidentally sits on a hot stove will never repeat the mistake, but neither will it ever again sit on a cold stove. A shepherd who has noticed a wolf stalking his flock kills one of his sheep, seasons its carcass with a drug and leaves the carcass for the wolf to find. The wolf finds it, consumes it, and soon finds itself in a state of severe nausea. It subsides, but the wolf never hunts the flock again.

An action which leads to an unpleasant outcome or no discernable outcome tends not to be repeated.

Negative reinforcement, on the other hand, is usually not so well understood. Contrary to popular belief, it is not the same as punishment. It is what takes place when a behavior which ends or avoids an unfavorable situation has a tendency to be repeated. A woman begins nagging her husband to take out the trash whenever it accumulates past a certain point, but stops nagging the moment he does, and he begins taking it out with less and less delay, until one day, he takes it out just before she begins. A father wants his son to clean the plate and puts pressure on him whenever he begins to complain about being full, but stops as soon as the plate is clean, and the son learns to associate finishing the food with ending or escaping pressure, and later in life, develops a tendency to eat in response to stress.

A smoker tries to quit, but goes into withdrawal. In the midst of it, he or she knows that lighting up will end the symptoms and is tempted a great deal with this. If this smoker does it once, the experience of lighting up coinciding with the end of the withdrawal symptoms serves as a negative reinforcement and this makes quitting more difficult.

A father with a tendency to abuse his son, when that son finally moves away, puts pressure on any of the rest of the family who remain in contact with him to take his side about spending time with the old man, but stops as soon as they do. The rest of the extended family learns that taking the father’s side is a way to escape or avoid such pressure, and so begin to take his side habitually. Sadly, I can also testify to this one.

People participating in a campaign of persecution of another group find themselves hating themselves for doing it, and especially detest this state of self-loathing, but soon discover that they can escape this state by devaluing the lives and identities of the other group and hating them instead. This they find far preferable. This exemplifies negative reinforcement.

Unfortunately, sometimes, one can be misled by one’s own operant conditioning into misapplying it with others:

A father wants his teenage son to do something, so he nags, and the son does it. This shows him that nagging is a good way to get his son to do what he wants him to do, and so the behavior of resorting to nagging whenever he wants the son to do something is positively reinforced.

The next time he wants the son to do something, he nags him again, and again he does it. Thus, the behavior is positively reinforced further.

But one of these times, as soon as he finishes doing one thing the father has nagged him into, the father makes the mistake of immediately starting to nag him about something else. So the son carries out the new task, and the father immediately nags him about something else. Each time the son completes one task, the father starts nagging him about another.

Now the reason this has worked to get the son to do things so far is that, as soon as he has done them, the nagging has stopped. The lesson to the son here is that "Doing what my authority figure wants ends or prevents the nagging." This approach only works so long as it has this result; so long as it ends or prevents the nagging. But the father is not seeing this. Completely unaware, he is teaching his son that nothing stops the nagging, and in the process, he is removing his son’s motivation. If nothing stops the nagging--if he is nagged just as much whether he carries out the task in question or not--then there is no point in trying. The act of carrying out the task in question does not end the unpleasant stimulus.

So the next time the father wants the son to do something, he nags him and the son responds a little more slowly than usual. The father responds by putting on a little more pressure than usual and the son picks up the pace again, and as soon as the first task is done, the father drops back to a normal pressure, unaware that this is a crucial step.

The day comes when the father starts nagging and the son does not respond, but the father puts on a little more pressure and the son responds, but then the father has more things he wants the son to do and so keeps on the added pressure. The first few times, this works, so this behavior is reinforced for the father.

But one day, the son also learns that, just as nothing stops the nagging, nothing stops the added pressure, and so he loses his motivation here as well.

Little by little, this cycle repeats with higher and higher levels of psychological pressure until the son stops responding altogether and develops a reputation for being lazy and unmotivated. Here we have what is known as learned helplessness. Next thing you know, the father is on the news explaining why he has to discipline his son with a cattle prod because, allegedly, "He doesn’t respond to anything less."

Learned helplessness also manifests in the elephant who is chained to a stake in the ground while very young and very small. He tries to pull it out and free himself, but he isn’t strong enough. Eventually, he stops trying, since acts that lead to a negative outcome or no outcome tend not to be repeated. As the months go by, if the elephant is properly cared for, he grows, and one day, he is strong enough to pull the stake out and free himself, but he still doesn’t because he has learned not to try. He has been trained to be helpless.

Sometimes, Operant Conditioning scares me.

In a nation pervaded by an attitude of white supremacism, any people who happen to be white but don’t share the attitude run the risk of having this violence brought to bear against them whenever they make this known, and so are pressured to conceal it. That’s punishment. If one of these sorts begins to have thoughts that go against this sentiment, this individual runs the risk of giving those thoughts away with something he or she says or does, and so is pressured to suppress them, and if possible, to replace them. If such a person finds himself or herself the object of suspicion for dropping such hints (an unpleasant state), but then manages to conceal the hints in question and escape the unpleasant state, such is negatively reinforced.

I don’t know about any of the times more recent than this, but in the 1950’s, in China, one thing the government did to control the population was to require the entire literate population to keep diaries to submit to party members for regular examination. Any time the party member in question found in the diary any thought that conflicted with the party's philosophy, the keeper of that diary faced severe punishment. The image of this punishment then dominated this keeper’s thoughts any time it occurred to him or her to write anything that the party would not approve of, and to escape this image, that individual would learn to exclude such sentiments from his or her writing. In time, with these individuals practicing more and more the act of guiding their written reasoning away from such thoughts, they also became ever more adept at guiding their actual reasoning away from them.

In the Korean War, US Soldiers captured by the North Koreans and the Chinese were, of course, confined, but permitted to correspond with their families through the Red Cross. Sometimes, though, the Chinese army was not very expedient about getting that correspondence to the Red Cross. Of course, they insisted on reading it first.

US Soldiers in Chinese captivity soon learned that their letters tended to get through more quickly when they contained sentiments about how the US or democracy really isn’t all that great or how the Chinese aren’t so bad, or things along those lines. That is, such sentiments were rewarded, and positively reinforced, motivating the soldiers who came up with them to come up with more such sentiments, and of course, the more they did it and were rewarded for it—the more it was reinforced—the better they got at it.

Often, these soldiers were confined in cells by themselves with no human contact except the people who brought them food and the occasional Chinese psychologist who would come around to ask about such sentiments in their correspondence and then ask the soldiers to expound and elaborate. In this, the soldiers learned that coming up with advantages to the Chinese approach and disadvantages to the US approach meant an escape from solitude, and so it was reinforced, providing additional motivation to these soldiers to practice finding such caveats.

As these behaviors were reinforced more and more, they came to characterize the soldiers in whom this happened. The more the soldiers were rewarded for finding advantages with the Chinese system and disadvantages with the US system, the better they got at it, until eventually, it became automatic and their loyalty to the US dissolved. Here we have what western historians of this period typically refer to as "brainwashing" but which Chinese historians and psychologists more often euphemistically dub "re-education."

My real concern here, though, is how this ties in with deconversion. This is a problem whenever a nation has an established religion. It cannot do so without subjecting those who don’t practice it to the status of second-class citizens, and as a result of this, those who do practice it are confronted with the prospect of becoming second-class citizens in the event that too many doubts arise. Thus, they learn that examining these doubts could result in punishment and misery, and this image is dispelled from their minds every time these doubts are. Thus, the act of suppressing the doubts in question means escaping the thought of second-class citizen treatment, and so is negatively reinforced.

"These points can't possibly be cogent, because if they are, I become a second-class citizen."

But the forces of Operant Conditioning are also found in many countries that lack an established religion but which still have large or forceful percentages of their population who practice one in particular. The practitioners of this faith, every time they consider leaving, are confronted by the notion of being alienated and ostracized by friends and family. This notion is escaped every time doubts about the faith are buried, and so the act of burying these doubts is negatively reinforced and becomes habitual.

"These points can't possibly be cogent, because if they are, I will be ostracized and alienated by all my friends and family."

"These points can't possibly be cogent, because if they are, it will mean that I have wasted years of my life."

There are some, though, with even more on the line. There are those in their fifties and sixties and older who have made a career out of their faith and no longer know how to do anything else. It is a recurrent conclusion in the books of Michael Shermer that it is extraordinarily difficult to get someone to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it, and I’m using male pronouns here because, unless I miss my guess, it happens to men much more often.

Even after one has examined one’s faith, and indeed, the idea of faith in general, and found they don’t hold up under scrutiny, one is strongly compelled to maintain the guise in order to earn a living. There are a number of clergy, theologians and apologists who don’t believe but who don’t dare let on. To have a living, they have to live a lie; a terrible position for anyone to be in.

"Those points can't possibly be cogent, because if they are, I have to admit that my financial empire is built on a lie."

"Those points can't possibly be cogent, because if they are, I have to choose between living a lie and living on the street."

What can be done? This is not a rhetorical question. I really would like to know. As the nonreligious following in the west grows and organizes, we should be able to come up with solutions to this problem. We should have advice we can offer people in this situation; maybe even organizations which can help. One in such a situation is currently confronted with the notion of losing both affluence and solvency. That’s not right. Surely there are things we can do for them to spare them the latter alternative. Honesty should not equate with poverty.

This ties in with a more politically focused concern of mine. It’s something I explain in my video about educational expenses. Since the 1970's, at least in the United States, as time has gone by, educational costs have slowly-but-consistently inched their way skyward. Financial aid in the form of grants and scholarships has also become gradually less and less available and the lost ground has been made up by loans instead. Both trends combine to produce an incrementally larger percentage of professionals in debt and the amount of that debt also continues to climb. There are bound to be many professionals in any given field motivated by greed who are going to stick to the high-paying corporate positions no matter what, but there are also bound to be plenty of others motivated instead just by the desire to make a difference; people who would be quite content with lower paying positions with small organizations and charities if not for all that debt.

The desire to get one’s debts paid off or to avoid getting into debt in the first place is the desire for freedom. In such a situation, the more high-paying the job, the more it helps one to make progress on paying off one’s debt, which places one in a position to equate wealth with freedom and thus, the most greedy are the first to achieve independence. Thus, greedy behavior is rewarded and reinforced, and generous, altruistic behavior is punished.

It is one serious reinforcement when greedy behavior is reinforced with money, but it is quite another when it is also reinforced with freedom, resulting in a conditioned association between the two. The greater the debt at graduation, the stronger the motivation afterward to take steps to make oneself more appealing to the more high paying prospective employers.

There is a direct positive correlation between just how high paying any given prospective employer in this country is and how right-leaning their dominant political attitudes tend to be. Thus, the more any given professional leans to the right, the more this professional tends to be hired by such firms. The more right leaning the professional, the less time it takes him or her to get all that debt paid off. So one is strongly motivated to bias one’s views to the right in the hope of gaining one’s freedom.

If it is difficult to get someone to understand something when his or salary depends on him or her not understanding it, it does not bode well to have more and more people in this situation where their salaries depend on not seeing the absurdity of things like supply-side economics. How charitable and rational can we expect such people to be when being charitable and rational impedes their debt payment? That is, effectively, a punishment. When escaping from the notion of taking longer to pay off one's debt is the consequence for not being charitable or rational in one particular case, this is negatively reinforced.

"Those points can't be cogent, because if they are, I have to work years longer to get out of debt."

Prepositions Made Simple

2011-08-31T02:01:00.000-07:00

Video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKJXMamsqPM

Recently, I had occasion to check out from the library the first season of the TV show The Big Bang Theory. I found it pretty entertaining, though more so toward the beginning of the season than toward the end.
These guys are supposed to be smart, yet one of them, in one episode, develops the tendency to put his fingers to his temples and give people a very intense look every time they do something he doesn't like, as if to harm them with just the force of his mind. Now, I'm sorry, but if you are sincerely under the impression that this does anything, you don't get to call yourself the smartest guy in the room.

But anyhow, there came an episode with our heroes dealing with this upstart, North Korean child prodigy, whose genius was so great that our heroes felt threatened by it. One of them, early in the episode, said to him, "May I say, your English is very good."

He replied, "So is yours, aside from your occasional tendency to end a sentence with a preposition."

Now as far as I know, there's nothing wrong with using a chair as if it were a chair, a toothbrush as if it were a toothbrush, or a set of nail clippers as if they were, in fact, a set of nail clippers. So perhaps this adolescent twit would care to explain what's wrong with using a Germanic language as if it were, in fact, a Germanic language.

Ah, but wait a minute. What does he mean by "ending a sentence with a preposition?" What do I mean by "Germanic language?"

You see, all over the English-speaking world, one finds grammatical experts who will swear to you left and right, whatever else happens, a preposition is something a sentence must never end with. You will also find experts who will tell you it's no big deal. The key difference is whether the expert in question is more a fan of German or of Latin.

Ah. But why those two languages in particular? You see, Latin was the language of ancient Rome, and as such is called a Romance language. Rome-->Romance. Spanish, French, Italian, and Portugese are all descended from Latin, and as such, are each also classified as Romance languages.

Once in a while, someone whose first language is English begins to study one of these other languages and finds a lot of common Latin roots, and so mistakenly comes under the impression that English is also descended from Latin. But in fact, English is a Germanic language because it is descended from ancient German, along with modern German, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish and Icelandic.

Now what does this have to do with prepositions? The World English Dictionary defines the word "preposition" as "a word or group of words used before a noun or pronoun to relate it grammatically or semantically to some other constituent of a sentence." Personally, I don't find that particular definition especially helpful, so let me see if I can improvise a better one. A preposition is a word in the sentence which describes the relationship (usually in space or time) between two or more of the nouns or pronouns within the sentence.

"The computer sat on the desk." "On" is the preposition here.

"The pretentious know-it-all monologued in the video." "In" is the preposition here.

"The student had to study while his friends got to play ball in the park." "While" and "in" are the prepositions here.

"He went to use the bathroom during the commercial." "During" is the preposition here.

"She took a nap after watching her favorite movie." "After" is the preposition here.

I find, a good way to develop one's skill for identifying prepositions is by practicing using different words in conjunction with the words "the fence."

"The squirrel sat on the fence."

"The cat walked along the fence."

"The baseball flew over the fence."

"The gopher tunneled under the fence."

"The basketball bounced off the fence."

"The riding lawn mower that Tim Allen had been tinkering with crashed through the fence."

That is how a preposition is identified. Now, "Never end a sentence with a preposition" is an absolute iron-clad rule of Romance grammar, not Germanic. It is the norm, in English, to give our prepositions the Germanic treatment instead, and there's nothing wrong with that. There is nothing wrong with using a Germanic language as if it were, indeed, a Germanic language.

Now remember, I referred earlier to those common Latin roots that one finds between English and insert Romance language here. Those are there because, although technically and officially a Germanic language, English has, over the centuries, come under a lot of influence from the Romance languages. One consequence of this is that we can give our prepositions the Romance treatment and they still make sense.

"The Internet is an information resource we can turn to," becomes "The Internet is an information resource to which we can turn." "Such-and-so is a leader we can rely on," becomes "Such-and-so is a leader on whom we can rely." "That is something I have a problem with," becomes "That is something with which I have a problem."

Now personally, I recommend practicing and developing a skill for phrasing sentences both ways. I recommend practicing taking sentences phrased one way and rephrasing them the other. This, in my experience, is a tremendous help in analyzing and understanding the arguments one is presented with. Or shall I say, "...the arguments with which one is presented." It's also a tremendous help if one's first language is Germanic and one is now trying to learn a Romance language.

I recommend developing a skill for both because one will find situations in which one is preferrable, and situations in which the other is. I recommend not being determined to stick to one or the other. Such is, after all, a good way up with which to get mixed.

So the next time some pretentions know-it-all presumes to take you to task for ending a sentence with a preposition, just say, "Oh. So you are saying that such is the sort of English up with which you will not put?"

Republican Logic

2011-05-12T06:58:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hbL3I1RoCo

It was not until I first started watching videos on YT that I encountered the word “facepalm.” Since then, I have found it delightfully broad in its application.
At one point, in the comments on I-don’t-remember-which video, I asked someone why Bush said there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. His answer was that the WMDs are in Syria. Hmm. So the reason he said they were in Iraq was that they were in Syria. When Bush says there are WMDs in Iraq, he means there are WMDs in Syria. Interesting. What if they actually had been in

Iraq

? Where would he have said they were then?
            As the protests in Libya were taking off, someone from the Bush administration (I don’t remember who) made the insistence that this wave of successful revolutions sweeping through the Middle East was a delayed reaction to his handling of Iraq. Interesting. So the way you cause successful revolutions in Jordan, Tunisia and Egypt is by invading Iraq.
            The Republican fondness for the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy is quite well documented. “Event B followed event A. Therefore, event A must have caused event B.”
            “Well, you know, the wonderful economic prosperity which characterized the Clinton years was a delayed reaction to the policies of Reagan. After all, it takes a long time to build a strong, prosperous economy.”
            Right. Or perhaps they were a delayed reaction to the policies of Polk, or better yet, the policies of Caesar. After all, it takes a long time to build a strong, prosperous economy.
            Here’s another explanation that makes just as much sense. Perhaps the wonderful economic conditions which characterized the Clinton administration were just left by the economy fairy. How about that?
            “God was angry about healthcare reform and unleashed Hell in the form of a volcanic eruption in Iceland.”
            Hmm. So when a natural disaster happens in one country, it means that God is angry about something someone did in another country. I wonder what country God was angry at when He caused the earthquake in

Haiti

.
            It is just as likely, if, indeed, God is responsible for that eruption, that it was because he was angry for Xerxes sending his forces into the Thermopylae pass. After all, if it is true, as I am told, that God works in mysterious ways, that is just as likely. Given God’s mysterious nature, it could be that this is his way of saying, “No healthcare reform in the United States!” or maybe it is his way of saying, “No more battles in the Thermopylae pass, damn it! It’s holy ground!”
            Great. So if something bad happens to me, I have no way to tell whom God is angry at. If something bad happens to someone, somewhere, it’s because God is angry about something, someone did at some point.
            What’s going on here? Maybe those on the other side of these debates are trying to get us to spend so much time with our faces buried in or palms that we end up suffocating.
            But it’s not just politics that gives me occasion to facepalm. The other day, I came across an attempt to glorify religious pluralism; that is, the attitude that one religion is as good as another. I agree with the technical details of this argument, but not the spirit of it. The spirit of it is that all religions are equally good while mine is that, well, that’s true, but that’s not saying much. For me, equally good means equally ridiculous.
            Presumably, one who practices Christianity does not practice Buddhism, and vice versa. If it does not matter which of the two one practices, then it also does not matter which of the two one does not practice, so why practice either? There are thousands of religions in the world. If it does not matter which one practices, then it also does not matter which thousands one does not, so what reason has one to practice any?
            This played a part in my deconversion. My father, a Mormon, tried to raise me with the notion that Mormonism is the best religion. My mother, on the other hand, a Christian, but very pluralistic about it, raised me with the notion that one religion is as good as another. They are all part of what Mitt Romney would refer to as “the chorus of faith.”
            But then... if all religions are equally valid, how come only one of them is asking me to spend all this time with its practitioners? How come only one is asking me to prepare for some mission? How come we are only attending services with and making donations to one? How come we are only celebrating the holidays of one?
            This started me thinking, and once that happened, my religious belief was effectively doomed.
            But with this particular “poem,” that was not the cause of my facepalm. The cause was its choice of words. Basically, it was about the god of all faiths. “The God of Adam. The God of Noah. The God of Abraham. The God of Moses. The God of Mohammad. The God of Hindu.”
            Who the hell is Hindu? Even the Hindus don’t know!
            “You know. Hindu. The god of Hinduism.”
            FYI: Hinduism is polytheistic. That means it has several gods, not a single one of whom has the name Hindu! Am I to infer that the individual who wrote this “poem” did any research at all on this subject? Am I to believe that he or she attached any priority whatsoever to a little thing like getting the facts straight?

Atheist goes Political, vol. 6: Altruism and Politics

2011-04-25T12:47:00.000-07:00

Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfSaa1At8BM

            Donald Trump makes use of an interesting piece of reasoning. He observes, the more one has, the more one can give. This rhetorical gem may sound enlightened at first glance, but I see the makings of a terrible rationalization in it.
            “Sure, I can afford to give you $2000, but you know, if I hold on to this, I can use it to make more money, and then next quarter, I’ll be able to give you $4000.”
            ...three months later...
            “Sure, I can afford to give you $4000, but you know, if I hold on to this, I can use it to make more money, and then next quarter, I’ll be able to give you $8000.”
            ...three months later...
            “Sure, I can afford to give you $8000, but you know, if I hold on to this, I can use it to make more money, and then next quarter, I’ll be able to give you $16,000.”
            Do you see the pattern here? If your focus the whole time is to increase as much as possible the amount you can donate but not the amount you actually do, then you are not actually making any contributions and this is not really altruism. You end up never actually getting to the point of benefitting the other party.
            “I could give two million to charity,” is just another way of saying “I have two million that I have not given to charity.”
            “Ha. I could give 4 million.” Translation: “I have four million.”
            “I could give 10.” Translation: “I have 10.”
            “Would you believe 200?”
            “Okay. So you are all so well off that you could give literally tons of money to charity. But what if I stop fixating on all these hypotheticals you are dispensing and pay attention instead to actualities? How much are you giving?”
            “Well...”
            Now don’t twist my words. I am not making the insistence that charitable donation must be the rule. All I am saying is that using a piece of rhetoric like this to create the illusion of charitable intent to help your own PR is dishonest and I ask the general public not to be taken in by it.
            It brings to mind a “disagreement” I had once, online, with someone who tried to refute my argument that none of us can afford to be fools with our money by saying, “Well, you know, money is just a concept.”
            I asked, “Well then what did you use to pay for the computer you are using?”
            He replied, “Why are you so closed to the possibility that it could be a library computer?”
            Don’t you love that choice of words? “...the possibility that it could be a library computer...”
            Okay. Well first, I know it is not a library computer, because if it were, this knucklehead would SAY that IT IS instead of just insinuating that one could infer that it might not be inaccurate to suggest that it could be interpreted as something which might be accurately called a computer in what could be seen as the possession of an organization which could be called a library. But second, whoever that computer belongs to, SOMEONE at SOME point BOUGHT it from SOMEONE with MONEY! Someone who could not have carried out that transaction unless he or she had been wise enough not to waste that money before the transaction in question took place. But I digress.
            This act of using a very rosy-sounding hypothetical to distract from a far less rosy actuality is a very insidious red herring, I find. It rears its ugly head every time there are Republicans campaigning.
            “When we tax corporations, we deprive them of funds that they could use to invest in their employees.”
            I’ve got to love that choice of words. Not “would,” but “could.” Of course, they cannot say they would, because that would set them up to be busted for lying down the road if they don’t. That’s the fallacy of nonfalsifiability.
            I suppose this could also be called an Appeal to Optimism which would be just the opposite of a scare tactic. In a scare tactic, one is presented with a hypothetical situation and asked to fixate on one of the frightening possible outcomes and ignore the rest. Here, instead, one is presented with a hypothetical situation and asked to fixate on one of the hopeful possible outcomes and ignore the rest. Yes, I suppose, they could use that money to invest in their employees. They could also use it to line their own pockets or buy themselves more mansions, yachts, and public officials. Why should we give less consideration to these possibilities? Why should these be considered any less likely?
            It seems to me this could also be considered a lie by omission. After all, the complete sentence is “When we tax corporations, we deprive them of funds that they could but probably won’t use to invest in their employees if their track records are any indication.” How can I be so sure that they won’t use it for that? From their own lack of motive. The only time a corporation has a motive to “invest” in its employees, whatever that means, is when other organizations are trying to entice them away and so the corporation in question has to compete in order to hold onto them.
            Ah, but what does it mean to “invest” in one’s employees? That sort of sounds like educational funding to me. How else could one “invest” in an employee? Well, if the corporations in question are run by people who want to see more funding to education, then they won’t mind paying more taxes to provide more revenue for spending that we can be sure will, based on the language of the act itself, be applied to that end; language which relies on actualities, not hypotheticals. The fact that the people in question are not supporting any such act demonstrates pretty clearly that contributions to educational spending are not, in fact, their interest, so screw ‘em.
            Here is a more probable revision: “When we tax corporations, we deprive them of funds that they could use to buy Republicans and blue dogs.”

Atheist goes Political, vol. 5: Labor Unions

2011-04-21T13:20:00.000-07:00

Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxQQea5H0-I&feature=channel_video_title

There are those who use the freedom of speech to spread hate and lies. There are those who use the freedom of the press to the same end. There are those who use the right to keep and bear arms to rob stores and banks. One cannot find a right or freedom that is never abused. Does this occasional abuse mean that every right and freedom must be gotten rid of? Of course not. Now consider this in light of an argument often made against collective bargaining rights. The allegation is made that labor unions are not what they used to be.
            “Now, the union bosses are in bed with the corporate bosses.”
            Hmm. So what you are saying is that this right is being abused, so we should get rid of it? This is an argument for greater transparency of both that is being presented, instead, as an argument to get rid of one of the two.
            Furthermore, just as the opposite of a utopia is a dystopia, the opposite of a euphemism is a dysphemism. Clearly “union boss” is a dysphemism for “union leader.” It is a word used in this case only to evoke the connotation of a mob boss. This, while not clear enough to be necessarily misleading, is highly dishonest.
            Are labor unions impervious to corruption? Probably not. Nor, for that matter, is any organization. Shall we get rid of them all?
            The most effective safeguard against any organization’s corruption is transparency, which one finds much more of in the labor union than the corporation. One also finds much more of it in the Democratic Party than the GOP. The GOP, on the one hand, discloses the source of only 25% of their funding and asks us to just trust them. The Dems disclose the source of 96% of theirs. But I digress.
            The people running the corporation have one motive above all others: their own personal profit. There is nothing about the profit motive which automatically backs up worker’s rights. Therefore, the corporation must be checked by an organization with such an interest as its paramount concern; an organization led by someone democratically elected by his or her fellow employees to act on their behalf. If that person is, indeed, in the pocket of the corporation, this is a reason to vote this person out and vote in someone else. It is not a reason to abolish the more transparent of the two organizations. This is how a vote works. Thus, labor unions are much more able than corporations to rid themselves of corruption.
            But what about union dues?
            Well, if an organization opens the door for me to make at least $300 per month more than I would make otherwise, I, for one, will be glad to kick back an extra $10 per month to that organization. Such is money well spent.
            But what if it raises the overhead expenses of the company so much as to price you out of the market?
            Well then the company can compensate by lowering the CEO’s salary to only $9 million dollars per year instead of 10. If any particular wealthy person in this country has to be content with only three mansions instead of four, I am confident he or she is going to survive.
            If someone is so well off that he or she can afford to drop more than $20 per meal on every meal without even waiting for special occasions; if this person already has a personal entourage waiting hand and foot; if this person has gotten to the point where every exertion is optional, where one need not lift a finger, where one can, indeed, pay others to lift one’s fingers and save one the trouble, this person is well off enough.
            The relationship between a corporation and a labor union seems, to me, analogous to the relationship between capitalism and democracy; two fundamentally different concepts by the way. So of course, given that capitalism and democracy are going to have occasion to conflict, by the same token, corporations and labor unions are bound to come into conflict sooner or later as well. But of course, sometimes the interests of a corporation tread on the rights of workers, and under such circumstances, conflict must be had and that’s the whole reason labor unions were invented.
            The central tenet of capitalism is that profit is good. There is nothing in it that is intrinsically honest, altruistic, or reform-minded. These are concerns of democracy instead. There is nothing in capitalism which automatically pushes to abolish slavery, segregation, or apartheid, promote woman’s suffrage, or wean us of nonrenewable resources. If profit is, indeed, one’s paramount concern, one supports such efforts only insofar as they have potential to benefit one’s bottom line. If, on the other hand, they stand to detriment it instead, one can be expected to stand against them.
            Ah, but if profit is good, then the workers’ profit is good.
            Huge corporations rip off millions—sometimes billions—of people and the government is compelled by voters to step in and take steps to prevent this from happening again. The profit self-interest then compels the people who own these corporations to mount publicity campaigns to oppose this effort. One common buzzword in these campaigns is “big government.”
            Really, though, there is no such thing as a market completely free from government influence. There cannot be. Every country which has ever existed has subjected its economy to some measure and some form of government influence. It is government influence that makes it a market. It is the government who prints the money and puts it into circulation. It is the government who collects that country’s currency in tax revenue and spends it, thus keeping it circulating. Thus, every party in a country who has occasion to deal with its government, or with other organizations that have such occasion finds their currency valuable to that end, and so trusts that currency. But I digress.
            Now when it comes to the act of passing laws against collective bargaining rights, or establishing warrantless wiretapping, where does all the rhetoric against “big government” disappear to? Why is it that laws that impede the efforts of the obscenely, absurdly wealthy to become even more so constitute “big government,” but not laws that disregard the privacy of the middle class and the poor?

Atheist goes Political, vol. 4: Educational Expenses

2011-04-10T14:21:00.000-07:00

Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87sOK3igQZc

            I’ve been subscribed to xxxThePeachxxx for a while, and I usually like her vids and have a hard time finding aspects of them to disagree with, but in one video from a little while ago, I found a point of contention. She made three videos addressing the subject of prostitution, and in those videos, she made a number of points I hadn’t considered previously. Her argument, in each case, is that prostitution should be legal. Afterall, there’s nothing necessarily illegal about consenting adults having sex and there’s nothing necessarily illegal about consenting adults exchanging money, so why does it suddenly become illegal when the two activities are combined?
            I understand making it illegal to sell tobacco and alcohol to people underage because it is illegal to give tobacco and alcohol to people underage. I can understand making it a crime to have sex for money with someone only 15 years old, because it is a crime to have sex in general with someone only 15 years old. I can understand making it a crime to have sex with someone for money against her will, because it is a crime to have sex with someone in general against her will.
            In every other case, activities that are a crime with money are also a crime without it. Why the exception? To borrow the immortal words of George Carlin, how can it be illegal to sell something it’s legal to give away?
            Additionally, when prostitution is legal, a prostitute who is assaulted by a client has the option to go to the police. She cannot rely on the protection of the law if she, herself, is a criminal. Instead, the best she can hope for is the protection of a pimp whose behavior is not governed by the same accountability mechanisms as a law enforcement agency. This leaves her open to that pimp’s exploitation.
            Clearly, the Peach anticipated, perhaps from experience, finding herself dealing with people determined to equate all prostitution with human trafficking, and so was compelled, in each of the videos in question, to emphasize that she was referring to LEGAL, CONSENTING ADULTS. She was, and so am I.
            Her main point in these videos I am hard-pressed to dispute, but in one, she made an adjacent point that I have a problem with. She said that prostitution is always a choice; that there are always alternatives. Clearly, she is convinced that this particular premise is well founded. I, on the other hand, am convinced otherwise. Here’s why.
            Consider two long-term trends in this country: First, every year, on average, it becomes just a little more difficult for the less educated to find work. Every year, education becomes just a little more important to the work force. Some years are exceptions but this is the overall trend.
            Second, every year, on average, education becomes just a little more expensive, and therefore, less available to the work force. Increasingly more so, the only way to have work is by having education, the only way to have education is by having money, and the only way to have money is by having work. With increasing frequency, one who has no work, no education, and no money, has no prospects for obtaining any combination of the three.
            With the increasing proliferation of this particular catch-22, with this particular trap snaring more and more people, with more and more people having fewer and fewer options, I am hard-pressed to see how one can say that there are always alternatives. In order for this premise to be well founded, one would have to account for every situation which could arise. Indeed, if such is the case, then why is the exploitation of a pimp a problem?
            If I’m right about this, though, it only strengthens her main point that prostitution should be legal.
            This dovetails with my next point about educational expenses. Consider student A and student B. Each wants to be an attorney and each begins college the same year, and after graduating from college, goes on to law school, and after three years, each graduates and passes the bar and is officially an attorney. But student A was able to pay for the whole thing with grants and scholarships, while student B had to use loans instead. Student B graduates with more than $100,000 in debt hanging over his head.
            Now they hit the job market and each finds abundant opportunities. Each finds plenty of prospective employers or clients who would benefit from their services and who are willing to provide pretty generous compensation for them. But Student B can’t work with most of them because the compensation they offer, however generous, is not enough to help him make progress on paying off his debt. The only places that offer enough to help Student B make this progress are huge corporations.
            These huge corporations realize that, the less available they can make these grants and scholarships, the more they can replace them with loans, and the higher educational costs become, the fewer attorneys there will be like Student A (potential legal adversaries) and the more there will be like student B (allies in their pockets). The more beginning attorneys they will have competing for jobs with them, which means the less they will have to pay to the ones they hire. So they mount a campaign to steadily erode educational spending by arguing that it’s not fair to ask people who are already financially strapped to allow their hard-earned tax dollars to be used to pay for the educations of other people’s kids. In this case, quality legal services become ever more available to the extremely wealthy and ever less available to the average Joe.
            A number of these huge corporations are credit card companies who take advantage of the low price of quality legal advice to add caveats to their credit applications of ways for them to tack on fees. Suddenly, credit applications which were maybe a page and-a-half long are four pages long, then eight, then fifteen, then twenty, and packed with who knows how many excuses to tack on fees and countless legal traps for people who try to pay off their account and close it; legal traps written in such dense jargon that more than 99% of the people in this country have no hope whatsoever of understanding them, and therefore, no hope of seeing the traps or even of understanding them once they have fallen in.
            Now what if it’s accountants, instead? Accountants who graduate with huge debt hanging over their heads are in the same situation. That’s bad, because that too means accountants going, in droves, to the big corporations for work after they graduate, to help those corporations find ways to milk and game the system and con the little guy. So too with scientists, engineers, doctors and economists. So too with every variety of professional, which puts the big corporations ever more in a position to decide who moves up in the world.
            Debt is bondage; bondage to creditors and monied interests. The more skilled, talented professionals we have in debt—in bondage—to the wealthy, the more of those skills and talents are reserved for their use, not our own. The higher educational costs climb and the more grants and scholarships are replaced with loans, the more power and profit this takes away from the general public and allocates instead to the exploitation of the financial elite. Debt is bad. Debt is bondage to the direct detriment of those who have it, and to the indirect detriment of all those of us who aren’t wealthy enough to help them pay it off, and the more difficult it becomes for skilled professionals to start out debt free, the fewer of them are going to do it which means the more skills beholden to the whims of the very wealthy, who are, of course, going to use them to get even wealthier, to the indirect detriment of the rest of us. That’s why educational spending is important. That’s why the slippery slope of gradually-but-inexorably rising educational costs must be reversed.

Atheist Goes Political, vol. 3: Recession, Recovery and National Debt

2011-04-05T11:11:00.000-07:00

Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-mLdFUphis

And then we have the national debt. Most people, unfortunately, don’t understand the ramifications of having a country in debt. You see,

debt is measured in increments of $10000 dollars. One such increment is called a bond. When one has $10000 to spare and decides to spend it on a bond, that $10000 is called the “principal.” For other bonds, the duration may be longer or shorter, but for US gov’t bonds, it’s ten years. That is what’s called the “maturity period;” that is, the period between when the principle is first put in and when it is paid back and the bond officially “matures.” Each year in between, that bond pays $1000 to its holder. Now where do you suppose that money comes from?
The taxpayers of course. Every $10000 of

debt costs the taxpayers $1000 per year. That’s money which could be spent on Pell grants, public works projects, paving roads, or laying out new electrical, communication, or plumbing infrastructures. Instead, it goes into the pockets of US bondholders. This is part of the reason that the world’s wealthiest country can no longer afford to keep its roads paved.
            So what if someone happens to have $4 million dollars? Well that someone has the option to buy enough of these bonds to generate $400,000 a year. That’s $400,000 of passive income every year. $400,000 of money flowing out of the pockets of US taxpayers into the pockets of US bondholders just for being bondholders; debt-holders.
            If we dichotomize US taxpayers into those who are wealthy enough to buy US gov’t bonds and those who aren’t, we find that one of the two is getting a free ride at the expense of the other. When the poor get money for not doing anything and it’s barely enough to sustain their existence, it’s called “welfare” and this has all kinds of negative, freeloading connotations, but when the wealthy get money for not doing anything and it keeps them in luxury, it’s called “bonds” or “financial wisdom” or “fiscal responsibility” or something along those lines and this has all kinds of positive connotations.
            But the fact is, if you’ve been following me so far, you now understand enough about US gov’t bonds to use them yourself this way if you have enough money. This is not difficult to understand. Therefore, success in this particular market is less a measure of the intelligence one has to begin with and more a measure of the capital one has to begin with. Thus, this is just one of many ways in which those who have lots of money are more able to make it than those who don’t even if their intelligence is greater.
            As it stands now, our national debt is $14 trillion. That’s one trillion, four hundred billion tax dollars every year going into the pockets of US bondholders. In a country with a population of a little over 300 million, that costs each of us almost $5000 per year. Think about that. That’s $5000 of your money which could be applied to educational spending or infrastructural spending or scientific research, which instead is going specifically to help the very wealthy get wealthier.
            Toward the end of Clinton’s presidency, we, as a nation, had been generating a surplus for several years. That means that we had actually been bringing in more in tax revenue than we had been spending. When a nation is as in debt as we were, that’s a wonderful thing, because every year of surplus is a year in which the debt is just a little lower than the year before.
            The economy was also doing very well. The GDP was soaring. The national unemployment rate was 4%. 4! In every major city, and most of the minor ones, it was nearly impossible to find a retail chain whose biggest promotion did not include the words “Now Hiring.” Two words one saw in the news every week were “labor shortage,” which is basically economic jargon for a situation with more jobs than employees. This made it kind of a drag anytime one went shopping for anything other than a job, but given a choice between a national labor shortage and a job market with dozens of people competing for each opening, which would you rather have?
            So the middle class and the working class had virtually no difficulty finding work, GDP was showing annual growth, and the national debt was showing annual reduction. The sweeping majority of the people in this country were very well off with this situation. The very wealthy, on the other hand, weren’t so happy about it, of course, because this surplus was generated mainly by taxing them. They remained quite wealthy, but of course, there’s no such thing as “wealthy enough.” They knew, of course, that they would be wealthier if these taxes were cut, so they started concentrating on getting someone into office who would cut them. Enter Dubya and a favorite Republican lie by omission.
            “We must cut taxes! Cut taxes! Cut taxes! Cut taxes!” Right off the bat, Bush commenced to pontificate about how, after several years of surplus, “...it’s time to start giving money back to the people.”
            “We must cut taxes and give money back to the people.” Sounds wonderful, doesn’t it? The thing is, though, when a Republican in public office starts talking about the importance of cutting taxes, one must ask “For whom?” When a Republican in public office starts talking about the importance of “giving money back to the people,” one must ask, “Which people?” This is because, all too often, when a Republican talks about “cutting taxes,” he or she means “for the wealthy,” and when this Republican talks about “giving money back to the people,” he or she means “the very wealthy people who happen to be funding my campaign and furnishing me with kickbacks.” These details, of course, are omitted.
            If the situation Clinton had established could have been maintained, the national debt would have continued to decline, GDP would have continued to climb, the subprime mortgage bubble would never have formed in the first place, let alone popped, and we would not still be paying 10 years later for the mistake of electing Bush.
            Now let’s not lose sight of one key fact here. Even during Clinton, the very wealthy continued to get wealthier, just not at the expense of the middle class and the working class. The only people not benefitting from Clinton’s presidency were the few who slipped through the cracks here and there, and we were still managing to generate a surplus and reduce the debt every year. Even health care expenses were on the decline, because in the interests of competing for employees, companies negotiated competitively with healthcare providers.
            But no. The time to start “giving money back to the people” does not come after just a few years of surplus. It comes after the national debt is all paid off; a goal we would be much closer to now if not for Bush.
            Now look at how much of our debt is being held by the likes of

China

? China is a big

bondholder. That’s not just money we owe. That’s money draining out of one country into another. This is why we need to concentrate on getting this debt paid off; on getting this drain plugged. The last time we made any such progress, Clinton was president, and we managed it by taxing those who actually had money to burn.
            If you need water, you don’t look in the middle of the desert. Likewise, if you need tax revenue to help pay down the national debt, you don’t tax people who don’t have any money.
            So how do we make progress in generating enough revenue to pay down the national debt? Well let’s see. We could tax the poor, but they don’t have any money. We could tax the working class, but in order to generate enough revenue to make a dent, we would have to leave them poor. We could tax the middle class, but there we run into the same problem with just a slightly deeper dent. We could tax the wealthy, but the Republicans and the blue dogs won’t let us. So instead, we remain in debt and money continues to flow out of the pockets of taxpayers and into the pockets of bondholders, which means that bondholders don’t exactly have a reason to support efforts to reduce the debt.
            The real impudence of this is that Republicans insist on blaming this situation on Obama. It’s true, one of his first acts as president was a huge stimulus package, but this was the only option left to him to get the economy moving again after the Republicans wrecked it.
            Whether an economy is officially in recession or recovery is determined by the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). This economic indicator is officially defined as a measure of the worth of all the goods and services sold within the economy in question in the period of time in question, but I prefer to think of it as a measure of the amount of money circulating—being spent—within the economy in question. Not the amount present; the amount being spent. All the money in the world has no effect on anyone, positive or negative if it isn’t being spent; if it isn’t circulating; if it isn’t being used to foster trade.
            You see, the money in your pocket right now is valuable to you because you are able to exchange it for goods and services that you need and/or want. But the whole reason this exchange is possible is that the money is likewise valuable to the parties you buy these goods and services from. The whole reason it is valuable to them is that they too can use it to buy goods and services from other people who can use it to buy goods and services from other people, and so on, and so on. Every time one of these transactions takes place, every time a certain sum of money is used to buy a final good or service, that trade gets counted in GDP. That’s what I mean by the amount of money circulating.
            Most of the time, when one of these exchanges takes place, it is to the mutual benefit of both parties, and it opens the door for other exchanges that are to this mutual benefit. Money freely circulating within an economy makes these trades possible. The extent of that circulation is measured in GDP. When GDP declines, it means that less money is circulating, which means that fewer such mutually-beneficial exchanges are taking place. If your customers suddenly aren’t earning as much money, it means that they’re not buying as much from you, which means you’re not making as much from them, which means that you, likewise, aren’t earning as much money, which means that you are not buying as much from others, which means that they, likewise, are not earning as much from you, and so on.
            When this process begins, like it did with the bursting of the sub-prime mortgage bubble in 2007, it precipitates a decline in GDP. When such a decline continues for at least two sequential quarters, then we have what is officially recognized as a recession. It remains a recession until the GDP has started growing again. So if we are going to get the GDP growing again, we have to encourage the spending of money within the economy.
            The money being spent within an economy comes from four sources: net exports, investing, consumer spending, and government spending. When Obama was inaugurated, all of our trade partners were in recession as well, so clearly, we could not count on more spending from net exports. The stock market and the bond market were both in rapid decline which meant no consumer confidence for investors, so clearly, we could not count on more spending from investing either. Prospective consumers were losing their jobs left and right, so consumers were pinching their pennies, worried that they would be next, and clearly, this meant that we couldn’t count on more GDP growth from consumer spending. The only option remaining was government spending, so that is the option that Obama and the Dems exercised.
            Perhaps they held some hope of paying for it by taxing the wealthy, but when the tax legislation was due to expire and the Dems wanted to enact new legislation concentrating the tax cuts in the middle class and the working class instead, the Republicans in Congress held that legislation hostage, filibustering it until the Dems agreed to extend the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy. So here we had a situation of increased gov’t spending and decreased taxes all around, resulting, of course, in increasing national debt, which meant more bonds ready to be bought by the well-to-do to funnel our tax dollars into their pockets.
            It is not Obama’s fault that he exercised the only option remaining to him to get the economy moving again. It is his credit, rather, that this move took an unemployment rate that was skyrocketing and leveled it off. Since then, the unemployment rate has had the occasional uptick, but overall, is slowly on the decline. Unfortunately, especially given population growth, this figure always declines more slowly than it rises, and the Republicans have been seizing on this. Unable to criticize Obama for costing jobs, except when dealing with people in no possession of any facts, they have to be content, instead, to excoriate him for adding them slowly in spite of the fact that this is still a great deal better than Bush could manage.
            Indeed, many of them allege “zero job growth.” If this were true, it would still be a vast improvement over Bush. Zero job growth is still better than negative job growth.
            Here’s a rhetorical question for my viewers to consider. How come, every single time someone brings up tax cuts for the working class and the middle class, the GOP insists that they have to be paid for by cutting something, but never when it comes to tax cuts for the wealthy? How come only one of these needs paying for?

Atheist Goes Political, vol. 2: Trickle-Down Economics

2011-04-04T17:10:00.000-07:00

Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKWRoOtj8Jk

            One subject my investigation has lead me into is economics. Politics can sometimes be considered without economics, but economics usually cannot be considered without politics, so the one offers a great deal of insight into the other. Conservatives are very fond of pedaling trickle-down, supply-side economics, which is the idea that, if the very wealthy are granted tax cuts, they will, of course, use their new-found savings to expand their businesses, adding jobs. After all, the extremely wealthy are practically chomping at the bit to add jobs, but they can’t because they don’t have enough money...right?
            But the people in question already have money up the wazoo which they are not using to create jobs. Why not? To understand the answer, you have to think of both opportunity and motive. Any time you want a certain group of people to take a certain course of action, you have to make certain they have both. Otherwise, forget it.
            The people in question, being so wealthy, already have the opportunity, but they’re not creating jobs because they don’t have the motive. A business owner’s focus is on maximizing profits. The only reason he or she has any motive to take any course of action, whatever it may be, is to that end. The only time these people ever hire more people—ever create jobs—is when they believe they stand to profit from doing so.
            So when does that happen? Business owners have reason to believe that they stand to profit from creating more jobs and hiring more people when they have reason to believe that they stand to profit from the act of increasing the supply of the goods and services their business provides. To increase one’s supply, one must expand one’s apparatus, and to do that, one must hire more people.
            So when does one stand to profit from increasing the supply of the goods and services one’s business provides? This happens when one has plenty of competition for those goods and services and the demand for those goods and services is on the rise. Under these circumstances, one understands that, if one does not meet this increase in demand with an increase in supply, one’s competitors will, which will lead to a loss of customers, business and profit. So if we want to foster an increase in hiring, we have to stimulate an increase in demand.
            So how do we do that? By concentrating the tax cuts among the people who provide most of the demand in this country. That’s the middle class and the working class, not the well-to-do. When the people in these tax brackets find themselves spending less on taxes, we are going to spend more on goods and services, thus driving up the demand for them; an increase in demand that suppliers are going to be compelled to meet with an increase in supply, and to do that, they will have to hire more people from these very tax brackets, which yields even more money flowing into these demographics, leading these demographics to do more spending, leading to an increase in demand, leading to an increase in supply, leading to more jobs, leading to more people hired from the middle class and the working class, leading to more money going to the middle class and the working class, and here we find ourselves in a self-feeding cycle.
            Now the biggest drawback to this is that, eventually, if enough jobs are added and the unemployment rate drops low enough, it’s bound to lead to a labor shortage, but so what? Sure, such can be inconvenient and annoying. It can be kind of a drag going shopping over and over again and never finding anyone available to help you, but compare that to the situation we have now. Which is preferable? At least, during a labor shortage, we are not wondering how we are going to keep our bills paid.
            This is one form of what economists usually refer to as “fiscal policy,” but which Robert Reich more descriptively dubs “bubble-up economics.” Economic prosperity does not trickle down. It bubbles up. The well-to-do usually understand enough about financial matters that we can expect them to prosper pretty much no matter what. This same guarantee cannot be expected with the middle class and the working class. Thus, we have to concentrate on ensuring that they are taken care of. A society which concentrates on directly benefitting these demographics indirectly benefits everyone.
            It’s funny. The case for trickle-down economics is all-too-often packaged with the argument for capitalism in general which purports to harness the profit self-interest as a force for good. But in asking the middle class and the working class to accept tax cuts for someone else instead of themselves, they ask them to abandon that very motive. Can it be trusted or not?
            “The self-interested profit motive can be trusted, unless it is yours.”
            So tell you what. Everyone watching who sincerely believes in trickle-down economics, try this little experiment. Try mounting a campaign to persuade all the people and organizations in the world to take all the money they have and give it all to me. After all, such will benefit them... somehow... some day... and if it doesn’t, it means that I still don’t have enough.

Atheist goes Political, vol. 1

2011-04-03T13:00:00.000-07:00

Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNPSGAFgF9Q

I was originally planning to make this all one video, but I’ve decided it would be wiser to break it up into smaller, more digestible increments; especially considering that it will probably be an ongoing series. I have tried to make it a point to exclude politics from the main focus of this channel, but I’m changing that. I am officially going political.
            For at least two years, it has been apparent to me that the most misunderstood term in the English language is “atheist” and the second most misunderstood is “evolution.” As I investigate ever more, it becomes increasingly clear to me that the third most misunderstood is “liberal.” These terms are the three most misunderstood and stigmatized because a lot of obscenely wealthy people stand to become even more obscenely wealthy by discouraging the investigation of these terms, what they actually consist of, and the reasoning behind them.
            For many years, I called myself an agnostic, avoiding the label “atheist” like the plague. This was because I saw theism and atheism both as forms of dogmatic, falsely-perceived gnosticism. But the reason I saw atheism like this was that, rather than investigating it, I accepted this stigma of it erected by well funded, dogmatic, zealous interests to the end of preventing this investigation.
            But then, one day, I actually began investigating atheism, and shortly thereafter, evolution and creationism, and began acquainting myself with the arguments on both sides, and I realized that the only times the arguments against atheism and evolution ever seemed to make sense was times when they addressed arguments that were not actually being made. In my study of logic, I learned that this is what is known as a strawman fallacy. The parties trying to argue against these positions, being unable to refute the actual arguments in favor, have to pretend that the arguments in favor are something else.
            Also, for many years, I called myself a moderate, likewise avoiding labels like “liberal” or “conservative” like the plague. But as I learned about atheism, evolution and logic, the differences between the two wings of the political spectrum became increasingly pronounced, coming ever more clearly into focus. In the ’08 presidential election, every time I watched part of one of the debates, I caught McCain relying on the same fallacy.
            “Senator Obama, what do you have to say about issue A?”
            “Oh, well on issue A, we have these facts, and using these facts as premises, I draw these conclusions, and using these conclusions as further premises, I draw these further conclusions, and on these grounds, I think this would be a good idea and I’m laying it all out there for the general public to examine, in the true spirit of democracy.”
            “Hmm. Interesting. Senator McCain, what do you have to say on that subject?”
            “Well look, my friends. I have experience, so just trust me.”
            This was his reply over and over again. He was like a doll with a string. This is what’s called an Appeal to Authority. You know who else has plenty of experience? Gadhafi. “Don’t examine my argument. Just take the fact that I am an authority of some sort as an excuse to stop thinking.”
            “Follow the example of my good friend Joe the Plumber, who isn’t actually a plumber, and whose name is not actually ‘Joe.’ Obama is elitist. I own seven mansions, but he is elitist.”
            What do you call a politician with tons and tons and tons of experience? Well, there are two things you call him, or her, in the unfortunate event that calling is, indeed, necessary. First, old. Frickin’ old. But second, and more importantly, corrupt.
            Public office is a position of public trust and authority. One who holds it is inevitably, invariably corrupted by it. Power corrupts. This is why the comparison is so frequently drawn between politicians and diapers. Both must be changed often, and for the same reason. This is one of the reasons the

presidency must have term limits. After eight years in the single most powerful position of public trust in the entire frickin’ world, one is most likely too corrupt to be trusted with it any more. Better, at that point, to accept retirement and spend the rest of one’s days lending notoriety and writing memoirs, and if you’re up to it, accepting less powerful positions of public trust, the way Taft did. But I digress.
            After reading up on atheism, I found it interesting that, virtually every single time a Republican campaigning for public office made an argument on that subject, it was either an argument I knew how to refute or a refutation to an argument that wasn’t actually being made. It was an argument I had heard refuted, and seen refuted over and over again and always the same way. This was always the case with Republicans, but virtually never the case with Dems.
            Then I familiarized myself to the same extent with evolution, and started noticing the same tendency. How in the world can a subject be a “controversy” if one side has not a single argument that has not been refuted? What does it mean if such a party continues to trot out those arguments over and over again?
            Can I really be expected to entertain the notion that, when Bush argues that “Evolution is still only a theory,” that he has never, in all his years, had this misuse of the term “theory” explained to him?
            Gravity, too, is “only a theory.” Cell theory is “only a theory.” Atomic theory is “only a theory,” but members of the general public are still being advised to maintain a distance of at least 80 km (50 miles) from the ruptured nuclear power plant in

Japan

. Why in the world would that be unless, in science, a concept being a “theory” does not prevent it from also being a “fact?”
            Atomic Theory is a theory; also a fact. Cell Theory is a theory; also a fact. Gravity is a theory; also a fact. Evolution is a theory; also a fact.
            In science, a theory is a school of thought. When the concept in question has so much evidence in support of it that the act of refuting it would be unavoidably revolutionary, then it is a fact, but becoming a fact does not mean that it ceases to be a theory. These two concepts (theory and fact) are not mutually exclusive.
            This particular argument has been made continuously for the past 1.5 centuries and it has always had this very problem. Yet, over and over again, it is conservatives, not liberals, who trot it out as if it’s new and completely irrefutable. Either I accept that the scientific consensus about evolution is lacking (and I can’t, because I know better) or I accept that no one has ever explained the problem with this argument to the conservatives (which I find extraordinarily unlikely) or I accept that a significant percentage of the general public simply doesn’t happen to know the problem with this argument and conservatives are participating in an effort to capitalize on that. I find the third of these the most likely, but if true, it paints a tremendously unflattering image of conservatives, or at least, the ones campaigning for and holding public office.
            Conservatives, over and over again, argue that evolution is “only a theory” and should therefore, not be taught as fact, since being a theory, allegedly, prevents it from being a fact. Liberals never rely on this particular canard.
            Conservatives, over and over again, argue that atheism is the “belief that God does not exist,” or the “hate of God” or the “belief that everything came from nothing” or “adolescent rebellion” or “communism” or “fascism.” Conservatives (especially Christian conservatives) make the argument, over and over again, that the

United States

was founded on Christian principles, in spite of the fact that this canard is demonstrably false. Liberals never make this argument.
            It is right wing organizations from whom one hears the argument that “Well, you know the Constitution doesn’t actually say ‘Separation of Church and State.’ It doesn’t have those exact words.”
            That’s true, in the same way that it doesn’t have the exact words “The people have the right to own guns.” Nonetheless, we do have this right. Why? Because of what it does say. “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”
            Do I get to spin this and say that, well, it just means that the government doesn’t get to order amputation campaigns? Of course not. Do I get to insist that by “arms,” it means those things that have a shoulder at one end and a wrist at the other? Of course not. What does it mean by “arms?” Well, it means armaments—things with which one arms oneself. Guns. Knives. Swords. Cutlasses. Tomahawks. Battle-axes. Spears. Even suits of armor, if you like.
            “Well then why are the Democrats trying to take away the Second Amendment?”
            Are they?
            “Well of course they are.”
            Can you show me any bills to that effect that they have ever actually tried to get signed into law?
            “Um........”
            In the mean time, what about the First Amendment? “The Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion OR restricting the free exercise thereof.” “...no law respecting an establishment of religion...” Say it with me. “...no law respecting an establishment of religion...” That’s what it says. It doesn’t make exceptions for one religion in particular. The free exercise of a religion is one thing. The establishment of one is another. If a nation has no laws respecting an establishment of religion, it has no established religion, and a separation of church and state, mosque and state, synagogue and state, temple and state, or whatever, is the unavoidable result. Sure, it doesn’t have these exact words per se, but that’s irrelevant. This is the unavoidable effect of this particular clause.
            “Separation of Church and State” and “owning guns” are both examples of colloquial language; the language of the general public. “No established religion” and “keeping and bearing arms” are both examples of legal language, and since the US Constitution is, in fact, a legal document, the latter choice of words is appropriate and to be expected.
            Lack of an established religion does not guarantee freedom of the people, but it is necessary to that end. On its own, this will not establish or protect freedom to the people, but such freedom is not possible without this. A legal system that protects and preserves freedom needs many essential components, of which this is one. An established religion will, unavoidably, tread on the freedom of the people. It will tread on the freedom of those who don’t practice that religion, but also the freedom of those who do. Those who don’t will automatically be relegated to second class citizen status. Those who do, on the other hand, will face the prospect of becoming second class citizens whenever doubts arise about whether the religion in question is true, and will thus be motivated not to freely, honestly consider those doubts, but to bury them instead.
            If it is true, as is so often alleged, that Christianity rests on reason, then Christian authorities have no reason to discourage the honest examination of these doubts. They should be ready to address them. Every time a Christian or Christian conservative authority tries to undermine the no establishment clause and the subsequent separation of church and state, this amounts to an admission that Christianity does not, in fact, rest on reason and has to rely on force instead.
            The Federalist Papers make the case for the Constitution, at least, as it was first ratified. Every single clause of it has the case for it laid out there. This invites public scrutiny of the case for the Constitution. This is done in the spirit of democracy which is predicated upon the assumption that the people are, for the most part, smart enough to decide for ourselves how we are to be governed, by whom, for what ends, and by what means. One who does not believe that does not believe in democracy. Every time someone makes the case that the many should forego our own judgment in deference to the few, this is an argument against democracy.
            The Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution and the Federalist Papers because, among them, religious and nonreligious alike did believe in democracy. They were confident, first, that the general public was smart enough to use rational, critical scrutiny the vast majority of the time on any argument laid before it, and second, that the Constitution and the Federalist papers could withstand this scrutiny.
            Presently, no part of the Constitution tries to get itself accepted by threatening the rights and freedoms of those who don’t accept it. The moment a nation has an established religion, this is no longer the case. Why would any party seek to threaten the rights of the general public with second-class citizen status in the event that problems with their shpiel are found? It can only be because there are problems with their shpiel and they don’t want the general public to realize it.
            People who lend their shpiel to public scrutiny want any problems with it found. This opens the door for those problems to be corrected.
            The moment a nation has an established religion, those who don’t follow that religion are unavoidably punished, and those who do are discouraged from giving it any real examination, lest they risk that punishment. Every time in history that a nation has had an established religion, this has been the case, no matter what that religion has been. Thus, the freedom of both is unavoidably infringed upon if not discarded altogether. Thus, the freedom of religion and the freedom from it are unavoidably linked. A nation cannot have the one without the other.
            Personally, I would not want to live in a nation that does not defend both these freedoms vigorously. Just as it is not possible for the freedom of religion to exist separately from the freedom from it, the reverse is true as well. I am not religious, but my freedom not to be religious must coexist with the freedom of others to be religious, however obnoxious they may get about it sometimes.
            Over and over again, it is conservatives, not liberals, trying to undermine the no establishment clause. Over and over again, it is conservatives, not liberals, trying to tear down this vital safeguard of basic liberties; this fundamental component of democracy. Over and over again, it is conservatives—not liberals—trying to undermine democracy allegedly in the name of democracy.
            Conservatives reiterate these canards constantly; these and many others I have found. Liberals virtually never use them at all. When I noticed this particular track record, I was compelled to investigate the arguments to see what other refuted arguments conservatives are determined to rely on. My examination of those arguments and counter-arguments will follow.

Muslims and Bad Jokes

2011-04-03T12:55:00.000-07:00

Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H35WIM28iIo

            I often find myself in the awkward position of asking others to differentiate between the act of deprecating Islam and the act of impugning the humanity of Muslims. If I recall correctly, it was Louis Farrakhan (Actually Malcolm X) who originally taught a form of Islam that cast Caucasians as the devil, until he made his pilgrimage to Mecca, where he met Muslims of every ethnic group, including my own. This changed his view in a way that a lot of especially vocal people have yet to undergo. These very vocal people are found among Muslims and the most vitriolic anti-Muslims.
            Over and again, anti-Muslims can’t seem to differentiate between allowing the religious freedoms of people who happen to be Muslim and paving the way for Sharia law. Over and again, allegedly, the only way to form a strong opposition to one tyrannical authority (Islamic theocracy) is by handing over our freedoms to another (anti-Muslim fascism). Over and again, the only way to defend democracy is by discarding it completely. Over and again, the arguments follow this pattern.
            At the same time, time and again, the downtrodden masses in the Muslim world cry out for democracy, not theocracy. Time and again, Muslims have no difficulty understanding as well as anyone else that the freedom of religion must apply equally to those with any religion or those with none. Time and again, they demonstrate a comprehension of the fact that, the moment a society infringes on this right for any of its citizens, it infringes on it for all of them. Time and again, they have no difficulty understanding that in order for the Muslims in any given society to have complete religious freedom, so must the Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, atheists and so on.
            In a video he made a while ago, (I believe I’ll start calling him...) Underf00t cast Muslims in this false-dichotomy, us-versus-them framework with a picture of suicide bombers with whom he equated all Muslims on one side and a picture of a stealth bomber on the other, with which he equated all non-Muslims. But Underf00t is a resident of the United States; a nation defended by very diverse armed forces with a number of Muslims serving in its ranks; Muslims laying down their lives in defense of his right to lump them together with the Taliban. In this very picture, the pilot of that stealth bomber could very well be Muslim himself, or herself for all I know.
            But I would hazard to say that not all of the blame for this falls on just the one side of this particular conflict. Over and again, there are Muslims who can’t seem to differentiate between times to protest injustices committed against Muslims and times to solicit conversion to Islam. Over and again, one cannot speak out against injustices committed in the name of Islam without opening the door for bigots to vehemently impugn the humanity of Muslims, but at the same time, over and again, one cannot take up for the rights and freedoms of Muslims without also opening the door for the solicitation of converts. One finds opportunists frothing at the mouth on both sides for the chance to usurp one’s call to justice for their own ends.
            “All manner of injustice is committed in the name of Islam. Muslims, stop it.”
            “Yeah! Muslims are scum who need to be wiped out!”
            “I didn’t say that. Don’t put words in my mouth. Most Muslims aren’t part of it. Most Muslims are good people. It’s the few who are involved in this sort of thing that I have a problem with.”
            “Yes. You’re right. Islam is the most beautiful religion.”
            “I didn’t say that either. What is with you people?”
            When people are committing injustice against Muslims, the problem here is that they are infringing on the rights of human beings, not that they are not abiding whatever constitutes “true” Islam. This is a time to peddle the message that Muslims are human beings, and as such, they have basic human rights, not that all human beings should be Muslims. The first of these is a demonstrable fact (Muslims are human). The second is an opinion (everyone should be Muslim). Muslims who cannot take up for the rights of other Muslims without trying to pedal their own conversion shpiel to non-Muslims in the process only act to drive others straight into the arms of these extreme anti-Muslim organizations who do their best to equate all Muslims with terrorists. These recruiters make it worse. If you want to make the world a more peaceful, tolerant place, you will have to differentiate between demands for equal treatment and demands for superior treatment.
            It seems to me, to this end, there are a few things the moderates on both sides can do to aid this differentiation. You see, in a recent video of mine in which I extended a few olive branches to believers, one of them was a Muslim. Before I began work on that particular video, I made it a point to contact each believer I intended to mention by PM to ask if he or she had any objection. The Muslim I contacted said in one message that she would have no objection as long as I didn’t say anything bad about Islam. I explained that I cannot promise that because that would mean giving Islam better treatment than I give other religions which would not be fair. I can promise absolutely not to impugn the rights and humanity of Muslims, as I’m pretty good at that with all believers, but I can’t and won’t promise to give one religion better treatment. What I’m taking up for here is the rights of Muslims, not the alleged veracity of Islam.
            I believe in democracy. Democracy is a system of government predicated upon the recognition that authority can never be simply trusted. Under democracy, those who want authority must labor not only to earn trust and respect in the first place, but to keep them, and one thing they have to do to that end is to lend their activities, especially the activities that involve public funds, to public scrutiny. Taxpayers deserve to know how their tax dollars are being used. Those who are unwilling to do this don’t deserve trust, respect or authority and those who deserve trust, respect and authority will have no objection to this. They don’t get to just go on receiving these just because they are accustomed to receiving them. That’s a problem I have with religious authorities; they tend to have precisely this undemocratic expectation, especially those outside of the democratic world.
            Most authority figures for other religions live in democratic nations with no established religion. For most Muslim authority figures, this is not the case. Most Muslim authority figures do their thing in nations in which Islam just happens to be the established religion. This being the case, Muslim authority figures have, for the most part, been able to go centuries without the higher degree or scrutiny that authority figures from other religions have had to undergo. So being accustomed to just receiving this trust, they expect to go on doing so. This attitude trickles down to Islamic followers. So with Islam continuously receiving different treatment, Muslims expect it to continue doing so.
            Muslims, this drives a completely unnecessary wedge between you and most of the western world. You see, there are those one behaves respectfully toward and those one actually respects. They are not necessarily the same. People can be cajoled and trained to behave respectfully toward characteristics like power, majesty and eminence, but we don’t really respect them. We respect characteristics like courage and character. There is a difference between showing respect and actually having it.
            We respect people who are willing to be a punchline, provided that the joke in question doesn’t impugn their humanity. This being the case, in the democratic world, we poke fun at ideologies and religions and the people who practice them. Consider for a moment, Judaism.
            You see, at Jewish weddings, at least the more orthodox ones, it’s the custom to have all the men dancing in one place and all the women dancing in another, and not together. So there’s this Jewish couple engaged to be married and the date of their wedding is approaching, and they are meeting with their rabbi to discuss the kind of behavior that is appropriate for the wedding night (like it’s his business).
            “Rabbi, can we have sex lying down?”
            “Oh sure. Nothing wrong with that.”
            “Can we have sex lying on our sides?”
            “That’s fine, too.”
            “Can we have sex this way?”
            “Sure.”
            “That way?”
            “Sure.”
            “The other way?”
            “Why not?”
            This goes on for about twenty minutes, and then one of them asks, “Rabbi, can we have sex standing up?”
            “ABSOLUTELY NOT!”
            “But Rabbi-“
            “OUT OF THE QUESTION!”
            “Well why?”
            “Well... it could lead to dancing.”
            <rimshot>
            Or consider Catholicism.
            Q: How do you get a nun pregnant?
            A: By dressing her as an altar boy.
            <rimshot>
            There’s this small town in which most of the citizens are Catholics but there is one fellow who happens to be a Lutheran, and every Friday night, he’s out in his yard, running the grill, barbecuing venison. Well these Catholics are more traditional and so they observe the custom of having no meat on Fridays, so when they smell the scent of venison wafting over the town it really irritates a lot of them.
            So they start trying to cajole this fellow into converting... since... for some reason... it’s not enough to just try asking him not to barbecue venison on Friday night. They keep after him and after him week after week, and finally, he agrees. So he goes to the local Catholic church and they go through the conversion ceremony, and at the end of it, the priest stands before him with a chalice of water in one hand and dips the fingers of his other hand in it and says, “You were born a Lutheran, you were raised a Lutheran, but now <splish, splish> you are a Catholic.”
            And at first, everyone in town is happy about this, but then, the following Friday night, they all smell venison yet again, and someone goes to peer over this guy’s fence and there he is running his grill, and he has a cup of water in one hand and he dips into it the fingers of his other hand and says, “You were born a dear, you were raised a dear, but now <splish, splish>, you are a walleye.”
            <rimshot>
            Or how about Buddhism? Who hasn’t heard that one about the Buddhist who walks up to a hot dog vendor and says, “Make me one with everything,” <rimshot> and so he does and the Buddhist stands there holding the hot dog until the vendor says, “What are you waiting for?” and the Buddhist says, “My change,” and the vendor says, “Change must come from within?”
            <rimshot>
            Q: How come the Dalai Llama can’t vacuum out his house?
            A: Because he has no attachments.
            <rimshot>
            I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I must digress for just a moment.
            Q: What did one drummer say to the other?
            A: <rimshot>
            Maz Jobrani is a Muslim comedian who chafes at suicide attacks, because after all, over and again, it’s Muslims carrying them out. He jokes that, just once, he wishes the suicide attacker could be a Buddhist or something. But then, he explains, he realizes that this could never happen, because Buddhists would never blow themselves up. Buddhists live in the moment, after all. A Buddhist would say, “Well, you know, I was going to blow myself up, but that moment has passed. I’m in a different moment now.”
            <rimshot>
            Now in this case, I’ve really got to hand it to the Buddhists. They’re real sports. I mean if there’s one religion we love to poke fun at in the western world, at least in the English-speaking world, it’s that one. But Buddhists take it all in stride. It runs off them like water off a duck. They laugh it off right along with the rest of us, because they know that, tomorrow, they will still be Buddhist and Buddhism will still be around. They don’t go around simply demanding and expecting respect, and for this, they become more respectable. They make no effort whatsoever to discourage laughter at their expense. Indeed, they welcome it because they know that their religion is strong enough to endure it, and I find it especially curious that Christianity and Islam each have so many especially outspoken proponents who find it so difficult to just borrow a page from Siddhartha. But I digress.
            Observe the tendency among the jokes I just rattled off. In the western world, one finds jokes like these targeted at virtually every religion, except Islam. Each of these jokes engenders laughter at the expense of the religion and the people in question, but not derisive laugher. This is the kind of joke one would make at the expense of an old friend or a sibling because friends and siblings are people we respect for their willingness to be the occasional punchline. Each of these jokes is what could be called an affectionate elbow in the ribs; a pie in the face, not a slap in the face.
            This presents something of a problem for Muslims living in the western world. In the western world, this is the treatment received by the followers of religions and ideologies of every sort, and our willingness to find the character to tolerate this treatment is what engenders the mutual respect that usually enables these practitioners to coexist. When Muslims in the west demonstrate an unwillingness to tolerate such treatment, an unwillingness to be the occasional punchline, this demand for superior treatment alienates them.
            The people we get along with are the people with whom we can exchange jests and verbal barbs over coffee; or, perhaps, halal coffee as the case may be. So what we need here are such jokes for Muslims; jokes that engender laughter at the expense of Muslims and Islam, but not derisive laughter. I think, primarily, we have to make it a point to concentrate on jokes that poke fun at Muslims in such a way as to equate them with our goofy, quirky neighbors and co-workers, instead of terrorists and suicide bombers.
            Coughlan, I think, came up with a pretty good one when he actually appeared in a video with a clean shave. I haven’t seen this in any of his videos before, or since. In this one, he had shaved off his beard, and of course, he knew that this would be the first thing we would notice, so he said, “Yes, my beard is gone. (It has) run away to join Islam.”
            <rimshot>
            Oh yes. If you’re a beard, Islam is just the place for you. Those Muslims give beards the royal treatment.
            Desertphile recently had a video up announcing a contest he was hosting. He read to us this story about a doctor’s office that had a meteorite crash through its wall that happened to have a piece of paper attached to it. He told us that the piece of paper had a note on it that said something funny and invited us to speculate about what it said. He then appointed two judges to decide the two funniest comments and offered a first prize, a second prize, and a few honorable mentions, none of which, it saddens me to say, went to me.
            Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not jealous of the guy—I think it was a guy—who came in first. My suggestion was funny, but his was side-splitting. I’m just annoyed that I didn’t even get an honorable mention. I mean come on!
            I made several suggestions. One was, “Directions for use: build a giant cube around this and pray toward it five times a day.”
            <rimshot>
            Q: How come you can’t tell north from a Muslim compass?
            A: Because they all point to Mecca, instead.
            <rimshot>
            I know. That one’s kind of lame, but it’s along the right lines.
            So there’s this ship currently in the south Pacific and it has a few Muslims on board. These Muslims do their five daily prayers, of course, but oddly, anchor themselves to the walls first.
            At first, everyone else on board is content to ignore this, but finally, one guy’s curiosity gets the better of him and he asks why they do this and they explain that, this being the south Pacific, the Kabba is clear on the other side of the world, so to face it, they have to face down.
            <rimshot>
            I know. That one is a little weird, but considering that I’m the one who came up with it, this is not surprising. So what do you guys think? Can you come up with more?

David Pelzer and Me

2011-03-02T14:42:00.000-08:00

I recently read the book A Child Called “It” and it royally pissed me off. For any of you who aren’t familiar with it, it’s basically the author’s personal account of his own childhood of abuse. His mother, at first, is the virtual paragon of motherhood. At first, she’s just the kind of mother virtually anyone would love to have. She’s loving, protective, supportive, but not coddling, clingy or suffocating. This must have continued for at least a few years. We can conclude from the book that this continued at least long enough for him to have memories of it. Then the account leaves off and picks up again a couple years later and she has taken a turn for the downright sadistic. She’s a completely different woman. It’s as if she’s an impostor.

Now personally, I have no objection to sadism per se. As long as the sadists in society keep their inclinations directed against the masochists in society, I have no objection. As long as those who enjoy dolling out suffering restrict themselves to those who enjoy receiving it, I have no objection. I’m mystified, but content. If that’s the sort of thing my neighbors are into, fine, as long as they don’t make too much noise when I am trying to sleep.

But if someone who happens to be neither is left at the mercy of a sadist who doesn’t care that he or she is neither, then we have a problem. This is the author’s situation here.

The mother isn’t just physically abusive. She plays mental games. She deprives him of food. She punishes him for obtaining food through other sources. Sometimes, when he manages to get food through other sources, she actually goes so far as to force him to regurgitate it. Once, after doing that, she forces him to consume it again.

This much was alarming, of course, but the part that pissed me off was the father’s behavior. For years, he knew this was happening and responded to it by trying to gingerly coax and cajole the mother into changing her MO. For years, his way of dealing with this abusive, sadistic, blood-sucking harpy was by shaking his little finger at her for being naughty.

Then, finally, the father reaches the point where he can’t take it anymore, and leaves. This guy’s not even being abused. This poor fellow has to put up with the suffering of another and he can’t take it anymore. He finds himself unable to suffer the suffering of another.

I found myself, with limited success, fighting down the urge to yell at the book. What is wrong with you?! Get that kid out of there! When you realize that a child is in an abusive situation, the highest priority is to get the kid out of it! Get that kid away from that abusive parent! If you have to make noise and hurt feelings in the process, if you have to rock the boat, capsize it, or even leave it in pieces, then so be it! If the boat in question keeps the child in question in the situation in question then such is a public service! When it comes to removing an abused child from an abusive situation and putting an end to the abuse, every other concern is secondary!

Ah, but wait a minute. That’s easy for me to say. I have never been that parent.

That’s true. I have been that child. For me, it wasn’t just one parent who did the abusing. It was both. And it wasn’t just one parent who looked the other way. It was all my aunts and uncles and all four grandparents.

Science vs. Science Education

2011-03-01T23:34:00.000-08:00

Most societies have both scientists and science teachers, but which is more of a benefit? I dare to say the latter and here I explore my reasoning for this conclusion.

Science is often criticized for having conclusions in a state of transition. “How can one trust science when it’s always changing its mind?” is the question. Funny, I think, how the image evoked here is of a field in a continuous state of wild fluctuation. Here we have an image of scientists going inexorably from one conclusion to another which is wildly different, but in fact, this is less of a fluctuation and more of a modification. The difference is scale.

Every last one of us may be completely certain of one thing. Somewhere in our current understanding of the world lies error. It may seem surprising, but that’s a good thing, because where there is error in one’s understanding, there is room to improve that understanding and this leaves the door open for discovery. Thus, each of us having an error in our understanding, has the opportunity to discover something, and since we all have this error, we all have this opportunity. One engaged in a continuous search for those errors is exploring. One engaged in revising one’s position with each error discovered is bound to have a more accurate picture than one remaining intransigent in one’s conclusions in the name of being constant.

The conclusions of science remain in a state of gradual, slight modification because science is dedicated not to the end of claiming to have every answer, but to the end of achieving the highest degree of certainty humanly possible about the answers we have. The fact that science is ready to admit its errors and the fact that it remains ever vigilant in the search for these errors is precisely what makes it trustworthy. Science is a self-correcting process, continuously seeking out an understanding of the world better than the one it furnishes today, and though “different” doesn’t necessarily mean “better,” “better,” does necessarily mean “different.”

Science is the best method we have for furthering our understanding of the world, because it works. If one wishes to send a rocket to the moon, one relies on astronomy, not astrology; physics, not metaphysics; chemistry, not alchemy. When a woman goes into labor, one calls a doctor, not a homeopath. When one collapses with a heart-attack, the paramedics bring a defibrillator, not magic crystals. There’s a reason one never hears the words, “Those odds are astrological.”

I appreciate science because I understand this. I understand this because of my science teachers. In high school, I took two semesters of biology, physics, botany, earth science, and psychology. In this, I came to understand and appreciate this.

A society benefits directly from scientific research, but to conduct this research, one needs both expertise and funding. With either of these taken away, the research simply won’t happen. Well the scientists who provide the expertise are much more able to secure the necessary funding in a society that supports that funding, and that is much more likely to happen in a society that understands and appreciates science. A society that has no science teachers is a society in which the general public ceases to understand science, and subsequently ceases to appreciate it and support its funding. Where there is no science education, there is no science. Thus, I conclude, when society loses its science teachers, when those teachers are negligent in some way, or when they are in some way hampered in their efforts to teach science, that society derives more harm than when the same happens to its scientists.

Therefore, in the interests of protecting his or her trade, every scientist is well advised to maintain a high level of skill for colloquial explanation.

Logical Fallacies 35: The Slippery Slope

2011-02-28T02:21:00.000-08:00

Video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EUBvFZgAx4&feature=watch_response

Now this one’s kind of tricky. In use, it might not actually be a fallacy. It depends. Here’s the pattern.

“Well, if event A happens, what’s to stop event B from happening? And if event B happens, what’s to stop event C? And then what’s to stop event D and E and F? And suddenly we’re in totally different territory.”

That’s the pattern. Here’s the logical structure.

First premise: Event A sets off a chain reaction that leads inexorably or almost inexorably to event Z.

Second premise: Event Z is something unfavorable.

Conclusion: In the interests of preventing Z we should prevent A.

The key question here is, does event A have any actual bearing, as far as we can tell, on the odds of event B, C, and D, etc? Is the first premise well founded? Maybe it is. For example, when I was in grade school, one day, the teacher assigned us a book report, and she insisted that the book we used as a subject had to be at least 100 pages; maybe more, but not a single page less. Not even one. After all, she explained, making such an allowance was virtually guaranteed to set this sequence in motion.

first student: “Well, 97 pages is close to 100.”

second student: “Well, 93 pages is close to 97.”

third student: “Well, 89 pages is close to 93.”

And the next thing you know, we have students writing reports on books only 15 pages long. Do I doubt the likelihood of this sequence? Not at all. I dare to say that this teacher gave the assignment this stipulation out of her own acquaintance with the psychology of the typical grade-school student.

Now let’s look at the age-old dilemma of the parent of a teenager.

“Heh heh. Sure, Son. Your girlfriend can come over to study in your room, but you keep that door open while she’s here. Do you understand me, young man? Keep it open or I’ll remove it.”

Does this make sense? Is it prudent for the parent to impose this boundary? Of course. Why? Because one thing tends to lead to another. This first step is, indeed, onto a slippery slope. In this particular setting, this observation (one thing leads to another) has predictive power. Here we have another non-fallacious slippery slope.

“Teenagers. You give them an inch and they walk all over you.”

Here’s another non-fallacious example:

“If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach it in the public school, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools, and the next year you can make it a crime to teach it to the hustings or in the church. At the next session you may ban books and the newspapers. Soon you may set Catholic against Protestant and Protestant against Protestant, and try to foist your own religion upon the minds of men. If you can do one you can do the other. Ignorance and fanaticism is ever busy and needs feeding. Always it is feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers, tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lectures, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After [a]while, your honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth century when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind.”

This is a quote from Clarence Darrow, at the Scopes Monkey trial, defense council for a biology teacher named John Scopes who was taken to court for having the audacity to teach evolution. Now how about another historical example?

The expansion of the Japanese Empire, during World War II was driven by an odd kind of circular reasoning. They needed to expand their territory so that they could obtain more material resources. But they needed to obtain more material resources so that they could expand their territory. Therefore, though I don’t know if it actually happened, many voices of reason and prudence would have been well founded in concluding that, in the event the Japanese Empire was allowed to expand a little, they would subsequently expand a little more, and a little more, and next thing you know, even if they started clear on the other side of the world, they are now threatening your territory and/or the territory of friends and allies of yours.

Here’s a non-fallacious example I would like all my Muslim subscribers to make note of, given the growing popularity among Muslims of Holocaust denial. The Holocaust is a widely and heavily documented historical event. To deny it is to deny and abuse history.

Among the world’s most famous holocaust deniers, and by that I mean people famous specifically for their holocaust denial—those who’ve made a career out of it with virtually no attention to anything else—a significant portion are not Muslim. What’s to stop these people from turning right around tomorrow and denying that Mohammed ever existed?

One also finds a psychological slippery slope in

Germany

, leading up to the Holocaust. The powers that be in that country, in 1930, would not have been able to get away with the Holocaust then, but instead had to be content with much more minor injustices, and then slightly less minor, and then slightly less and slightly less, incrementally more and more severe, until we have a holocaust.

Now how about a few fallacious examples?

“If you teach people they are biologically related to animals, won’t they start acting like animals?”

This slippery slope is kind of short, but still fallacious. First, although most animals are not people, all people are animals. To be human is to be a pattern-seeking primate; one particular species of animal. Therefore, to act like a human is to act like an animal; albeit a particular species. But second, you mean other species of animals, don’t you? Any species in particular? I mean one thing evolution shows us is that human beings are biologically related to kangaroos. Are you telling me that, if you came to accept evolution, you would start to act like one of them? I would like to see that.

You can’t allege behavior like animals with any meaning unless you are prepared to specify what species of animal. Camels are animals too. Does this mean that accepting evolution will lead to people acting like camels? What about goldfish, jellyfish, moths, anemones, or choral? These are all animals and these all have very distinctly different behavioral characteristics. If the act of accepting evolution leads to animal behavior, what species?

Just to digress for a moment, I mentioned anemones there. I don’t understand why anyone has a difficult time pronouncing this word (anemone). I mean you pronounce it the same way you would pronounce these four letters (N M N E) in this sequence. Simple. Now back to the subject.

“Well, if you legalize same-sex marriage today, you’ll be legalizing bestiality tomorrow, then pedophilia, then vandalism, then murder, and so on and so on, until you get to ethnic cleansing, and soon the whole world will be consumed in flames!”

How in the world do you figure that? How in the world does restricting same-sex marriage mitigate the occurrence of any of the rest of these? A number of states in my country alone have legalized same-sex marriage. Has this brought any change at all in the amount of political pressure brought to bear by bestiality-rights groups? What laws are there, currently, against bestiality? How are they enforced? How could they be enforced except by a complete, utter, total disregard for privacy in any form?

“If you permit scientists to destroy human embryos for the purpose of research, it's a slippery slope from there to killing human fetuses in order to harvest tissue, and from there to euthanizing disabled or terminally ill people to harvest their organs, and from there to human cloning and human-animal hybrids, and if making chimeras is okay, well then Dr. Frankenstein must also be okay, and Dr. Mengele, too, and before you know it, it's one long hapless inevitable slide from high-minded medicine to the Nazis.”

Of course. Nazism has so much to do with stem-cell research, euthanasia, cloning and making chimeras, doesn’t it? After all, those mad scientists in Saturday Morning cartoons which are always making chimeras are all Nazis, aren’t they? The very same argument could be made about the slippery slope from legalizing mustaches into Bolshevism.

So the key question here is how great are the odds that each event in the proffered sequence actually facilitates the occurrence of subsequent events? How much veracity is there to the first premise in this argument?

Incidentally, this drawing of a slippery slope into fascism, Nazism, Communism, Maoism and such is a very common practice. You could almost call it hackneyed and predictable.

Logical Fallacies 34: The False Dilemma

2011-02-28T02:05:00.000-08:00

Video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kchUxqSrxQA&feature=watch_response

Reality is internally consistent. That is, it agrees with itself. If two statements are in disagreement, it means they cannot both be correct. Therefore, any piece of evidence in support of one is evidence against the other.

They can however, both be incorrect. Any piece of evidence against one is not necessarily evidence for the other. The act of proving one claim true proves any incompatible claims false by default, but the act of proving one claim false does not prove any incompatible claims true by default.

Premise: “Statements A and B are incompatible.”

Premise: “Statement B is proven correct.”

Conclusion: “Therefore, statement A is proven incorrect by default.”

This argument is logical.

Premise: “Statements A and B are incompatible.”

Premise: “Statement A is proven incorrect.”

Conclusion: “Therefore, statement B is proven correct by default.”

This is argument is not logical. If you had additional premises enabling you to guarantee, somehow, that one of the two must be correct, then it would be, but otherwise, the act of proving one statement incorrect does not rule out the possibility that several incompatible statements are likewise incorrect. By the same token, if a wrench is the wrong tool for a certain task, it does not necessarily establish that a set of nail clippers is the right tool for it.

When two statements of fact are in disagreement, either only one is correct or neither is.

“Look at all the terrible, subversive things being done in the name of religion X. Do you see how that religion is? So turn to religion Y instead.”

“My best evidence that creationism is true would be the complete impossibility of the contrary.”

“Evolution cannot be true. Therefore creationism must be. The evidence I have that creationism is correct is this evidence that evolution (allegedly) isn’t.”

“Candidate such-and-so is campaigning for insert public office here. But what do we really know about candidate such-and-so? He says this, but he has done this, this, and that. His subversive actions have had all these negative consequences. So vote for me instead. I’m candidate Whosits and I approve this message.”

Never mind that candidate Whosits may have a record that’s even worse.

Michael Jackson overdoses on prescription medication. Deepak Chopra seizes on this as a chance to cast categorical aspersions on all “mainstream” medicine and to promote alternative pseudo-medicine in its place, as if the tragic misapplication of one somehow amounts to a resounding success of the other. Never mind that it was modern, so-called mainstream medical science which figured out the cause of death. So I guess, if mainstream medicine doesn’t work, we should hold these findings in abeyance until “alternative” medical science has a chance to conduct its own autopsy and provide us with more firmly based conclusions.

This fallacy is called the False Dilemma. Given the fact that we are now going into election season in the United States, I predict it is going to become increasingly common in the months ahead. C0nc0rdance offers another really good example in his video called The Deadly Doctor Gambit, which I have linked in the description.

I’ve been hearing this argument a lot, nowadays, among certain political talking heads. They regale us at length with an emphasis on all these ways that government bureaucracy has gotten in the way and let people down. This is done to cajole us into giving serious consideration to private organizations that serve the same functions, or to arguments for reassignment of those functions to private organizations. Now I don’t know about others, but these arguments tend to fall pretty flat with me, because the last couple of years, I’ve been let down and screwed over plenty of times by both. The act of making the case against one falls far short, on its own, of making the case for the other.

Logical Fallacies 33: The Spontaneous Reframing Fallacy

2011-02-28T02:01:00.000-08:00

Video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFeXWxXt19E&feature=watch_response

Here I’ll be examining a particular manner of fallacy which lately, I’ve been encountering more and more. It’s so common that I am compelled to believe that it must have an official name, but I don’t happen to know what that is. If at some point, someone finds out, please let me know and I will add the name in an annotation right about here. For the time being, I’ll just call this the Spontaneous Reframing Fallacy.

This is a kind of Strawman used as a Red Herring, except that instead of strawmanning the position of the individual it is being used against, it strawmans the subject of disagreement. It occurs when the Strawman is timed to distract from the actual point of contention under discussion, in the interest of pretending that the two of you have, all this time, actually been in disagreement about something else entirely. So let us first revisit these terms: Red Herring, Strawman.

A Red Herring is a kind of logical fallacy which, instead of answering a question or argument, strives to distract from it.

“Well of course Bush and Cheney profited from the invasion of Iraq. We all did.”

“We all did? All of us? Every last one of us? Even those who have died in the fighting?”

“Oh, well, if you don’t grasp this, there isn’t much hope for you. I’m sorry to be the one to break it to you but people die in war.”

“I’m quite well aware that people die in war, and when they die in war, I am hard-pressed to see how they can profit from it. And if they did not, in fact, profit, then it wasn’t all of us which makes the statement that we all profited from it incorrect. So are you willing to admit that you misspoke?”

A Strawman, on the other hand, is a kind of fallacy which tries to create the appearance of refuting your position by subtly accusing you of holding a fundamentally different position; a fundamentally different position which perhaps resembles yours cosmetically, but which is nonetheless fundamentally different.

“I lament the corruption in this country.”

“Well why bother living in a country you hate so much?”

“I don’t hate the country. I object to its corruption. There’s a difference. Pay attention.”

So for an example of a spontaneous reframing, let me use an example from a discussion I had recently. I had expressed the sentiment that no religious claim holds up under scrutiny which is why every religion dedicates itself to the end of avoiding and discouraging scrutiny. Someone disagreed with me, making the insistence that Christianity does hold up. I asked if he would be interested in testing that assertion. He said he would be, so I asked him to present me with a Christian claim which he believed held up.

He immediately commenced to shower me with tired, hackneyed rhetoric we’ve all heard hundreds of times.

I expressed surprise at his...generosity. After all, I had asked for a single claim to scrutinize and he provided me with a selection. So I took my pick. Among his claims was the one that the

United States

was founded entirely by Christians.

Now a big pet peeve of mine is the common practice of claiming that one knows something, with no comprehension whatsoever about the significance of this word (know). Belief can rest on personal experience (indeed, on virtually anything), but knowledge must be demonstrable. You can believe whatever silly little thing floats your boat, but if you can’t show something—if you can’t demonstrate it—then you don’t know it and you have no business claiming that you do. You can accurately claim that you believe it, but not that you know it; not unless you can demonstrate it.

If you make a claim and I ask how you know it, and you say that you just do, what you are demonstrating is that you have no comprehension whatsoever what it means to know something.

So when you make a claim and I ask, “How do you know that?” I’m inviting you to make with the demonstration. This question (“How do you know that?”) is the form such scrutiny takes.

So in all honesty, I brought more than scrutiny. You see, the evidence doesn’t just fail to support this claim; it refutes it. So I indicated this claim and asked this fellow what he thought Benjamin Franklin meant when he said, “The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason.”

His response was to tell me that, although Franklin was a smart fellow, the simple fact that he said something doesn’t make it true, and that Christianity still holds merit.

I wasn’t saying that. I was not trying to make an appeal to authority against the “merits” of Christianity, whatever they may be. I was making an evidence-based argument against his claim that this country was founded entirely by Christians. I was simply showing that, given the fact that surely Benjamin Franklin of all people counts as a founding father, and given the fact that Benjamin Franklin was demonstrably not Christian, this claim that the United States was founded entirely by Christians does much more than break down under scrutiny. It utterly disintegrates with just a dash of actual evidence, unless that evidence is very rigorously cherry-picked.

I can only conclude that the only reason this fellow accepted this claim in the first place was due to a lack of scrutiny.

Incidentally, if anyone’s interested in scrutinizing this claim I just made about BF, I will refer you to the 1758 edition of Poor Richard’s Almanack. I guess, technically, you could say that he didn’t actually say it, but rather wrote it, but nonetheless, it is clearly his sentiment.

Next example:

“You really should accept Christ into your heart. I mean, it would be a real pity if you went to hell to burn eternally after you died just because you were too proud for your eyes to be opened to the truth of this world.”

“Uh, first, simply calling something ‘the truth’ does not make it true. Second, any god who would arrange someone’s infinite, eternal torture for refusing to engage in special pleading and unreasonable credulity is a brutal tyrant I want no part of. Besides, there is no hell.”

“How can you possibly know that?”

“Well, hell, by definition, is a place of eternal fire. Fire, by definition, is a chemical reaction—a reaction between molecules—which means that for there to be fire, there must be molecules, all of which are part of the flesh, which I’m told we leave behind when we die.

“Hell is also, by definition, a place of torture. Torture depends on pain, which is a warning signal that something is wrong with the body—with the flesh; a signal carried along the nerves to the brain where it is processed and endowed with an emotional significance. That means that, in order to experience pain, one must have both nerves to carry the signal, and a brain to process it, both of which are part of the body—of the flesh—which I’m told we leave behind when we die.”

“Well that’s true about fire in this world. The fire in hell is different.”

“Well that means that it is fire which is not fire; something which does not fit the defining characteristics of fire, but which we nonetheless call fire just the same. In that case, it makes just as much sense to call hell a place of disco, however fitting some might consider that.”

“Well say what you will, but I prefer to live in a world surrounded by mystery and wonder.”

“Bullshit.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Well because you worship one of the gods of the gaps, who are extraordinarily anti-social beings. They always make it a point to live at an epistemic distance, just out of sight. They live in the wind until we figure out that wind is just air molecules in motion. They live in thunder, until we figure out that thunder is just high pressure air meeting low pressure air. They live at the tops of impassable mountains, until one day when those mountains suddenly become passable. Then they have to go live somewhere else.

“They live in the clouds, until one day when we suddenly figure out how to fly. They live in the space above a planet, until we figure out that the world is round, which means that living above it means living around it which places the planet pretty much in just a hole—a gap—in heaven. Then they have to make due with living within each of us in ways that vigorously avoid scrutiny, or as abstract philosophical concepts no one can ever seem to establish agreement over the precise meaning of.

“Basically, the god of the gaps is born or invoked whenever you take everything you don’t currently know, everything unknown, all the answers you don’t currently have, lump them all together, and rubber-stamp them [GOD], thereby insisting that they are known. ‘Why does the wind blow? I don’t know. It must be God.’ ‘How did the Universe come to exist? I don’t know. It must be God.’ ‘I don’t know what it is. Therefore, it must be God. Therefore, I do know what it is.’ ‘It is unknown, therefore it is known.’ Now if you sincerely believe that God is the answer to all, then you believe that you know the answer to all, so where’s the mystery? What do you have to wonder about?”

“Look. I have a right to be religious.”

“I have yet to suggest otherwise. The subject of our discussion is the problems with the reasoning utilized in your arguments. Do you have the right to be religious? Absolutely. Do I have the right to point out the problems in you reasoning? Absolutely.”

Next example:

“They should teach intelligent design in biology classes in order to cover both sides of the controversy.”

“There is no controversy. ID is not a viable scientific concept.”

“Yes it is.”

“No. It’s not an explanation.”

“Yes it is.”

“Let me explain something here. The only way something gets to be called a scientific explanation is if it describes an empirical, verifiable, falsifiable, testable process. ID doesn’t do that.”

“Yes it does.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“What’s the process?”

“That an intelligent designer of some sort made everything.”

“And in the course of making everything, what process did the designer use?”

“I don’t know. The designer works in mysterious ways.”

“Well that process, which you just admitted you don’t know, is the very focus of science. If you can’t describe a process, then you don’t have a scientific explanation. This is why intelligent design is not science. There are only two kinds of creationist claims: those which don’t lend themselves to testing and therefore have no utility, and those which do lend themselves to testing and have failed it. Until you get a process figured out, you don’t have a scientific explanation, and therefore you don’t have an alternative to evolution which does describe a process. You can’t replace something that works with nothing that doesn’t.”

“...Well science isn’t everything.”

“You might try paying attention. The subject of our disagreement is not what constitutes everything, but what belongs in a science class. Yes, I agree that science is not everything. It’s not art. It’s not literature. It’s not philosophy (although it has roots in philosophy). It is, however, everything that has any place whatsoever within a science class, and that’s the subject here.”

So basically, the Spontaneous Reframing fallacy is clung to out of a desperate aversion to this admission: “You have a point.”

Logical Fallacies 32: The Perfect-Solution Fallacy

2011-02-28T01:46:00.000-08:00

Video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qkm6mI0EfZU&feature=watch_response

Let’s say that you are a parent and you have a child in school, and that child’s first report card of the new semester has a GPA of 2.0; a C average. You’re disappointed, of course. It’s not quite what you had hoped, but at least it’s a passing grade.

So you work with your child, a few of his or her professors, and his or her counselor to find any areas in his or her study approach in need of improvement. You find a few areas, you and your child work to improve those areas, and the next report card has a GPA of 3.0; a B average.

You were hoping for a 4.0; an A average. Does your expectation detract at all from the value of the improvement? Of course not. It’s still an improvement.

Most of the Founding Fathers had hoped, in the act of severing our ties with Britain, that we could put an end to slavery in the colonies in the process. But passages in the original draft of the Declaration of Independence which condemned this practice proved too divisive and had to be dropped. John Adams originally wouldn’t have it, but Benjamin Franklin argued with him that the most important issue here was independence from Britain. If that much was not accomplished, he argued, the rest wouldn’t matter. “Please, John,” he argued, “now that we’ve come this far, don’t give it all up just because our accomplishments don’t include that particular one. Don’t sacrifice all these other improvements in the situation just because we can’t make that improvement as well. Don’t reject a partial improvement just because it’s partial. Don’t commit the Perfect Solution Fallacy.

Similar problems impeded reform efforts in the drafting of the Constitution. Again, there were those who were hoping, in the process, to put an end to slavery, but again, it proved divisive enough to halt everything else and was dropped.

Finally came the Lincoln administration which saw the end of slavery, but it was not until the Johnson administration that segregation was finally abolished.

Sometimes, walls which cannot be jumped over can be climbed over. Such a process requires time and patience, but it often brings results which would otherwise be unattainable. If the Founding Fathers had remained utterly intransigent on slavery with the ratification of the Declaration, the United States would probably have never successfully severed its ties with Britain. If this had been the case eleven years later, the Constitution would never have been adopted. If the abolition movement had refused to accept any reform that abolished slavery so long as it still allowed segregation, slavery may have persisted decades longer.

When the Congress was deadlocked over Health Care Reform, Democrats realized that they would never get a bill through the Senate that contained a public option. They could get through legislation containing a laundry list of other reforms, but not that particular one. President Obama made an urgent plea to his party. “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good,” he said. Don’t commit the Perfect Solution Fallacy.

By the same token, there can be no reform under any circumstances that doesn’t entail unforeseen complications. Some of those complications are bound to be at least a little unfavorable. Rejecting such reform on this basis is the same fallacy. A reform is worthwhile when it constitutes an improvement, perfect or not.

I don’t remember the names of the legislators spearheading or opposing this particular argument, but in the last couple years, there has been at least one instance in which the Congress has commenced to debate the Electoral College. So before I continue on this particular example, let me just explain in case anyone watching doesn’t happen to know what the Electoral College is.

The Congress is a Legislative body. That is, its main focus is making laws. It is a bicameral legislature, meaning that it has two houses. In one, called the Senate, each state has two seats. In the other, called the House of Representatives, each state has a number of seats coinciding in approximate proportion with its population. The objective, in the Senate, is to represent each state equally, while in the House, it is to represent each person equally. The full effectiveness with which each objective is accomplished is debatable, but nonetheless, these are the objectives.

The Electoral College is based on the Congress. In the EC, each state has a certain number of votes coinciding with the number of seats it has in the Congress; both houses. So Hawaii, having two seats in each house, has four votes in the EC, while Alaska, (errata ahead) being the only state in the nation with more seats in the Senate than the House, has three.

In a presidential election, actual ballots are counted on a state-by-state basis. This actual ballot count is the popular vote. The candidate who has the most people in a certain state vote for him or her is the winner of that state’s popular vote. Whichever candidate wins the biggest share of a state’s popular vote gets the entirety of that state’s electoral vote. When the candidate in question is a Republican, the state in question is called a red state, and when that candidate is a Democrat, that state is called a blue state.

In this case, it’s winner-take-all. Whichever candidate gets the biggest share of a state’s popular vote gets all of its electoral votes. Either they all go to one candidate, or they all go to the other.

Now the biggest problem with this, at least as far as I know, is that on a national level, the popular vote and the electoral vote sometimes add up in different ways. This is what happened in 2000 when, on a national level, more than 500,000 more people voted for Gore than for Bush. Bush was still declared the winner because he had more votes in the EC. Gore won the popular vote, but Bush won the electoral vote, and therefore the election.

As I recall, it was early in 2009 when one of our legislators (I don’t recall which one) proposed an amendment to change the election system so that the popular vote would be tallied on a national scale instead of state-by-state, and then the winner of the national popular vote would be awarded all the electoral votes in the nation. This way, the winner of the national popular vote actually wins the election every time.

Another legislator (again, I don’t remember which) argued against this amendment on the grounds that it would bring about a state in which less populated regions are more likely to be passed over by political campaigns.

Now I’m afraid I don’t know how else this amendment fared in the Congress, but let me just take issue with this counter-argument. Yes, I can see how the amendment in question would have this effect, but seeing as how that’s also a problem with our current system, I don’t attach much significance to that particular observation.

“This amendment will improve our current system in one particular way.”

“Perhaps, but it will not improve it in this other way.”

That’s the argument in a nutshell; a textbook Perfect Solution Fallacy.

Logical Fallacies 31: Hasty Generalization

2011-02-28T01:30:00.000-08:00

Video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaX_-42NptU&feature=watch_response

Now this one is going to be both a module about a certain logical fallacy and a book recommendation.

There is an unfortunate human tendency, when presented with a puzzling observation, to accept the first explanation, or seeming explanation, that happens along. A good example of this occurs when one person asks, “Why does the sun rise?” and another responds, “It is being pulled across the sky by magical horses,” or “It is being rolled across the sky by a giant, magical beetle.”

“Where did life come from?”

“God made it.”

A much more grievous example is examined by UCLA geography professor Jared Diamond in his book Guns, Germs, and Steel. This book examines why, across the ages, some civilizations have developed further and more rapidly than others.

Now let me just take a moment to say that I highly recommend this book. It’s kind of a heavy read, but if you can find the time for it, it’s worth it. You see, many a cursory examination of history shows us that it was European civilizations that conquered Africa and the Americas, and not the other way around. So it has often been asked why in the world this should be the case.

There are those who are very quick to respond to this by simply saying that Europeans are just more intelligent than Africans and Native Americans. Now there may have been a time when no explanation received more evidentiary support than this one, but even then, this was far from adequate grounds to accept this so-called explanation, given the fact that it accounted for only this one observation.

Let’s say that we have a list of 100 related, yet randomly selected, empirical observations. Ah, but wait a minute. Let me take a moment to clarify that I’m using the word “empirical” in the scientific sense of the word, not the philosophical sense. So what’s the difference?

In the philosophical sense, “empirical” is contrasted with “rational.” Empiricism accounts for everything that can be directly observed while rationalism accounts for everything that can be logically concluded or inferred from that which can be observed. In the philosophical sense, “empirical” is a synonym for “observable,” while “rational” is a synonym for “extrapolable.”

In the scientific sense, on the other hand, “empirical” is contrasted with “anecdotal.” Here we have a slightly different concept with the same name.

Anecdotal evidence is evidence based on anecdote. When one points out that two characteristics go together, or coincide, in one particular case, that’s an anecdote. If that anecdote is documented in a demonstrable or independently-verifiable manner, then we have a piece of anecdotal evidence.

Empirical evidence, on the other hand, conducts a proper sample to determine what percentage of the time two characteristics coincide or two variables change in unison. Empirical evidence, in the scientific sense of the word, is necessary in order to establish whether any correlations exist. If two variables tend to increase in unison or decrease in unison, then we have a positive correlation. If, on the other hand, increases in one tend to coincide with decreases in the other or vice-versa, then we have a negative correlation. This is the scientific sense of the word “empirical,” which is the sense I am using here.

So summing it up, empirical evidence in the scientific sense is evidence intended to make correlations empirical in the philosophical sense.

So let’s go back to that list of 100 related, yet randomly-selected, empirical observations. Beginning with the first, if we are setting out to explain them, it’s a good idea to speculate until we have maybe five or six explanations, which at this point, are called hypotheses. Then, the best thing for us to do is to keep each hypothesis in mind while we examine the second observation. The hypotheses which explain the second as well are strengthened and supported by the act. Those which don’t are weakened, unless they can be modified so that they still explain both observations.

This we repeat with each subsequent observation, modifying each hypothesis as necessary, until one has been modified to the point that it enables us to predict observations which are on the list, but which we haven’t examined yet. When these predictions can be made with testable, measurable, accuracy, to any extent whatsoever, leaving the door wide open for directed, testable speculation, then we have a school of thought, or in scientific and academic terms, a theory.

When a given explanation enables you to make these predictions with such a high degree of accuracy that the prospect of that explanation being mistaken would be the greater miracle, the greater scientific revolution, then we have a fact. Not until we reach this point. It’s still a theory, but it’s also a fact. In science, these are compatible concepts.

The question of different civilizations developing at different speeds, and thus European civilizations conquering African and Native American civilizations is one observation for which many possible explanations can be arrived at through speculation. If this is the only piece of evidence one is going to use to support this “conclusion,” or perhaps only this and a bare handful of others, then what we have is the Fallacy of Hasty Generalization, also known as the Fallacy of Insufficient Statistics. That is, it reaches an inductive generalization based on the briefest, laziest, of assessments, and far from sufficient evidence.

One could also call this “conclusion” the Fallacy of Unwarranted Assumption, which I have explained previously in this series, since it also makes the assumption that the intelligence of the three major ethnic groups in question is the only variable that had any bearing on this. But of course, such is clearly not the case.

Jared Diamond, in this book, takes the long road, taking the time to examine as exhaustive a list of related cultural observations as can be reasonably accommodated in just a few hundred pages. Basically, he goes well out of his way, making a very noble and successful effort to avoid this particular fallacy.

The rest of this particular video, or perhaps set of videos, I am going to spend expounding on the book. If you don’t feel like sitting through that, then by all means, click away now.

Let’s say that you have two neighboring civilizations, A and B, and each, at this point, relies on a nomadic way of life. But then, after a few centuries, one begins to experiment with agriculture. What does that entail?

Agriculture depends on two key practices:

First, in any undeveloped region, only about 10% of the vegetation is going to provide some manner of sustenance that human beings can digest. In agriculture, one tears out the other 90% and replaces it with the plants that previously composed that 10, enabling one’s civilization to draw ten times as much sustenance from the same patch of land.

Second, in agriculture, one domesticates plants, enabling one to apply artificial selection to their reproduction. This makes it possible to direct the development of those crops in ways that further support the civilization growing them.

So if a civilization relies on nomadic living, every able-bodied member of that civilization must participate in the search for food in order for that civilization to sustain itself. If, on the other hand, it begins to make the transition to agriculture, as happened in the agricultural revolution, about 10,000 years ago, suddenly it is able to produce so much food that a large portion of its people don’t need to participate in that and can begin to develop their skills and expertise in other specializations, like soldiery. Therefore, an agricultural civilization is much more able to sustain an army than a nomadic one.

This, however, was not a key difference. The agricultural revolution took off at about the same time in Europe, Africa, the Americas, and Asia. But this set the stage for other key developmental differences.

One concept this book explains is the concept of a continental axis; that is a straight line across the surface of the earth between a continents two most distant points. In the Americas and Africa, this axis runs mainly north and south. In Eurasia and Australia, it runs mainly east and west. But this east-and-west continental axis is much longer in the one than the other. Now what does that mean?

Well this equated to a major agricultural advantage for civilizations in Europe and those at the same latitudes of Asia, in regions which, today, we call Kazakhstan, Mongolia, and northern China. After all, the latitude at which a plant typically grows directly affects the amount of sunlight it gets and how that amount changes through the course of the year. So any given plant adapts much more readily to changes in longitude than changes in latitude. Plants growing at the eastern-most end of Europe in, say, Portugal, are much more able to make the transition to the Korean peninsula and vice versa than plants adapted to Canada are able to suddenly be cultivated in Ecuador.

Therefore, given the much greater variety of plants which are naturally going to arise along the Eurasian axis, and given the far greater ease with which those plants are adapted to grow in regions further east and west than in regions further north and south, this resulted in a greater variety of crops which could be grown in Europe and Asia, making civilizations in both regions much more able to adapt to environmental changes the like of which would impact their food supply. This made European and Asian civilizations, over the centuries, much more able than civilizations in other parts of the world to weather environmental changes that impeded the growth of certain crops.

Now the relevance of this part will not be immediately apparent, but consider the cheetah. Its mating practices usually entail three or four males chasing the same female across miles of open country. This is necessary in order to get the blood circulating in the female’s reproductive organs. She is in fact unable to conceive unless this chase takes place first.

Now in order for us to domesticate an animal, we must be able to persuade that animal to breed in captivity. Breeding cheetahs in captivity would require the construction and continuous maintenance of a cage several miles long; an undertaking for which I am hard pressed to think of any organizations that both have the funds and would find it worth the expense. Thus, there are practical limitations preventing cheetahs from being domesticated.

The larger animals of Africa are replete with such limitations. It doesn’t usually entail a chase, but all of Africa’s largest animals have reproductive practices which depend utterly on factors which cannot be practically duplicated in captivity. Animals like the elephant, wildebeest and water buffalo can be tamed but not usually domesticated. That is, we can capture a single animal of this species and train it to survive in captivity, but we are prevented by practical limitations from reproducing them there, at least until the last couple centuries.

If an animal can’t be domesticated, it can’t be drafted. It can’t be used to pull wagons, chariots or plows on a regular basis on a national level. So when the agricultural revolution took off in Africa, this was a big impediment to such activities as empire-building; an impediment not present in Europe.

Europe, on the other hand, was replete with animals which could be both domesticated and drafted. This is where cattle come from. So because large animals were draftable in Europe but not Africa, this was another major advantage to developing civilizations there.

Now consider the swine flu. It’s called the swine flu because it originated among swine and made the transition to people. But did you know that the seasonal flu is another swine flu that made that same jump centuries ago?

Because European farms had all these draft animals that African farms didn’t, this resulted in European farmers spending a lot more time regularly in contact with other species, which opened the door for a lot more diseases to jump this divide. As a result of this, European civilizations were much more prone to disease outbreaks, which over the successive centuries, built up European immune systems, while at the same time, making them carriers of many diseases that other civilizations hadn’t encountered. So when they encountered those other civilization, they usually brought devastating disease, while suffering a great deal less from whatever diseases those other civilizations might be carrying.

Now consider the wheel. The wheel, interestingly enough, was invented in two locations, by two different cultures, independently of one another. That is, they were not in contact at the time. One was a people in Europe whose name I don’t know and the other was the Incas in modern-day Peru.

But the wheel didn’t benefit the Incas the way it benefited the European civilization. Of course, the Europeans, being surrounded with all these draft animals, were very quick to develop wagons for carrying supplies relatively quickly over relatively great distances, while the Incas didn’t have this option. The Incas had the wheel but they were in the mountains of South America, and the nearest animal capable of pulling a wagon was the Buffalo, thousands of miles away on the plains of North America.

And then, of course, there’s paper, an invention from ancient China. Paper, in a pre-electronic age, enables a civilization to design machines, draw maps and develop and maintain a written language, which is necessary in order to maintain records, expound at length on highly abstract ideas, minimize miscommunications over great distances, foster innovation, and many other functions. This development helped China to get quite a long head start on everyone which lasted for centuries. Indeed, Chinese ships had reached all corners of Europe by the time Europeans had only begun to experiment with shipping.

But then came a day when the ruling regime in China, a regime which greatly supported shipping, was replaced by another regime which didn’t support shipping at all. This regime called back all of China’s ships, decommissioned them, and dismantled China’s ports, thus leaving the door wide open for Chinese shipping accomplishments to be surpassed by European shipping accomplishments.

This event, though, was not in much danger of being repeated in Europe, because Europe was not unified under one particular government. Christopher Columbus had many governments to choose from. He asked one government to sponsor his voyage and they refused. Then he asked another and they refused. He kept asking different governments, and finally found one that agreed, and that’s how European civilization first made contact with the Americas.

Now one thing I find especially interesting is how Jared Diamond uses this part to make an argument against too unified a government. After all, having Europe divided in this fashion gave each European nation a vested interest in maintaining its exploration efforts, lest its failure to do so allowed it to be overtaken by the exploration efforts of other European countries.

But much of this is adjacent to the main point of the book. The question he addresses is, “How come it was European civilizations which conquered Africa and the Americas, and not the other way around?” A very interesting consequence of that answer is, with just a few environmental differences, it very well could have been the other way around.

Logical Fallacies 30: Argument by Repetition

2011-02-28T01:23:00.000-08:00

Video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9IlquMdvu8&feature=watch_response

What if I were to tell you that, contrary to popular belief, the world is in fact a flat disk, and the Moon truly is made of cheese? Would you believe me? I may be mistaken, but I doubt it. You would probably have less difficulty believing that this claim is made of cheese. What if I were to repeat it a few times? Would this make it any more convincing? Again, I may be mistaken, but I doubt it.

What if I were to bring in several friends to join me in this repetition? Would the lot of us, together, be able to repeat it enough times to suddenly render it convincing? Of course not. Why not?

Because if you can tell that a certain claim is, on the face of it, fundamentally absurd, no number of repetitions is going to suddenly render it any less absurd or you suddenly less able to tell that. You are going to be just as able to glean this absurdity after the thousandth repetition as you are after the third.

I once heard on NPR about a fellow approaching the Dalai Lama and asking if he had ever been told who Jesus Christ is.

Now I’ve never met the Dalai Lama personally, and I’m not psychic, but I think it pretty well founded to guess that, upon hearing this question, deep inside, he sighed and thought, “Yes. I’ve been told.”

Now it just so happens that there is a much clearer, more straight-forward answer to the question, “Who is Jesus Christ” than most Christians have ever realized. Jesus Christ is Santa Clause for adults; a cosmic, Jewish zombie who is His own father.

Sometimes, at the book store, I come across books with titles to the effect of, “The Christian’s Guide to Talking to Non-Christians.” This, it seems to me, and many other such answers should be written into a book called, “The Non-Christians Guide to Talking to Christians.”

Christians, many of you, in this increasingly inter-connected world, have no doubt been presented with the Muslim shpiel many times. Muslims, many of you, no doubt, have likewise been presented with the Christian shpiel many times. I know that my atheist subscribers get presented with both all the time. I don’t know if I happen to have any Jewish, Buddhist or Hindu subscribers, but I would guess that if I do, the same thing happens to them all the time as well. Does it become any more convincing as it is repeated to you over and over again? Probably not.

Yet, many a Christian and Muslim laments to me that we atheists won’t ever see the “truth” of your religion, no matter how many times you repeat it us. Here we have a kind of special pleading which I am compelled to call the ad nauseum fallacy. It’s a kind of special pleading because it only seems convincing when a double-standard of argument and evidence is applied to it. Like the ad populum fallacy, it only seems convincing when it supports a position you already hold. The only reason you find it convincing is that you begin with the assumption that it is true. Therefore, anyone who doesn’t begin with that assumption is not going to find it convincing. To these people, it’s just a petty annoyance.

Well this one has turned out to be surprisingly concise, but that’s all I have to say about that.