MetisOnline - Savage Reason

Zero the Hero

djerrom@gmail.com (Darcey) — Sat, 13 Oct 2012 14:59:44 +0000

Back in June, Edmonton physics teacher Lynden Dorval was suspended from his position for handing out zeros to students who did not complete assignments and just recently he was subsequently fired for violating the official policy.

Bringing us up to date, the principal who did the firing (Ron Bradley) has moved on but the issue has not. Parents are speaking out and one wonders why their voices were not part of the initial argument - afterall, this is about their kids, isn't it?

Parents are urging Ross Sheppard principal Mike Suderman to change a school policy brought in by the previous principal that prohibits teachers from grading students with zeros for missed assignment or exams. Instead, teachers are required to use behaviour codes such as “not handed in” for missed work.

The vast majority of parents at Wednesday night’s school council meeting disagreed with the no-zero approach, said Allan Garber, co-chair of Ross Sheppard’s newly established school council.

“We heard views from, really, all sides, but at the end of the day the parents were really of a strong mind in coming forward with the recommendations,” Garber said.

In the recommendations, parents emphasized their “trust, respect and confidence” for Ross Sheppard teachers as well as the school’s dedication to academic excellence.

“We believe that behaviour is important and the values of work ethic, punctuality and responsibility are important. We trust that Ross Sheppard will support and nurture these values,” the recommendation said.

Proponents of the no-zero approach have argued schools are responsible for making sure all students learn the provincially mandated curriculum. Assigning zeros when students fail to complete work penalizes students for bad behaviour and fails to assess what they actually know, no-zero advocates have said.

Critics of the approach argue students should learn lessons about behaviour in school so they are prepared to succeed in post-secondary institutions and the job market. (Edmonton Journal)

Beyond basic logic:

Assigning zeros when students fail to complete work penalizes students for bad behaviour and fails to assess what they actually know, no-zero advocates have said.

A nice softening of the ultimate truth. Either you know the facts or you do not and the only way to gauge whether one has absorbed any knowledge is to test it. Simple.

To think otherwise is just to place a bet. You can bet they may know it but you can't bet that they don't as that would also lean towards violating 'official policy'.

This whole pro non-zero nonsense has nothing to do with teaching children but has everything to do with teaching ideology and in addition the process is dysfunctional. If one does not get a mark for work that was assigned then it becomes as if the work was never assigned. It becomes possible that one could artificially inflate grades by only handing in assignments that they are really good at and ignore everything that they are not.

Resolves:

If you don't allow failure of any kind then nothing is a failure and therefore nothing needs to be corrected. If it becomes conditioned that failure does not exist then there becomes no reason nor opportunity to change.

Other sad, is that we will never know if Lynden Dorval, was a good teacher or not.

Faith as a virtue

djerrom@gmail.com (Darcey) — Mon, 11 Jun 2012 00:26:24 +0000

As the story goes, a group of athiests in Ohio (Mid Ohio Athiests) had a contest on who could caption the most irritable to Christians billboard. Winner above (Reason is a virtue) went up on some leased property until the owner demanded it be taken down. The athiests have drummed it up to unreasonable Christians and apolex that it was not their intent to bother them.

I would tend to disagree since Christianity is the only major religion where faith is explicity defined as a virtue and here we are with a symbolic cross-out of one of the top three theological tenants. Whether 'Christians' had the billboard removed is a story to be told by someone else.

I personally don't find the billboard offensive per se, but more of, as a puzzle to be unraveled. Being a person who likes to reason, I figure it deserves a crack.

The obvious message here is that reason is more important than faith but what absolute logical categorizations the atheists meant it to fall under God only knows and so therefore we have to look at the known which is virtue.

Virtue is defined as conformity to a standard of right and a particular moral excellence (#). It means goodness and integrity and the deepest definition is being faithful to what is true and right.

This is why faith is a virtue. It isn't possible to reason out faith as reason is too abstract.

And to have faith, you have to trust.

The kicker in my mind says - In the calculus of beliefs, trust is a human mental phenomenon and therefore trust always lends itself to different interpretations which is manifested through human intuition which eliminates objectivity.

So, to be virtuous by reason alone, one would have to have faith that their reasonability is not attached to their own perception of what is right or wrong. Because, by reason alone, you would never know if you were living within the truth or not. The doubt would never end.

You could never have trust, you could never have faith, and you could never have virtue. Pure reason over faith doesn't resolve to the same end.

The evil behind measuring evil

djerrom@gmail.com (Darcey) — Sun, 03 Jun 2012 02:21:57 +0000

It has been a week of blood and gore with the media following up on every nugget of Luka Rocco Magnotta who is suspected of murdering and dismembering one Lin Jun and mailing his body parts to various political party headquarters.

Digging thru the bleeds it leads comes this fascinating article by Adian Humphreys of the National Post on measuring evil. Social scientists have apparently been working on creating a scale of depravity to eliminate bias in sentencing and their research aims to "establish societal standards of what makes a crime depraved" (#).

I would think that most of us are pretty good at recognizing sin and evil when we see it but apparently our consciences are not good enough as we don't always take into account issues of race, culture, gender and socio-economics.

We need a standard of depravity, and then of course, we would need somebody of some higher power to regulate it:

With news taking the dark plunge into slasher movie territory — without the comfort of make-believe — current attempts to scientifically quantify “evil” seem more relevant and urgent than ever. It is a measure of our times that psychiatrists have produced both the Depravity Scale and the Scale of Evil, competing hierarchies of human harm.

It is research to help doctors and judges know what precise flavour of evil they are looking at, whether their goal is finding a fit sentence or searching for a cure for depravity.

The era of magnetic resonance imaging has also helped. Science is trying to understand evil as well as classify it.

“Those of us who practice within the forensic sciences will tell you: some murders truly are worse than others; some assaults truly are worse than others. Some crimes absolutely distinguish themselves by intent, actions and attitudes as worse than others,” says Dr. Michael Welner, professor of psychiatry at New York University School of Medicine.

“Not every killing is evil,” he said.

“You have these words that are tossed around to the point that people are tone deaf to them. The word ‘evil’ is tossed around until it loses its meaning.”

To reattach meaning to “evil” — to reclaim it and measure it and put the most appalling and uncommon cruelty in its terrible, distinct place — Dr. Welner developed the Depravity Scale.

“People have grappled with evil being such an indefinable concept and I can tell you, having conducted this research with such elaborate protocol for about ten years, evil can be defined, you can achieve a consensus about what is an evil person.” (National Post)

Indeed. And when science can finally objectively identify what an evil person is because of what they did, then they can work to correct the seeds of evil behavior.

Further down the slippery slope:

While Dr. Welner’s Depravity Scale seeks to bring the science of evil into the courtroom to assess punishment for the worst crimes, Dr. Stone’s Scale of Evil is a more academic pursuit, designed to help categorize killers for further study.

“For a long time people wondered, is there something different about the brain of somebody who does violent acts, particularly repetitive violent acts, in comparison to an ordinary person’s brain,” said Dr. Stone.

Researchers have traced different functions to different parts of the human brain, including breathing, movement, memory, morals and social decision-making.

The brain’s amygdale, for instance, seems to recognize when someone is fearful or distressed. Studies on “cold-hearted murderers” shows their amygdales do not function normally, deadening a sense of empathy, said Dr. Stone.

The orbitofrontal cortex is the brain’s decision making area and, when linked properly with the amygdale, can mitigate off-kilter thoughts.

“Think of the orbitofrontal cortex as a kind of braking system that, if it is operating, will put the brakes on a thought or desire that preceded it,” said Dr. Stone.

“We know now there is interconnection between the amygdale and the frontal cortex and if that conductivity is not operating properly the person may go ahead and do the unspeakable crime which otherwise he would have put the brakes on.”

The higher up Dr. Stones scale a criminal is placed, the more likely it is there is a genetic or brain abnormality as a contributing cause.

Ultimately, the research offers hope that measuring evil and understanding evil may lead to curbing evil.

A cure for evil? Chilling... And more so as this is not the first time I've come across such ideas:

Prof Adrian Raine, a British criminologist, argued that abnormal physical brain make-up could be a cause of criminality, as well as helping to predict it.

His studies have shown that psychopaths and criminals have smaller areas of the brain such as the amygdala and prefrontal cortex, both of which regulate and control emotion and behaviour. He also believes that a lack of conditioning to fear punishment, which can be measured in toddlers before disruptive behaviour is apparent, could also be a strong indicator.

Dr Nathalie Fontaine, who also spoke at the conference, argued that children as young as four exhibited “callous unemotional traits” such as lack of guilt and empathy that could also suggest future bad behaviour. Linking these features with “conduct problems” such as throwing tantrums could be a strong way to predict who could be anti-social in later life.

Both speakers said that identifying these issues earlier could be important in stopping children from becoming criminals.

Maybe we wouldn't live in such a depraved and decadent society if we stopped treating every human failing as some kind of disease and let victimism take the place of traditional morality.

Amygdalians - So, if we were to have 'faith' in the message that all forms of evil and depravity are biologically based, then that must mean that the rest of us were born innocent. Various forms of evilness and depravity acted out on later in life are therefore caused by fluctuations in the size of our amygdala's and not by any outside forces in our environment.

Obliterate the human conscience with progressive nuttiness and you get an amoral generation. Just take a look around.

The case against born this way

djerrom@gmail.com (Darcey) — Sun, 20 May 2012 13:20:15 +0000

When the media hammers on you day after day drumming what seems like simple logics into your lap of subconscious it becomes easy to take what they say for granted and never question it.

A good case is the stream of stories portraying links between biological factors and homosexuality whose resultant always tends to be they are who they are because they were born that way. The born that way causation gets bannered up front for all to see and any opposing views resolve to the back.

I'm one of those who has never questioned it, at least not until recently.

Not long ago I came across a number of studies involving twins and homosexuality. The basic premise is, if twins are identical in every way because they share the same genes, and if homosexuality is biologically based, then both twins would be homosexual. At issue with this basic idealism of born this way is that it doesn't happen.

In fact, it has been proven over and over again that genes do not make us behave in certain ways. Even to be a homosexual.

Now I'm not judging homosexuality and my feelings for them are the same as for Mormons who do what they do and refrain from Jehova Witnessing my door. What I am critical of, is the somewhat silence of the media when it comes down to reporting their various view points.

Here is a segment from a recent story that should have raised some questions but did not - possibly because it was relegated to a small corner:

Boys will be boys, as the adage goes, with their rough-and-tumble boisterous play so stereotypically male.

Is it the doings of a primary sex hormone called testosterone, long associated with social dominance, virility and strength?

Many scientists have explored the role of hormones and conduct, whether in school playgrounds, sports, war or bedrooms.

Now a Universite de Montreal study of five-month old twins is among the first to tease out the contribution of genetic and environmental factors to circulating levels of this chemical.

The research with infant twins suggests that the environment plays a greater role than genes when it comes to testosterone levels.

Studies in human and animal models over the past 50 years have confirmed an association between aggression, dominance and testosterone in adolescence, said lead author Richard Tremblay of UdeM's research unit on children's psychosocial maladjustment.

"The question is, when does that association start?" asked Tremblay, whose team looked at newborn babies of both sexes.

Published in the online edition of Psychoneuroendocrinology, the study compared testosterone in saliva samples from a total of 314 infants — identical twins with non-identical twins. Identical pairs share the same genes, while fraternal twins are like any siblings and share 50 per cent of their genes.

"So if testosterone levels are genetically determined, then the identical twins would be more alike than the fraternal twins," Tremblay explained.

Researchers found that testosterone levels in infancy are not inherited genetically but rather are affected by environmental factors. (Montreal Gazette)

This goes against previous studies that sought to show that testosterone levels are hard-wired into the brain and therefore biology drives sexual orientation. Those studies drive a lot of the lobbying for homosexual rights and as this paper shaves against the grain it should be a bit of a big deal but obviously it isn't. Just a little Postmedia and Mother Nature Network attention.

Maybe this is just too much of a can of worms to open, as apparently, the issue of being born this way has already been determined.

Thinking is more interesting than knowing, but less interesting than looking

djerrom@gmail.com (Darcey) — Sun, 13 May 2012 21:56:11 +0000

Ottawa cops to conduct racial profiling to prove they don't racial profile

djerrom@gmail.com (Darcey) — Sun, 06 May 2012 22:04:55 +0000

It all started with a routine traffic stop in 2005 by Ottawa police where the driver, 18 year old Chad Aiken, later complained to the Ontario Human Rights Commission that he was stopped only because he was black.

They took his side and as part of the initial settlement, the Ottawa Police came out with a racial profiling policy in 2011 which in general meant sensitivity training and the sentiment that:

The policy says that racial profiling is largely an unconscious phenomenon and it's often not the intent of the officer to discriminate. (CTV)

Not good enough it was ruled and so it was back to the drawing board of appeasement.

The latest:

...a new settlement reached two weeks ago requires officers to collect race-based data for two years.

"Our goal was to seek public interest remedies, so we advocated for data collection and are very pleased that the Ottawa Police Services have agreed to do that," said Barbara Hall, chief commissioner of the Ontario Human Rights Commission.

Hall explained this project will help address concerns and perceptions that minority communities may have about how they are policed.

"So it really is about finding out more about how the OPS does their job and, depending on what that data says, working out responses if concerns are shown through the data," she said.

Police Chief Charles Bordeleau spoke to media Friday afternoon about the project.

"The issue of racial profiling has been spoken to in the past, and racial profiling exists across our society -- and police is no exception," he said. "The goal here is to demonstrate that we are a bias-free police service to our community." (QMI)

I don't see how you can continue to be bias-free when you have already been judged guilty of such and every subsequent upcoming action will be under the icy please everyone microscope of bureaucratic yay-nay. The only way they can prove themselves to not be biased under this judgement, is to simply stop less brown people or keep quotas by race.

I'm betting on conversations such as this - So today we stopped 15 white people, 15 blacks and 16 indians so we better get back out there and get us a couple more whitey's or someone be pointing a finger.

Can you imagine the pressure?

It is ironic that just this past February, two Ontario criminologists suggested that Canadian police should collect race-based data. Not however, to prove that we are a less or more racist society, but to pinpoint areas of social disadvantage. They argued that "suppressing race statistics makes quantitative anti-racism research impossible" and furthermore, "failure to collect data does not prevent racial profiling".

These are good commonsense arguments that I for one can roll with.

This idea of police collecting race-based data to prove they are not racist is a fail from the get go. As I've noted before - The deep reality is that certain racial groups commit more crimes than others.

And for the Ottawa Police being forced to show otherwise, I just can't wait to read their final report.{jcomments off}

Study: Thinking can undermine faith

djerrom@gmail.com (Darcey) — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 16:40:45 +0000

A recent study from University of British Columbia scientists is said to unveil why some people are less religious than others. In short, they conclude that those who think more analytically are less inclined to be religious believers.

See here:

Psychologists William Gervais and Ara Norenzayan, of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, predicted that people who were more analytic in thinking would tend not to believe in religion, whereas people who approach problems more intuitively would tend to be believers. Their study confirmed the hypothesis and the findings illuminate the mysterious cognitive process by which we reach decisions about our beliefs.

Cognitive theory of decision making supports the hypothesis that there are two independent processes involved in decision making. The first process is based on gut instinct, and this process is shared by other animals. The second cognitive process is an evolutionarily recent development, exclusive to humans, which utilizes logical reasoning to make decisions. Their study of 179 Canadian undergraduate students showed that people who tend to solve problems more analytically also tended to be religious disbelievers. This was demonstrated by giving the students a series of questions like the one above and then scoring them on the basis of whether they used intuition or analytic logic to reach the answers. Afterward, the researchers surveyed the students on whether or not they held religious beliefs. The results showed that the intuitive thinkers were much more likely to believe in religion.

To test whether there is a causative basis for this correlation, the researchers then used various subtle manipulations to promote analytic reasoning in test subjects. Prior research in psychology has shown that priming stimuli that subconsciously suggest analytical thinking will tend to increase analytic reasoning measured on a subsequent test. For example, if subjects are shown a picture of Rodin's sculpture "The Thinker" (seated head-in-hand pondering) they score higher in measures of analytic thinking in tests given immediately afterward. Their studies confirmed this effect but also showed that those subjects who showed increased analytic thinking also were significantly more likely to be disbelievers in religion when surveyed immediately after the test.

Three other interventions to boost analytic thinking had the same effect on increasing religious disbelief. This included asking subjects to arrange a collection of words into a meaningful sequence. If the words used for the subconscious prime related to analytic thinking, such as "think, reason, analyze, ponder, rational," rather than control words "hammer, shoes, jump, retrace, brown," subjects scored higher on tests of analytic thinking given immediately afterward, and they were also much more likely to be disbelievers in religion. This demonstrates that increasing critical thinking also increases religious disbelief.

Norenzayan emphasizes that "Analytical thinking is one of several factors that contribute to disbelief. Belief and disbelief are complex phenomena that have multiple causes. We have identified just one factor in these studies."

Professor and Chairman Terrence Reynolds of the Department of Theology at Georgetown University finds it plausible that analytic thinking could make religious belief more difficult. "If one assumes that all rationality is tied to what we know directly through the five senses, that limits our understanding of meaning questions. Religion tends to focus on questions of meaning and value, which may not be available through analytic verification processes… by definition God is a being that transcends the senses." (Psychology Today)

So called 'disbelievers' are of course using the various articles on the study as a forum to attack Christianity and I would add that this is no surprise as atheists tend to have intellectual and emotional objections to Christianity.

What is missing in the discussion is why the scientists would apply this to a religious faith and not to faith overall? For example, if the same principles of the study were applied to antitheists or to those who believe in global warming would we have similar results? What about for those who believe in Darwinism and his just-a-theory of evolution?

It is worth noting that the deeper articles reporting on the study have pointed out that "analytic reasoning is not superior to intuitive reasoning" (#) and that "analytical thinking is one of several factors that contribute to disbelief". However, the overall implication is that reason is compromised by belief as it interferes with naturalistic empiricism, which is in itself just another theory of knowledge.

The only factual this study may provide some forward evidence of, is that those who have faith, are possibly less sceptical.

Saskatoon living in harmony expert living without harmony

djerrom@gmail.com (Darcey) — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 02:08:10 +0000

Saskatoon resident Ashu M. G. Solo is a self-described progressive who is 'trailblazing' the new field of public policy engineering and when he isn't busy doing that he sits on the committee for the Saskatoon Cultural Diversity and Race Relations Committee and its Living in Harmony Ad Hoc Subcommittee.

On the cultural diversity committee and the living in harmony thing he has "fought to protect civil rights and civil liberties" and so it is strange, to hear a man of his ilk use the term religious bigotry so loosely:

A Christian prayer by a city councillor at a City of Saskatoon volunteer appreciation dinner discriminated against non-Christians, says a volunteer who intends to complain to the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission.

Ashu Solo, a member of the city’s cultural diversity and race relations committee, was among the guests at the dinner Wednesday, where Coun. Randy Donauer said a blessing over the food in which he mentioned Jesus and ended with "amen."

"It made me feel like a second-class citizen. It makes you feel excluded," said Solo, who is an atheist.

"It’s ironic that I’ve now become a victim of religious bigotry and discrimination at this banquet that was supposed to be an appreciation banquet for the service of volunteers like me." (Saskatoon StarPhoenix)

There is bigotry here but it isn't coming form the Christians. If a bigot is defined as someone who treats members of a group with intolerance and hatred then one may feel that coming from Mr. Ashu Solo himself. His threats make that pointed.

Further strange is Mr. Ashu Solo's sentiment that he felt excluded by prayer, even though he claims to be an atheist.

I would tend to think that this is a good thing.

Cultural Resonance

djerrom@gmail.com (Darcey) — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 10:43:04 +0000

Let's all war on science

djerrom@gmail.com (Darcey) — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 14:00:25 +0000

The perceived war on science is said to have officially begun with the election of George W. Bush in 2000 who grew to bear the monikor of an anti-science president. The perception was cheered on by the media and left-wing lobby and later, following the election of the Stephen Harper Conservatives, it began to be portrayed as an issue here. Prime Minister Stephen Harper is anti-science, his government is a step back, it's a crusade against the scientists.

Unfortunately, the ideological name calling is not singular to the government alone but is part of a much wider effort to paint all persons with a conservative or libertarian bent as ignorant. Disagreeing with the schizoid policies of Canadian scientist David Suzuki can make one a knuckle-dragging redneck.

Recently, the American Sociological Review published a study by one Gordon Gauchat (Politicization of Science in the Public Sphere: A Study of Public Trust in the United States)(h/t) which explores "time trends in the public trust in science" from 1974 to 2010. The chart below shows us that once upon a time, liberals and conservatives shared a similar trust in science:

As we can see, over time there began to grow a divergence between the two ideologies. Those with a liberal bent trust more while all those others trust less.

A number of theories are tested to explain the 'sink' such as the emergence of the "new right" (NR) which has affiliations with the religious right whose cultural mentality is portrayed as being absoluted and dynamically opposed to secular institutions. That tends to be the most popular theory and it's purported trend in Canadian politics began with a stunt by liberalist Warren Kinsella (read more here). While it has become somewhat of a populist sentiment, according to the analysis of the data by Gauchat, it doesn't help to explain anything.

The Christian right, is not adding to any significant conservative dilutions of scientific trust although it can also be said that a lot of Christians don't trust the scientific establishment either. It is nothing more then speculation to pin one onto the other. Even the 'anti-science' policies of George W. Bush are insignificant.

The reality is:

...that much of what passes for science today is deeply compromised. Scientists who answer to the political needs of regulatory agencies have a habit of following the exigencies of their political masters rather than scientific rigour. Well-educated conservatives are aware of the politicization of the climate-change debate and understand that a vast number of prestigious scientists, likely the majority of top scientists, are climate-change skeptics.

Gauchat in his study strives mightily to disentangle his subsets of data and explain the mysteries of conservative thinking. Yet had he not been obsessively preoccupied with conservatives in what advertises itself as a study of the broad public’s trust in science, he could have stepped back from his data and seen it for what it actually shows. The conservatives aren’t the oddity; the true-believing liberals are.

In 1974, the starting point for the study, all political groups that he considered — liberals, moderates and conservatives — held science in high esteem, with conservatives the most enamoured of science of the three, followed closely by liberals and then moderates. It was the moderates, not the conservatives, who first became disillusioned with the scientific establishment, and the moderates remain relatively disillusioned today. After the moderates began their disillusionment, conservatives, too, began to question the science that the establishment was purveying. Today the conservatives are more disillusioned than even the moderates, but only by a small margin. These two groups started at about the same place in 1974 and they have today arrived at about the same place. Nothing especially noteworthy here.

The liberals, on the other hand, never stopped being enamoured by the scientific establishment, never took seriously the complaints of establishment critics, never themselves questioned the science that the establishment produced. (Lawrence Solomon - Financial Post)

A notable finding by Gauchat is that attainment of high school diplomas and graduate degrees is higher for conservatives then liberals, and the decline in scientific trust actually correlates to an increase in conservative educational components. Educated conservatives become less confident in the scientific establishment. The data is significant enough to state that conservative discontent with science is not attributable to the uneducated. Apparently, the more learned you become, the more you question.

Gordon Gauchat:

In essence, this study greatly complicates claims of the deficit model, which predicts that individuals with higher levels of education will possess greater trust in science, by showing that educated conservatives uniquely experienced the decline in trust. This interesting result may indicate that educated conservatives have been most affected by the NR’s identity work. Moreover, it suggests that scientific literacy and education are unlikely to have uniform effects on various publics, especially when ideology and identity intervene to create social ontologies in opposition to established cultures of knowledge (e.g., the scientific community, intelligentsia, and mainstream media).

Summing it up we find something very familiar:

....conservatives’ unfavorable attitudes are most acute in relation to government funding of science and the use of scientific knowledge to influence social policy. Conservatives thus appear especially averse to regulatory science, defined here as the mutual dependence of organized science and government policy.

It isn't the science we don't like, it is the inherent mix of pseudo with social-engineering policies pumped out day after day by an evergrowing community of statist government established scientific entities (see Elizabeth May for a perfect case study). Some of those 'established government entities' are now becoming former government funded entities and that is what is prompting the outcry from the seemingly 'anti-anti-science' lobby.

It ain't really about the science, it be about the ideological policy.

It isn't stupid to be right, but the reverse may be true if one tends to think otherwise.