1. The Religion of Peace Strikes Again

Comment #295030 by Dispiracist on December 1, 2008 at 5:23 pm

165. Comment #294904 by Nairb on December 1, 2008 at 1:57 pm

If we want to tackle muslim extremism, I think we need to learn from what has worked in the past aainst other such extremists.

World War 2 offers some interesting lessons of history.

The German population may have been highly unified in supporting, if not the Nazis directly, their deadly anti-Semitism of the time. And it took very much more than just invading Germany to end the war in Europe. Some of the fighting continued through to the 1960s. Perhaps not quite as bad as some Japanese soldiers in isolated Pacific Islands, but pretty wacky all the same.

Here is an interesting article on the topic:
http://www.jewishpress.com/page.do/21967/The_Anti-Terror_Campaign_That_Succeeded.html

2. The Religion of Peace Strikes Again

Comment #294842 by Dispiracist on December 1, 2008 at 12:39 pm

68. Comment #294397 by decius on December 1, 2008 at 3:29 am

Stats on bride burnings:

I’ve no idea now. I’ll take your theistic anecdotal hearsay as trumping my first ranked Google search – which on closer inspection I see is over 10 years out of date. Possibly the eradication of dowry murders would be another case of good news being no news. People generally might not be interested to hear that bride burning is history.

It’s interesting that a 10-years out of date article is the top-ranked Google search on the topic. Presumably the idea of burning women alive is a compelling emotional hook, as drives urban myths.

I should have realised that this stuff is continually revved up. Having just watched the ‘Forbidden Lies’ movie (about the Norma Khouri who wrote Forbidden Love – the fraudulent story about honour killing in Syria).

3. The Religion of Peace Strikes Again

Comment #294349 by Dispiracist on December 1, 2008 at 2:11 am

5. Comment #293871 by Evilcor on November 30, 2008 at 10:21 am

the problem is one of incentives, and therefore a structural issue.

Religion might be a useful spark for terrorism, but there is always a government involved somewhere in the background. Either as an indirect perpetrator or as an indirect beneficiary of the aroused emotional affiliation. E.g. If you want to become the most popular political leader ever in your nation’s history (momentarily at least) then just sit back and wait for some appalling tragedy to strike then address the people in a serious, confident, statesman-like manner. The opinion polls will go through the roof.

There is a theory that governments would otherwise be limited to controlling relatively small communities like city states, unable to expand and absorbing neighbouring communities except by stimulating conflict that creates long-term dependency of their subjects on their ruler’s capability to impose peace on all parties. An extortion racket that involves persistent threats and reminders of violence. Religion might play a useful role in facilitating such conflicts, resulting in very large populations population coming under the control of a single ruler – the one most effective at cultivating conflict, but not too effective.

There would be an incentive for governments to make life a misery in surrounding territories, if only to deter their own subjects from absconding to alternative locations presenting more attractive opportunities. The implications are that if most governments control small nations and are too small and militarily weak to eliminate or immiserate neighbouring populations then they can’t deter their subjects from absconding. Maintaining sufficient tax-paying subjects implies allowing life to be relatively tolerable at home. Given that military expansion is off the agenda for the time being, such governments can probably afford to be nice even to their own citizens. It may be periods like this, with many fragmented city states rather than large nations, which gave rise to the cultural advances of ancient Greece and the late middle ages in Europe.

4. The Religion of Peace Strikes Again

Comment #294344 by Dispiracist on December 1, 2008 at 1:57 am

Speaking of statistics, the Mumbai casualties are barely 2 weeks’ worth of bride burnings for India overall.

But this is typical of journalists to focus on the negative perspective. They could equally say the Koran is 47.3% hatred free. Most people will look at anything ambiguous and take from it whatever they want to hear or see. If disaffected, aggressive young men are prevented from reading the Koran then the bad half might be relatively harmless.

The mums in PNG had some insight into this:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/12/01/2434537.htm?section=justin

5. Atheist Foundation of Australia Bus Slogan Rejected!

Comment #291684 by Dispiracist on November 26, 2008 at 3:39 pm

I doubt this would be due to the religious beliefs of APN management. APN, like all the other badly managed media companies, is desperate for revenue. But their commercial risk is that the costs might exceed revenue – given that religious groups may retaliate with vandalism, abuse, and harassment of bus company employees and APN. APN’s insurance contract may even preclude this activity.

The problem here is not with APN, it is with the generally accepted reluctance of law enforcement and courts to enforce property rights and act against intimidation and violence. Presumably based on a misunderstanding of the concept of free-speech, property rights, and religious tolerance.

I am acutely aware of this inversion of law and order priorities at present, as we have aggressive paedophiles openly operating in our area, with several recent abduction attempts. This makes me the one who would be grossly irresponsible in allowing my youngest child to walk home from primary school. (It is already illegal in NSW to leave a parked car unlocked on a public street as it is considered to be aiding criminal activity. Next step will be laws against women and children being left unattended in public.) On the other hand, the top Sydney police story of today is the substantial resources committed to patrolling cinemas with special night vision equipment so police can arrest people recording movies with their mobile phone cameras.

Perhaps a better way through is to underwrite APN’s perceived additional risks so they can’t lose. They could be offered a substantial additional bond payment, which becomes non-refundable if APN provides independently acceptable evidence of harassment costs sufficient to justify police investigation and compensation claims against the perpetrators. This would at least get any consequences into the crime statistics (police are always eager to solve easy crimes – it gets their performance numbers up). It may only have to occur on the first few occasions, once a successful precedent is established there would be less perceived risk for media companies.

6. Why we believe in gods

Comment #291522 by Dispiracist on November 26, 2008 at 1:32 pm

On the by-product issue about language development preceding or following music, a useful source would be the neuroscientist Daniel Levitin.

He is a guitarist and is therefore would be well acquainted with the significance of music and dance both for human and bird sexual selection, especially for picking up birds at gigs.

The idea is that language capability is a by-product that becomes available from the evolutionary-driven sexual display function of increasingly sophisticated audio processing input and output modules. This emphasises that by-products go both ways. They can obviously be useful, and can only ever be harmful as long as the net long-term harm to reproductive success is significantly less than the benefits of the module’s core function.

This music / language link may also have some commection to the fact that guitarists tend to have relatively primitive language skills: They usually can't read music, operate their amp volume knob, and use the word 'man' excessively.

7. Single-Celled Giant Upends Early Evolution

Comment #291485 by Dispiracist on November 26, 2008 at 1:06 pm

53. Comment #290993 by Roger Stanyard on November 26, 2008 at 4:33 am

fossils of large multi-cellular animals from the pre-Cambrian do exist

That’s typical! Another spectacular theoretical breakthrough entirely based on magazine article headlines is shot down in flames. No wonder science is difficult. Even biology could be as easy as economics if only biologists could become as comfortable with ignoring inconvenient facts.

I should have noticed the word ‘poised’, meaning ‘if only, but for contradictory facts’ in the statement ‘poised to revolutionise our understanding of the evolution of complex life on Earth’. I suppose few people would read an article headlined as ‘slightly increasing the range of considerations when interpreting pre-Cambrian fossils.’

8. Single-Celled Giant Upends Early Evolution

Comment #290970 by Dispiracist on November 26, 2008 at 4:11 am

14. Comment #287900 by DamnDirtyApe on November 20, 2008 at 11:31 pm

A lot can happen in 550 million years.

A lot can happen in only a few years.

I was just checking basic biological classifications on Wikipedia to help my son with his end of year science revision, particularly in distinguishing protists and eukaryotes, only to find that biological classification has evolved to the point where I don’t understand it any more – not that I really understood it first time round. I have been overtaken and sidelined by the evolutionary race in biological terminology. Hopefully my offspring are better adapted to this new environment.

As an explanation for the Cambrian explosion, this article clears up a misunderstanding, leaving much less of an anomaly to explain. If there were no large multicellular animals before the Cambrian explosion then it was really just a starting point for large organisms. So Charles Darwin was right: the Cambrian explosion is an artefact of the fossil record. Prior fossils weren’t preserved because there were none to preserve.

This also undermines the idea of the trilobite eye as some kind of trigger for an animal evolutionary arms race. The arms race would have occurred just the same, but instead of being an incredibly improbable innovation, which inexplicably failed to occur for a very long time, the eye becomes more of an inevitable evolutionary development enabling multi-cellular animals to exploit the available information resource (reflected light) to locate threats and opportunities.

It may even explain why plants haven’t evolved eyes – not that anyone’s asking.

9. Interview with Sam Harris

Comment #290919 by Dispiracist on November 26, 2008 at 3:17 am

Someone mentioned SETI.

Which reminds me that there is a related project, though a little mundane in focus:

http://www.totl.net/STI/

10. We can't hide in our labs and leave the talking to Dawkins

Comment #290390 by Dispiracist on November 25, 2008 at 4:47 am

Coincidentally my kids and I have just completed watching the last of the 4 episodes of Marcus du Sautoy’s presentation of The Story of Maths.

It is an excellent production. While the kids would otherwise have preferred to watch The Simpsons my 14 year old enjoyed it and actually found it relevant for his school work. (Which wasn't the point - I'm trying to ensure they find this stuff inherently interesting rather than experiencing lacklustre exposure in school.) Even my 10 year old stayed alert and interested through all 4 episodes. And he’s someone who claims that everything except football is gay.

So I rate du Sautoy as having passed the discerning child test.

11. Why we believe in gods

Comment #290350 by Dispiracist on November 25, 2008 at 3:50 am

I’ve got that Nicholas Wade book ‘Before the Dawn’. This has inspired me to actually read it.

Ignoring the fact that Spielberg wasn’t available as production director, I picked up a possible content error around 13 minutes:

Music cannot originally have been a cultural by-product of language put to rhythm, even if it appears that way today. Evolutionary developments must be incremental and developing spoken language must depend on enhancing an existing ability to discern and to produce vocalisations. This means that song and dance is likely to have preceded language, perhaps for mate selection as occurs in birds. Rhythm sources are more likely to be limb movement – with periods derived from walking, jumping, running, waving arms etc. rather than heart rate. It’s more of a coincidence that the frequency of heart pulses corresponds to the range of limb movement frequency.

Around 34 minutes there’s some discussion of monotheism versus polytheism and that desert religions are more repressive to women etc. Not sure how that fits with Australian aboriginal religion. Being a typical Australian (well a Kiwi actually, which is pretty typical for Australians) I therefore know virtually nothing about Aborigine culture. I've heard they whack their women around, but that isn’t their original cultural outlook. They probably learned that from the European missionaries. Perhaps Australian aboriginal spirituality is an exception to desert environments. Aborigine culture is one of the oldest human cultures and is apparently well adapted to desert conditions rather than being in conflict with geography.

In the Q&A the first commenter mentioned Greek polytheism compared to desert–originated monotheism. I’m not sure that there really is any shift from poly to mono in religious practises from Greek to Roman to Roman Catholic. Zeus was the top god with scores of lesser gods. Pronunciation shifts take Zeus to Deus and Theus and the original lesser gods just become complex hierarchies of angels, demons, and various prophets, disciples, and saints. It remains as polytheistic as ever. Does the same thing apply to Islam? It would make evolutionary sense that any novel religion is a small innovation producing a slightly more infectious mutation of something already in circulation.

I don’t think the polytheism versus monotheism question is relevant to the message. Perhaps best deleted if the theory is inconsistent.

12. Regenerating a Mammoth for $10 Million

Comment #290239 by Dispiracist on November 24, 2008 at 10:22 pm

This would encounter similar objections as sex education, immunisations, and stem cell research.

If animals can be unextincted then people might be less cautious with already endangered species. This will be as outrageous for environmentalists as condoms are for the Vatican.

On the other hand, seeing as our collapsing financial system, the impending nuclear war with Iran, and climate change might take us back to the Stone Age, perhaps it’s a good precaution to re-establish our natural prey. This will give us something to live on until civilisation re-emerges.

13. It came from outer space: Fireball streaks across Canadian Prairie, crashes

Comment #290139 by Dispiracist on November 24, 2008 at 6:09 pm

49. Comment #289662 by InfuriatedSciTeacher on November 24, 2008 at 4:11 am

I should probably be more aware of the paranoia in places targeted for nuclear destruction.

My Dad had a brief experience of this even far away in New Zealand. Before I was born he worked in geophysics and was invited by a journalist to comment on a US atmospheric hydrogen bomb test near Hawaii. Apparently there was no one else with anything interesting to say about it, but he had local data from the magnetic pulse. There was a photo in the local paper, with buildings in Honolulu in the foreground which he recognised and used to establish the altitude and direction. A few quick calculations and he had the altitude, location, timing, and therefore the blast intensity and presumably a few other technical details which could be easily derived. All this ended up being quoted in the paper – with the consequences of some diplomatic fuss about breach of security etc. It was apparently easier for some people to believe he was betraying classified information than that someone might just do the maths. I think he still qualified for a security clearance eventually – but he had to explain himself.

On the meteor I observed – the explosion had a tinge of colour, I don’t remember exactly what. I have mild astigmatism which makes mercury streetlights produce a violet halo – I think it was a similar effect. The light was basically white, but the imperfections of my eyes refracted specific wavelengths. I think the object originated from a comet tail Earth happened to be transiting – so presumably it was mostly ice. It was the most interesting thing that happened that night. Even the aliens I met near the impact crater were unsure of what the object was – but I may have been asleep by that stage.

14. The Religious Support Behind Proposition 8

Comment #290125 by Dispiracist on November 24, 2008 at 5:03 pm

596. Comment #289749 by Steve Zara on November 24, 2008 at 6:51 am

attempting to prove the non-existence of God won't achieve much, I don't think. At least not alone.

You don’t need positive benefits. Just being known as an atheist is sufficient. It provides social permission for other people to let go of uncertain beliefs.

On the positive benefits of secularism: there’s interesting research accumulating on irrationality in behavioural economics, neuro-economics, and various other fields of psychology. This, along with deductive logic, provides solid grounds for rational secular ethics, incorporating that people are inherently subjective, irrational, and frequently mistaken rather than being intentionally evil and sinful. But it might take something along the lines of a religious cult to promote and disperse the message. I think this actually happened in the 1960s with the Ayn Rand cult, though obviously the theory was incomplete and unsuccessful. This stuff has since developed further in a different direction, which I think is worth looking at in light of insights consistent with evolutionary psychology. I feel that someone must be on the brink of integrating the philosophical traditions with recent scientific discoveries.

Simply attacking the concept of God still has value: it smokes out those at a crucial point having lost confidence in their religious beliefs. This can be seen from the link with homophobia and religious evangelism:

I think there was a discussion in an older thread about experiments showing homophobic men as relatively prone to sexual arousal when viewing erotic images of men. The similarity with religion is that evangelical behaviour in cults is sometimes triggered by a major disconfirming experience. The common ingredient is uncertainty, either the homophobe’s sense of uncertainty about their sexual orientation or the cult member’s uncertainty about a crucial belief. The need to resolve uncertainty drives behaviour resulting in public demonstration, similar to bullying behaviour.
This would be consistent with homophobic men’s public concern with male homosexuals and sodomy. They’re less threatened by lesbians who they don’t identify with and who aren’t fully qualified for sodomy.

There’s a similar effect with athletes and their need to prove their worth. There’s more to sports competition than addiction to endorphins, attention seeking behaviour, and legal outlets for aggression and violence. The one thing sport is certainly not about is fair play and good clean fun. In that sense, being a good person has little to do with religious institutions. People are religious because they think they are bad. My former rowing coach incessantly harangued us to develop various male qualities believed to be essential in champions - mental toughness, strength, discipline, confidence, etc. But real people consistently practising these heroic qualities wouldn’t even be involved in amateur sport because they would have little to prove. (Which at least makes competing against seasoned champions slightly less daunting for juniors.)

Public opposition to atheism might inadvertently reveal a similar fear of uncertainty, a sense that atheism is an attractive yet threatening implication of wavering disbelief. Atheism is not necessarily arrived at rationally –one may naturally affiliate and conform to whatever social group one is exposed to. On the other hand, though it seems unlikely, people might be evangelical atheists if they feel religion is potentially threatening, which conversely reveals their uncertainty about their own position.

So an aggressively atheist position might be perceived as an opportunity by uncertain religious evangelists who are driven to seek prospective converts, yet are tentatively curious about atheism. Once such a person is enticed into engagement you will know you are dealing with someone whose belief is wavering. They wouldn’t have an opinion on the topic if they were truly confident. It the old sales wisdom: objections imply interest.

Which implies taking occasional religious posters seriously. (Of course, by the same logic, this post inadvertently reveals my own lack of confidence in behavioural economics and rational, subjective ethics. But I don’t expect to be taken seriously.)

15. The Religious Support Behind Proposition 8

Comment #289703 by Dispiracist on November 24, 2008 at 5:26 am

505. Comment #289637 by Quetzalcoatl on November 24, 2008 at 2:25 am
A lot of this is learned from playground taunting, where being called "gay" is an insult.

Here’s some gay trivia you might find interesting.

Perhaps education has already made a difference with the increasing focus on forms of bullying in schools. I notice that my kids frequently use the word ‘gay’ negatively, but it doesn’t seem to be a personal insult. Gay for them means boring, unexciting, not cool and slightly pathetic. As a parent I am frequently told something I am proposing is gay.

My youngest child is unaware that the word gay once had a homosexual connection. It’s a bit like the word silly, which once meant a religious person who is spiritually enraptured. We now apply the word silly, by association, to the kinds of things that religious people sometimes do when they are spiritually inspired.

So being homosexual could now be considered gay – independently of its meaning of actually being homosexual. With this dual meaning of the word you could have a gay who is also gay. Technically, also applying the original meaning of gay, you could also have a gay gay gay guy. Meaning a man who is superficially happy, though homosexual, and who doesn’t realise they are being uncool and unfashionable.

16. It came from outer space: Fireball streaks across Canadian Prairie, crashes

Comment #289483 by Dispiracist on November 23, 2008 at 7:16 pm

I was fortunate enough to see one of these events 11 years ago looking North from Upper Hutt, New Zealand.

I think I was the only witness. I was driving my baby son around the block in the wee small hours. He had a reflux problem and being driven around in the capsule usually got him back to sleep. The meteor happened so fast that if I hadn’t been already looking in that exact direction I probably would have missed it.

It behaved identical to the YouTube video, similar angle and speed of descent, flaring into an explosion after a few moments, but more colourful than the one in the YouTube video – though that might just be a limitation of the police camera. The one I saw was about half the duration compared to the video, with a terminal explosion fairly high up and no audible sound (at least it wasn’t audible over the sound of a crying baby). The one I saw must have been a tiddler compared to this one.

These things can be a serious safety hazard. Having babies that don’t sleep that is – I fell asleep at the wheel driving to work the next day. (Fortunately I was stopped at a red light at the time.)

It must be awful to live somewhere where something dropping out of the sky sets hearts racing and is immediately compared to being ‘like a missile’. Do they get an unusual number of missiles dropping in on them up there? And what guilty secrets do they have that makes them feel they could be a target?

17. Puncturing the Acupuncture Myth

Comment #288976 by Dispiracist on November 22, 2008 at 11:43 pm

294. Comment #287834 by decius on November 20, 2008 at 5:52 pm

Thanks for repeating the Jared Diamond expose.

I had assumed his economics was flawed (conspicuous by absence), but that his ideas were plausible even though only a partial explanation. I had no idea so many of his key propositions were unjustified.

It reminds me of another popular author I enjoyed many years ago, Eric von Daniken. He got more publicity than real scientists and many scientists were impressed with his ideas, except in their personal field. Eg. The physicists thought that the maths and biology was interesting, as long as you ignore the dodgy physics. Similarly the mathematicians thought the maths was a problem, but were impressed with the geology and physics, etc.

18. Puncturing the Acupuncture Myth

Comment #287810 by Dispiracist on November 20, 2008 at 5:12 pm

236. Comment #286619 by decius on November 19, 2008 at 4:19 am

Well, gullibility has many and varied symptoms, but the general profiles of the gullible tend to coincide.

Not necessarily, if scepticism and gullibility are distinct mental processes associated with the different brain regions.

Individuals would then rate independently on each factor. Scientific people would probably rate above average in both. I think it was one of the great debunkers like James Randi or Martin Gardner who said that, outside their specialties, scientists tend to be more easily fooled by pseudoscientific nonsense than the average person.

The important factor may not be a higher ability to believe what appears to be valid knowledge, but how the flawed information source is deceptively perceived as valid.

If people relied on apparently well-informed sources then it was once reasonable to believe in acupuncture. I have met qualified GPs and physiotherapists who believed acupuncture was an effective medical technology, pending only routine experimental verification in the near future. But that was 15 years ago.

It’s easy to see how things like acupuncture become widely accepted. Sports injuries have always been fertile ground for quack remedies, if only because athletes tend to be young and naive. Competitors sometimes resort to alternative medicine because the optimum treatment of resting to allow damaged tissue to recover appears negative and implies just doing nothing and inactivity, which doesn’t sit well with the athletic imperative of mental toughness, making it happen, and heroically exceeding all limits. With naturally high levels of growth hormone minor stresses recover quickly in younger people. This spontaneous remission gets causally associated with whatever positive treatment was sought.

Sports training used to be riddled with pseudo-scientific myths, like sweating off fat, exercising to work off mild flu (can damage heart muscle) and stretching before training to prevent injury. (Stretching makes little difference to injury rates. On the other hand, warming up apparently reduces injury by synchronising the nervous system and establishing increased awareness of limb position, spatial awareness, and better overall coordination.)

So much for acupuncture. But now I’m curious to know what there is to debunk about Jared Diamond.

19. Puncturing the Acupuncture Myth

Comment #286548 by Dispiracist on November 18, 2008 at 7:47 pm

21. Comment #286284 by j.mills on November 18, 2008 at 12:48 pm
which I feel is a bit unfair as I've only recently gotten round to reading Diamond, and now I'm a twat already. Will you guys please sort out what opinions I should have and then post them here please? Seems like I have to keep thinking all the time! Sheesh.

As another Jared Diamond worshipping twat, I think you should read everything he wrote. If you’re worried about left wing environmental ideology overloading vestigial political incorrection neurons then I recommend as a fortifying supplement the equally comprehensive, but less detailed, Hans-Herman Hoppe lectures at http://mises.org/media.aspx?action=category&ID=66

This probably belongs in some other thread – like the one with 11 million posts I’ll never get to read. But Hoppe is more than a right wing version of Diamond. (He’s not a biologist and isn’t really right or left as such. Dorsal fin might be a more threatening and anatomically correct term.) His unique contribution is to explain how Diamond’s theory explaining Eurasia-centric development of civilisation is not the full story. Hoppe also explains how Diamond’s civilisation collapsing crises have a systematic origin in political processes, with implications for traditional environmental activism.

As for acupuncture, it worked well for me. In normal circumstances I’m around 195cm and 100kg. Like many other deviants from standard human specifications I had chronic back pain for many years. After getting nowhere with GPs and radiographers and then spending all my money on completely ineffective acupuncture treatment I realised that perhaps seeking a cure was the wrong approach. Following another form of alternative medicine, aka first aid – removing the cause - it’s now been 20 years since I trained twice a day for competitive rowing, along with heavy weight training, excessive running and cycling, with inadequate sleep. I also no longer work as a stacking labourer in a concrete block factory.

I’ve never felt better except for the issue I’ve heard about where a patient’s level of scepticism impedes the effectiveness of alternative medicines. I consider myself very sceptical; it’s my primary religion even ahead of atheism. I’ve noticed this placebo-destroying effect of scepticism may even extend to medically proven drugs like alcohol, which no longer seems as potent as when I was an athlete. Similarly, aspirin no longer seems as effective following significant alcohol dosage the previous evening.

20. ELECTION DAY IN THE USA. GO VOTE.

Comment #281065 by Dispiracist on November 9, 2008 at 2:53 pm

1084. Comment #280976 by Roger Stanyard on November 9, 2008 at 4:39 am

... the Chicago school of economics - that efficient capital markets can handle risk. They can't because the underlying theory can't handle uncertainty (which, by definition is not open to probability) and distinguish from risk (which is based on probability theory. The two are basically grouped together as one. It is a fatal flaw as we have seen this year.

I’ve just stumbled across this thread, so I haven’t looked through all 1000 comments. But the above remarks stick out as really nailing the root cause of the financial crisis.

Though obviously economists in Chicago aren’t unique in confusing uncertainty with risk. It would probably help if all economists studied core science and philosophy before even opening an economics text book. The difference between uncertainty and risk is as fundamental as distinguishing between precision and accuracy, or systematic and random errors. Yet even Nobel prize economists have missed this essential fact.

There are plenty of other widespread pseudo-scientific methods and assumptions that prevent many economists from comprehending important things that aren’t visible. (Ironic given that this is the very essence of economic thinking: that critical aspects are often choices that aren’t taken, things that don’t happen, and therefore effects that can’t be easily observed and measured.)

If anyone is interested the book linked below appears to be the best general historical background to the present crisis and appears to offer the most sensible and politically practical banking reform program – which directly follows from identifying the underlying root cause. I’ve recommended it to others. I’m very interested to hear if there is anything else around that’s better.

http://mises.org/books/desoto.pdf

21. Cassini

Comment #279951 by Dispiracist on November 6, 2008 at 5:08 pm

For youse guys afflicted with pedantic linguism, relief can be found in John McWhorter’s audio lectures for The Teaching Company: “The Story of Language”.

You’ll also find it interesting from the perspective of applied evolutionary theory and understanding human development and the global spread of civilisation. Having read McWhorter I am now comfortable in using this information to annoy my kids. Like correcting their inappropriate use of abandoned and virtually extinct expressions. Eg. ‘going to’ when ‘gonna’ is the prevailing word, and the need to not never miss no opportunities to emphasise by multiple negatives.

There’s a time to flow with the changes and a time for precision in language. You need to be aware of the inevitable rapid flow of language to even notice when precision is prudent. The Mars Climate Orbiter was effectively destroyed by the shared assumption that language is static and universal.

22. Paddy Power offers odds of 4-1 that God exists

Comment #279435 by Dispiracist on November 6, 2008 at 3:45 am

You could potentially make some money on this, less legal fees.

The real risk for the bookie is if an aggrieved punter brings a lawsuit. Being a commercial dispute the case would be decided on the balance of probabilities rather than reasonable doubt. I don’t know if they use juries of the clueless on commercial disputes in the UK, but it wouldn’t matter as there’s usually no shortage of dodgy judges.

They could use the same judge who decided in favour of the insured in the case of an alien abduction insurer refusing to pay out. Alternatively, the judge who found in favour of the plagiarism suit brought by the copyright holders of John Cage’s 4’33’’ might still be available.

Then there’s always Sharia law courts as a backup. But it would probably settle out of court anyway, given the immense risk of legal costs being randomly awarded. Like the famous MacLibel case – the party with nothing to lose effectively wins, regardless of the official judicial outcome.

23. Religion: A Tool to Keep the Parasites Away?

Comment #279129 by Dispiracist on November 5, 2008 at 3:08 pm

I can’t remember what I wrote last time this came up. But what I should’ve said was that science involves more than just mere correlation and socio-biology is criticised for more than just biological determinism.

There could be any number of evolutionary psychological explanations for these correlations, but there might be no need for more complex theories when it would be simpler to just correlate both data sets (parasite and religious diversity and their impact) against poverty.

Other primates don’t seem to be dependent on religion as a mechanism of social segregation. Everything that distinguishes humans from other primates: the brain function to accommodate complex language, morality, and to think and plan creatively, all indicates cooperative social aggregation. If disease is an inevitable consequence of aggregation then either its benefits must greatly outweigh the disadvantages, or there are other mitigating innovations. (Like hygiene, cooking food, waste management, acquired immunity, and air conditioning.)

Also, it sounds plausible that warmer locales harbour more infectious disease but reality isn’t as simple as that. You only have to contemplate Jared Diamond’s description of how European explorers and colonists wiped out indigenous populations via microorganisms introduced from cooler locales. These microbes didn’t suddenly become more malignant just because the air temperature or humidity was higher. Similarly the microbes European explorers brought back from new worlds didn’t cause the damage they did because of climate issues.

24. Hitchens Debates Rabbi Wolpe on God

Comment #279092 by Dispiracist on November 5, 2008 at 2:28 pm

Unrelated to this linked article, Hitchens appeared yesterday early evening as a commentator on an Australian TV news show about the US election outcome.

He must carry considerable credibility as a guest commentator, however his value to the TV network in conferring his credibility to an inept TV show conflicted with the unwillingness of the host to facilitate his opinions – which were tarnished as being undesirably analytical, rational, and inappropriate for this time of celebration.

The impression I got was that he was invited to appear and offer his opinions, and then got trashed because he was daring to offer his opinions, rather than merely bask in the glory of this historic occasion – as the guest commentators complied with.

About the only point he got through, by talking over the host who was continually interrupting, was that people are getting cause and effect confused. Obama’s election victory, contrary to popular journalist opinion, logically cannot cause improvement in the civil rights of blacks – his victory is a consequence of previous improvements in human rights for American blacks.

More importantly he also pointed out that the outcome of promises made by both candidates is that the US engaging in war against Iran is inevitable, creating a very high risk, until US policy becomes clear, that either Iran or Israel will realise they cannot afford to fail to exploit any brief period of uncertainty. (Likely to be drawn out given the global depression.)

25. Hitchens Debates Rabbi Wolpe on God

Comment #279062 by Dispiracist on November 5, 2008 at 1:57 pm

If the summary of the Rabbi Wolpe’s points is accurate, then the real issues seem to be:

1. Social control - who does the condemning of immoral behaviour?
2. Confusion about basic economics and morality – particularly over the value other humans represent to each other, regardless of whether they are closely or distantly related, strangers or acquaintances.

That is: who is in a position to actually condemn, not just express moral outrage, but to do something about it – either to restore justice or to at least estimate the cause and the harm and to attempt to prevent further harm.
As Hitchen’s points out – societies which don’t do this don’t tend to get very far.

Aside from the psychological drivers of irrational belief, the intellectual need and rationalisation for the concept of a supernatural arbiter might be based on people’s unwillingness to trust themselves or their neighbours or any human authority’s competence and extent of knowledge and capability to learn the true situation. This might stem from a fundamental incomprehension of the nature of science and the evolutionary mechanisms of error correction and knowledge growth over time.

Rabbi Wolpe on the economic and moral issues:

“If there is in fact nothing other than our accidental appearance here, and it favors my group that your group be destroyed, what possible countervailing principle would persuade me otherwise?” Rabbi Wolpe asked.

This is a particularly revealing question which implies religion as the solution to a nonexistent problem. Aside from the intractable problem of defining the referent group, it also begs the question as to exactly how it might favour anyone or any group that some other person or group be destroyed?
If other people are criminal attackers then the issue is the process of social control and justice. If not then it leads to logical contradictions like the secret oriental art of self-defence as outlined by Mad magazine’s feature on Kung-Fu movies of the 1970’s: Incredible fighting abilities are a form of worship of the pursuit of excellence in self defence. Attack is the best form of defence, and surprise is the best form of attack. The most excellent form of surprise is to attack someone before it even occurs to them that they represent any kind of threat. The more innocent and unsuspecting the victim, the more surprised they will be.

Hitchen’s version of the best argument against his own position (presumably that humans evolved just like other animals):

“Mr. Hitchens began his response by saying, “I have a great difficulty with most people I meet in even believing that they’re intelligent primates.”

This line will become a future classic, if it isn’t already:

Shepherds don’t look after sheep because they love them — although I do think some shepherds like their sheep too much. They look after their sheep so they can, first, fleece them and second, turn them into meat. That’s much more like the priesthood as I know it.

26. Why We Believe

Comment #275085 by Dispiracist on October 30, 2008 at 6:44 pm

16. Comment #274503 by nalfeshnee on October 30, 2008 at 6:03 am

so self-effacing that they would rather have us believe they are someone else

I’ve always suspected that’s why many people get involved with acting. Many successful actors appear to have psychological problems, but if that’s the driver of their career choice then it’s a wonder than there’s any who are relatively sane.

And it isn’t limited just to the thespian tradition, I’ve always suspected that many of the CEOs and Boards of Directors in companies (unsuccessful) that I’ve worked for were really actors – just working off someone else’s script and looking the part.

It goes beyond the communist tradition of expressing extreme self criticism, which merely eliminates the individual. Reincarnation goes even further by replacing them with something else. All remnants of the memory of the lost individual are obliterated by the idea of reincarnation.

I’d be interested to hear if anyone knows which famous historical characters are now the most popular reincarnation delusions. The cliché from comedy shows always used to be Emperor Napoleon, with lunatic asylums swamped by hundreds of slightly non-standard versions of all shapes and sizes, like an Elvis impersonation convention.

27. Why We Believe

Comment #274332 by Dispiracist on October 30, 2008 at 1:50 am

The resemblances here are uncanny. Not only does my brother live in Wagga Wagga, I know someone named Tichbon and I am clearly subnormal in not believing in reincarnation. This obviously means something important - all I have to do now is come up with some bizarre connection that explains these incredible coincidences.
Ideally something that boosts my sense of superiority.

My initial preference is that I’m Jimi Hendrix reincarnated. But I’ll have to learn to play guitar to be sure.

28. Somalia: Rape Victim Executed

Comment #274239 by Dispiracist on October 29, 2008 at 7:22 pm

Fortunately for Western women you can't bury them up to the neck in Astroturf. And the clay courts at Wimbledon are too hard to dig. So the specified Sharia punishments cannot be performed in the venues available places like London.

But there is perverse logic to these stories.
It’s easy to understand how a rape victim can be regarded as an adulterer. It’s nothing unique to Islam. All societies tend to regard rape victims as sluts. The penalties for being accused as a female adulterer are severe everywhere, regardless of legal logic, evidence, or culture. There must be some evolutionary psychology explanation – I have no idea what it is but the situation is such an obvious strategy that it is continually reinvented by rapists.

Rape victims often endure further humiliation and bullying via malicious smear campaigns initiated by the rapist and their friends and family. This was a major problem connected with the Islamic rape squads operating in Sydney for many years. The logic is that rapists tend to be opportunist criminals living in close proximity to their victims. Malicious rumours serve multiple purposes: it undermines the credibility of the victim in possible court proceedings, (this is the kind of sophisticated advice available by paying for very expensive and successful defence attorneys who’ve obtained the highest legal credentials from the very best legal schools), but most importantly it drives out the victim, who is forced to move away to avoid daily abuse from neighbours and former acquaintances – normally the abuse and sneering is dished out by other women who pickup on the wild rumours.

Driving out the victim via a smear campaign minimises the likelihood of the victim proceeding with a police complaint or inevitably coming into contact with, and recognising, her attacker.
Typical rapists, like most opportunistic criminals, don’t have very much in the way of initiative or resources, and tend to be stuck at home living with their mums. They tend to lack the capability of moving away to avoid recognition by the victim who lives in the vicinity. So their next best option is to exile the victim. It must be a very successful strategy, because most rape charges do not proceed to trial after it becomes clear that the defence strategy can’t argue the physical evidence. This implies they must claim consent and aggressively undermine the victim as a vexatious complainant. (The victim is usually acutely aware by this stage that people are saying things about her and her status and credibility in her community has collapsed.)

Even if the victim initially resists ostracism and instead toughs out the abuse and pursues a criminal complaint the victim will still have to leave town eventually, because the rumour damage cannot be undone. The reason is that those who assist in perpetrating malicious rumours initiated by the rapists fall prey to the same psychological mechanisms that entrench religious beliefs. They can therefore no longer regard the victim as entirely innocent, even if the rapist is convicted.

You can see how misery and damage spreads throughout a community by a single rape. Not only are enemies created between those directly involved, but the victim also becomes the enemy of many other women in the community. And this is normal even for Western communities. It must be very much worse in a culture where the status of females is barely equivalent to livestock.

In a sense the Somali rape victim is really being executed because she is an enemy, not only because she was raped or is an adulterer. There is no discrimination under Islam – all enemies are executed or enslaved. She was already enslaved, which leaves only 1 remaining option.

In Western cultures rape victims are no longer executed, but they are still punished in various ways, including a lifetime of anxiety – not necessarily in fear of potential rapists, but also in fear of how readily and eagerly other women may turn on her as a target of hatred and contempt. It’s like witch trials. It’s only a small step for them to execute themselves.

29. Sarah Palin's War on Science

Comment #273671 by Dispiracist on October 29, 2008 at 5:22 am

70. Comment #273621 by Laurie Fraser on October 29, 2008 at 2:09 am

Communism might the wrong terminology, especially given the track record of whatever it is that those inflicting it believed was communism.

Communism is just an extreme form of democracy. The only form of democracy that can be ethically justified (essential for long-term sustainability) is at the other end of the spectrum where voting only concerns the use of aggregated resources willingly contributed by each participant - more like company law than party politics.

People who are unwilling or unable to conform to community norms (including non-coercive tax obligations) might be much less of problem than you’d think – as long as transparency and easy access to information occurs. There was an example in the news a couple of days ago, ironically involving experiments in motivating voter turnout in elections. I don’t recall the source, but the experiment involved polling people to ask whether they intended to vote in the upcoming election. There were things like glossy brochures and telemarketing campaigns involving psychological tactics of obtaining an explicit personal commitment – which increased compliance with voting obligations.

But the most effective technique was found to be to be a circular announcing that each person’s street had been selected to participate in a long-term survey of citizens’ voting attendance, enclosed with a printout of electoral office data disclosing previous voter attendance of all the registered voters in the immediate neighbourhood. The implications for each person studied were that their neighbours were receiving exactly the same disclosure. And that the data from the current election round would be in the general mail out in future surveys. The implied message wasn’t that “big brother is watching you”, it was more like “now that your neighbours know who you are, how will they feel about your demonstrated community orientation?”

This idea fits with the theory that people probably wouldn’t donate blood if they didn’t have an opportunity to let others know about it. I think that’s why they put a bandage on your arm – overkill for the size of the wound and the likelihood of bleeding. The real reason for the bandage is so that people can ask you about it, which provides an opportunity to disclose your social heroism.

Something like this might also be another approach:
http://politicalgraveyard.com/trouble/tax-evasion.html

30. Sarah Palin's War on Science

Comment #273618 by Dispiracist on October 29, 2008 at 1:59 am

40. Comment #273494 by Laurie Fraser on October 28, 2008 at 7:27 pm

taxation is one of the great goods of civilisation

Just a minor correction there: taxation itself is cannot be a good.

If anything the loss of any money for any reason can only ever be a bad thing for a typical family. (Though at least tax is more honest than sale of monopoly privileges and inflation wealth transfer via the banking system – classic cases of taxation without representation.)

What would be a real good is a community pooling of substantial resources to achieve good things. You’d need to look very carefully at exactly what things taxes are applied to before determining whether or not they are really good, and specifically good for who. Generally there is a good reason why people might object to contributing taxes, if they were ever able to find out exactly how their coerced ‘investment’ had been applied. The only known way of being sure the outcomes are worth having is if the expenditure is observable and people willingly contribute and demonstrate their agreement by their actions in continuing their contributions. Government affairs are typically shrouded in secrecy and tax is by definition not a willing contribution.

31. Sarah Palin's War on Science

Comment #273612 by Dispiracist on October 29, 2008 at 1:43 am

To all you Americans about to be inflicted with yet more politicians you deserve:

What you should do is to get organised and secede by splitting the empire into independent states. No empire = no emperor.

If it is good enough for the socialist USSR, then it should also make sense for the socialist USA. (But don’t stuff it up like the last time – try and keep focussed on the real objective and don’t get distracted again by racial issues.)

It might be a good idea to dismantle all the nukes first; otherwise folks like the Alaskans will want their fair share to play with.

For those who get stuck with Palin as emperor of Alaska - you can always move elsewhere.

32. May your god go with you

Comment #273089 by Dispiracist on October 28, 2008 at 5:39 am

I don’t know much about psychology but I thought that the mechanism of irrational belief was already reasonably well understood by psychologists. There’s an element of cost-benefit trade-off, but it is a bit more subtle than this book seems to indicate (at least from the reviewer’s perspective).

Belief is basically the same process for learning anything, though in the case of religion is triggered by the mind’s irresistible social need to demonstrate consistency with a publically committed position.

The reviewer is right: the details of the belief are more or less irrelevant to the belief learning process. So challenging the details based on logic will generally miss the mark. Certain beliefs are more or less likely to be initially acceptable or to attract commitment and to be easily transmissible. And false beliefs can become more deeply entrenched than true beliefs, because false beliefs are more readily prone to disconfirmation by reality – disconfirmation is required to trigger an emotionally intense re-justification process which, in the absence of better explanations, creates ideal conditions for deep learning of the initial false belief. Poverty also is likely to increase the frequency of disconfirmations in connection with religious ideas like God’s benign interference in personal affairs.

General education would provide some immunity, though intelligence itself may not. (If anything, intelligent people might be more creative in rationalising and therefore entrenching their false beliefs.) This consistency effect is extremely powerful, as long as it remains invisible and unacknowledged. Smart people who don’t know very much about politics or economics, yet have vociferous public opinions on these topics, are almost certain to have worked themselves intractably into the grip of attractive but false beliefs, despite being atheist or valuing clear thinking.

Being a psychologist, the author is probably aware of this. Especially given that Robert Cialdini, who produced the most popular layman’s books summarising research on mind control, claims to be the most frequently cited psychologist. So perhaps she’s come up with some important additional aspect.

Cialdini’s book “Influence: Science and Practice” doesn’t mention mainstream religion. So it might be overlooked in discussions involving religious belief. But he uses a few examples from cults. (His books might otherwise be less popular as undergraduate texts if they annoyed too many people.) Cialdini should be compulsory reading for anyone interested in belief.

He’s just written another popular book on practical applications of this area of research – though I don’t know anything about it.

33. Children need to be sprinkled with fairy dust

Comment #272807 by Dispiracist on October 27, 2008 at 8:37 pm

26. Comment #272101 by Chris Davis on October 27, 2008 at 1:58 am

Kids can do fantasy without help. When I was approximately 0, I learned - probably from my scientist mum - that diamonds were formed by pressure on coal. So I put a lump outside and placed a brick on it.

That reminds me of my own early experiments in aviation. My parents always warned me about jumping off the roof with an umbrella. (Apparently Mary Poppins is still sought by police.) So I did something more creative. I attached a small crane to a box, stood in the box and hooked the box up to the crane and proceeded to winch myself afloat in the air. The crane just bent and snapped leaving me still on the ground with nothing but the discovery of a new law of physics: that whatever you try to do, something opposite will happen to prevent it from working.

There’s an element of truth in the article above. I think it would be very unusual to find a 9 year old that had only just sussed the situation with Santa. But, like the 9 year old boy, I’d be more concerned about the mental state of his father who thinks he can keep the Santa myth alive beyond school age.

On the topic of serious students of child development:

There’s a very good book I just read: A Mind at a Time by Mel Levine. Ostensibly about learning difficulties in children, but might equally be considered to be about identifying and addressing exceptional learning capabilities involving other unimpaired areas of mental capability.

Levine identifies imagination as just one of very many important aspects of mental development. Every child is different and there are now ways of identifying and estimating how each important aspect is developing, recognising that there are no normal people. Some aspects will be super developed, and others will remain forever undeveloped. Seeing as kids vary so much among the various capabilities: like spatial processing, listening, concentrating, verbal expression, social interaction, and different aspects of memory, it would be a mistake to think that all children need this or that. Including imagination stretching material, or ‘ dull science stuff’.

I think I recall suffering through seemingly endless puppet shows, nursery rhymes, and fairy stories as a young school child in the late 1960s. The idea was presumably that this kind of thing stimulated children’s imagination, some kind of all pervasive defect in children needing rectification along the lines of the school milk program. But the things that young, female, scientifically illiterate, Marxist, hippie, teaching college graduates with extreme maths anxiety regarded as imaginative could only ever have been utterly irrelevant to a 5-year old boy.

All I ever learned was how to tune out in class. That might be what really develops kids’ imagination – boring them into having to think for themselves. In that sense fairy stories really can stimulate kids’ imagination.

34. Dare we stand up for Muslim women?

Comment #272752 by Dispiracist on October 27, 2008 at 7:08 pm

28. Comment #269770 by Border Collie on October 23, 2008 at 10:03 am

we, as overly tolerant, oh-so-politically-correct multiculturalists and or cultural relativists are complicit in the abuse and deaths of these women. I wonder what the lady who had her face eaten away by acid thinks about our self-righteous, hands-off attitudes. I'm going to start researching to find a way to help.

I’m heartened by your public commitment to start researching a way to help.

I assume you’re interested in the bigger issues, rather than addressing specific injustices the media blunders into. Small, well-meaning interventions often cause net harm and aggravate or shift the real problem. Eg. The muliti-billion dollar ransoms for hostages between East and West Germany which delayed re-integration, the hand amputations in Sierra Leone which attract foreign aid for subsequent appropriation, the grain aid shipments to Somalia which destroyed the local agricultural market, and campaigns supporting prisoners of conscience which incentivise a take no prisoners approach.

Do you have a specific research direction in mind?

35. Afghan student gets 20 years instead of death for blasphemy

Comment #269502 by Dispiracist on October 23, 2008 at 4:43 am

I’ve just realised that it might now be illegal for Australian residents to advocate support for whatever it is that the Australian military is currently engaging against in combat operations. Technically the Australian government is supporting the Afghan government in fighting whoever they happen to be opposing from time to time. The Afghan government is apparently opposing people like Parwez Kambakhsh, among others, so technically he must also therefore be an enemy of the Australian government and military. It is probably borderline un-Australian to have any sympathy for him.

36. Afghan student gets 20 years instead of death for blasphemy

Comment #269498 by Dispiracist on October 23, 2008 at 4:28 am

It’s interesting to read about what our boys (The Australian SAS and infantry) are over there fighting to defend. They might not personally agree with the Afghan government’s policies of suppressing of free speech, oppression of women, and torture and execution of innocent reporters, but they will defend to the death their right to do so.

On other the other hand, the Aussie soldiers keep getting stick for fatally peace-keeping too many non-Taliban Afghan politicians, police, and soldiers in friendly fire incidents. Perhaps there’s more to it than gets reported.

At least they are trying to blend in with local culture to win their hearts and minds. It’s been revealed in parliament that some local Afghan politician’s family recently received an undisclosed amount in a traditional honour payment after he was routinely peace-kept by the Australian infantry.

37. 'I have never been happier' says the man who won gold but lost God

Comment #269252 by Dispiracist on October 22, 2008 at 7:12 pm

19. Comment #268375 by vijaykrishnan on October 21, 2008 at 6:54 pm

a disproportionate amount of wealth, jobs etc. are created by overconfident entrepreneurs who in their minds downplay the possibility of failure, rather than by folks who accurately evaluate risks and decide that they want to startup despite a 90% chance of failure.

Sorry, I haven’t read your other blog post.

But I have a couple of comments on this one:

The real probability of success and of failure are just inverses of each other. There is an element of framing bias, but I think it would be unlikely that irrational religious belief adds to those natural psychological biases. Because these biases are already very strong in non-believers.

The stats on new venture failures might be impossible to determine. There’s a common misconception that most new business fail fairly quickly, but there are reasons to believe this is incorrect. (Project completion, purpose served, amalgamation or acquisition by other projects.) The reason for genuine entrepreneurial failure may be more to do with the timing of the venture’s establishment or expansion in the business cycle.

Entrepreneurs who establish new ventures are using real money, including their own time and resources, and they don’t just do it based on gut feeling or unjustified hopes and dreams. They are not overconfident because they, or someone they trust, has normally done the numbers based on the best information reasonably obtainable. If anything many entrepreneurs might miss opportunities because they are too conservative.

What often does them in, despite careful plans, is activity in the overall banking system - something they cannot estimate or forecast. So the actual chance of failure, for economic reasons out of their control, will vary considerably over the business cycle. Theory indicates that most wealth and jobs would be created by those who do accurately evaluate risks. The complexity of the real world means it may not be possible to demonstrate this – so the theory is all we have to work with.

On the performance of athletes:

In most top sports competitors are all pretty much similar physically and mentally, they take pretty much the same performance enhancements and screening agents, and undergo similar training and coaching. At a very high level the difference between these athletes basically comes down to luck. Which boils down to consistency, in working very hard to limit the range of performance over which luck has an impact.

The positive mental attitude is not the motivation. It is just an effective mental tool for suppressing doubts to avoid critical and analytical thoughts which might otherwise inject a degree of variability to performance. Athletes don’t necessarily have to really believe they are the best or that god is helping them, just to imagine they are and think as if they were. But they don’t get to be the best by trying really hard to fool themselves into it.

Athletic performance is no different to other forms of entrepreneurial endeavour. A lot of rational planning goes into it. As with most things, the actual visible performance is just the tip of the iceberg.

38. A 'values' voter speaks her mind on Obama

Comment #267746 by Dispiracist on October 21, 2008 at 3:42 am

48. Comment #267309 by Bonzai on October 20, 2008 at 12:22 pm

Oh, really? A vote by morons affects everyone else's life, not just their own.

That is exactly the point about socialism: everyone's life is affected, despite their preference, whether or not they are aware of the impact. It isn't the morons that do this affecting, they just do the voting. They present easy targets for manipulators who lack normal human scruples. But it is only ever socialists who get voted for. Anyone seeking majority votes to acquire the appearance of legitimacy and attain coercive authority over others can only ever be some kind of unscrupulous socialist. (Or some variant from the zoo of socialism, like communists, conservatives, fascists, Marxists, and social democrats etc.) They wouldn't even be up for election if they didn't believe they know better than anyone else.

So maybe we are just being cruel to ridicule this woman. She is one of the victims.

People wouldn't make sick pirate jokes about someone just because they have a wooden leg. Perhaps we should have sympathy for people who behave as if they have wood chips in part of their brain.

At least she accepts basic scientific principles of biological inheritance and infection, which is better than many. Though atheism may not necessarily be inherited from the maternal parent, it might at least be contagious - like obesity.

The real question is between whether there is something wrong with this woman, who is entitled to vote and whose vote makes a difference, or whether there is something much more wrong with democracy; a system which allows stupid women to vote as a mechanism of conferring legitimacy on former bank directors and their associates who think they should benefit at the expense of the rest of us.

I'd be happy if this woman was not able to vote for government elections, but only if no one at all can vote.

My vote is that we get rid of democracy (and not replace it with anything else).

56. Comment #267343 by al-rawandi on October 20, 2008 at 1:06 pm

Democracy isn't perfect, just like capitalism isn't perfect. But they are the best systems we have and have been proven to be such.

Al-rawandi

That isn't quite correct. Democracy has actually been proven to be very much not the best system we have. (Assume the best theory of democracy is Popper's. In demolishing proportional representation, Popper established that democracy is not about selecting rulers but is instead about dismissing unpopular governments without bloodshed. PR remains discredited, but Popper's argument in favour of regular coercive democracy has been superseded.)

Establishing a broad voting franchise only has the purpose of conferring the appearance of legitimacy. This explains why even Robert Mugabe bothers to hold elections without any opposition candidates. The appearance of legitimacy is extremely convincing and increases satisfaction with, confidence in, and tolerance of evil politicians. But even Hitler was legitimate by that standard. History, and economic theory, demonstrates that democracy is fundamentally incompatible with personal freedom, private property, and free markets.

And as for capitalism, in theory it's been proven to be the best system. Like Western civilisation, capitalism would be a very good idea. I'm still waiting for it to be implemented anywhere so this can be demonstrated.

39. Why Evolution is True

Comment #264166 by Dispiracist on October 13, 2008 at 7:56 pm

Books like this are very important because evolution and natural selection is so widely relevant and you obviously can't leave education in the hands of the professional experts.

Not only do creationists lie faster than people can rebut them, but prospective believers in all kinds of crap are born and mature faster than they can be educated and enabled to think independently and critically about everything important. There is so much competing crap around that the critical ideas need to be packaged and presented very efficiently and effectively.

I see this in my own kids already. They're not quite up to speed to take on much until they're about 10 or 11. Then you've only got a few short years before anything they could learn directly from parents is considered intrinsically worthless. Basic books are the only hope.


One day I hope to see similar productions from credible authors in the field of Economics.

Perhaps something like: "The Money Delusion" and "Why Banking is Not True".

Unfortunately we'll we waiting a long time considering that the equivalents of biological creationists are routinely awarded Nobel prizes in economics.

40. 'Space elevator' would take humans into orbit

Comment #260169 by Dispiracist on October 4, 2008 at 7:57 pm

The real problem with the space elevator will not be limited to composing sufficient elevator music. There are further issues with erecting the space crane to assemble the elevator. Union rates for crane operators are based on height. So the crane operator's salary might exceed the available funds that exist on the entire planet.

Plus there might be issues with fire regulations governing the use of the emergency stairs. It's bad enough already in low rise car parks. And the accumulated urine in the corners of the fire stairs over hundreds of thousands of flights could accumulate to produce dangerously toxic and explosive fumes.

The last time anyone tried this there was some difficulty.

It was said at the time that if the design failed the resulting catastrophe could devastate the Earth with the potential to extinguish intelligent dinosaur life forever. It would be anybody's guess as to what form of repulsive and inferior creatures might eventual evolve in their absence.

41. Why I left Young-earth Creationism

Comment #259596 by Dispiracist on October 3, 2008 at 3:38 pm

The creationism appears to have been successful in that he has used his intellect to reprocess and entrench his core religious beliefs. So it might actually be harder for him to now abandon religion.

His story is like a slow motion version of Robert Cialdini's discussion about customers who get a bad deal tend to be very much more satisfied with their product and supplier than customers who got a genuinely good deal.

The steps are:

1. The initial unsustainable proposition is accepted by the target for rational social reasons: authority, similarity, social proof, scarcity.

2. The target (inadvertently or by manipulation) demonstrates a public commitment to the proposition - which sets up the rational consistency-seeking mechanism.

3. The unsustainable proposition later collides with the disconfirming evidence of reality.

4. The target experiences emotionally-driven mental activity to defend the proposition by acquiring replacement justifications.

The sooner the initial proposition is disconfirmed, the sooner the target seeks to acquire more solid foundations (less easily disconfirmed) to maintain the commitment. It is this further creative and imaginative mental processing which lays down the core elements of belief.

A critical aspect is that the initial proposition must appear acceptable but actually be unsustainable; otherwise the essential deeply emotional and creative post-processing stage of learning is not triggered.

The implications are that scientific knowledge which is true or removed from everyday experience has little chance of being disconfirmed and so can't trigger the processes by which irrational beliefs accumulate adherents. Which means that religions can only work when adherents are exposed to ideas which are semi flawed: good enough to be still partly useful but bad enough to collide with reality reasonably quickly.

This indicates that various popular non-religious movements like Marxism, social democracy, Keynesian economics, conservatism, central banking, and aspects of libertarianism would also depend on similar processes to religious belief.

42. Earliest reference describes Christ as 'magician'

Comment #258351 by Dispiracist on October 1, 2008 at 10:06 pm

This has to be some kind of practical joke.

The shape of the 'bowl' looks suspiciously similar to what previous generations knew as chamber pots. Chamber pots are commonly inscribed with witty remarks.

This one probably translates to something more mundane like 'dia rho eia gastro enteritis' or 'do not eat, contains toxic material'

There is an ancient ritual, long forgotten in our modern era of flush toilets and metropolitan sewerage systems. This involves scrutinising one's output for evidence of future bad news. Physicians could diagnose some basic medical problems this way. It could easily be misinterpreted as a soothsaying ritual.

43. Earliest reference describes Christ as 'magician'

Comment #258279 by Dispiracist on October 1, 2008 at 5:57 pm

8teist

The sad thing with the bible discovery link is that these folks probably aren't even religiously motivated. I think you have to be from NZ to truly appreciate local archaeology. Having been settled in the 14th century there is a desperate shortage of anything that could be interpreted as historically interesting.

At least they didn't just make up the story - surely they couldn't have!

44. Mathematics and faith explain altruism

Comment #256130 by Dispiracist on September 28, 2008 at 7:10 pm

Obecalp: not sure if anyone's responded already:

27. Comment #255384 by Obecalp on September 27, 2008 at 12:20 pm

Argh, comment edited: How on earth do you guys quote, post pictures etc?!?!

When you log in to enter a comment there is an extra link to guidelines that tells you how.

There's a time limit for entries. So if you are a slow typist or touch type way too much drivel you can format remarks offline and paste them. In theory that should give you a better opportunity to edit for readability. In practise it has other disadvantages. MS word has some blog functionality which is supposed to make all this easier. I have no idea how or if it works.

You can directly link a URL, or a picture. There are special websites around to which you can upload pics and diagrams and then link them dynamically into blog posts. Hardly anyone bothers, but they say a pic is worth 1000 words so it should be worth doing.

The other silly pictures are just avatars for amusement only. You can upload them via the profile section somewhere on the site. You can make an animated gif of a movie sequence by downloading video format conversion freeware known as 'Super'. (You need to use whatever handy video software you've already got to snip yourself a short section of DVD movie etc, so when Super converts it to animated gif it will be less than this site's size limit for avatars. You may also need to crop the video or specify the resulting image size to suit the dimension limits.)

45. Ministers to Defy I.R.S. by Endorsing Candidates

Comment #255951 by Dispiracist on September 28, 2008 at 3:45 pm

Taxation is fundamental to understanding the persistence of religion in the age of science.

A good (and possibly only) book on the topic is "For Good and Evil. The Impact of Taxes on the Course of Civilisation" Charles Adams.

I think it's out of print but used copies can be stolen to order from any US library via Amazon.com
According to Adams virtually every significant event in history has an under-appreciated tax story, which generally provides a deeper explanation than the conventional understanding. It would be very interesting to people interested in religion, with or without economics knowledge and regardless of whether anyone would agree or disagree with the author's personal preference for lower taxes.

There is an mp3 audio seminar covering some of this material, again on my other favourite website at:

http://mises.org/media.aspx?action=category&ID=67

Vested interests can go to extreme lengths to justify tax privileges, perhaps even claiming belief in magic and recruiting hordes of followers. Some notable examples were the American Revolution and the American Civil War. Even Jesus was a born in unusual tax avoidance circumstances. Many people became Islamic for tax purposes.

Rulers cannot tax themselves. That's the basis of tax exemption. The assumption is that religious institutions are government. Historically the dominant religions in most communities really were the government. It has little to do with morality, charity, or non-profit structure.
This also explains much of socialism. Sovereign entities and agencies cannot meaningfully pay real tax. That's why many of the British Commonwealth nations like Australia and New Zealand became as economically socialist as the Soviet Union. Their public sector activities grew to dominate the economy to a greater extent than Marx considered theoretically possible, even after a communist revolution. This situation was not driven directly by ideology. As for religion, ideology plays a role more oriented to deterring criticism and opposition.

This growth occurred naturally from inherent differential taxation as government operations tended to crowd out otherwise competing private sector enterprise. Contributing factors were broader than just income, payroll, and profit tax and included things like customs duties, various regulatory exemptions, and their risk-free status attracting lower cost finance. Government operations do not usually generate accounting profit. Instead their success becomes growth in size, scope, and employee numbers - which further contributes to crowding out private enterprise.

Historically this income tax differential is a recent phenomenon resulting from widespread private incomes coming into existence with the industrial revolution. You could say the prior to industrialisation most ordinary people didn't have anything worth stealing. Farm workers consumed much of their own produce and monetary incomes weren't generally something that governments had access to taxing historically.
General income tax became relevant once industrial workforce incomes became significant. And even then income tax was only brought in as a temporary war measure.

46. Pope: Religion has a place in politics

Comment #254684 by Dispiracist on September 26, 2008 at 5:14 am

23. Comment #254265 by Pony on September 25, 2008 at 1:51 pm
PaulJ, you need to put that in perspective. That's 67 healings out of 900 MILLION pilgrims, not just 150 years.

If these stats are correct then it is poor evidence of miraculous healing, but it is conclusive evidence of the miraculous infliction of disease and disability.
The reason is that of any group of 900 million people, you'd expect more than 67 of them to experience a spontaneous remission on any particular randomly selected day in their lives. If only because a small number are mistaken about being ill in the first place.

48. Comment #254568 by JemyM on September 26, 2008 at 12:33 am

Democracies must begin to recognize religions as ideologies.

Democracy is itself a destructive ideology, and many religions don't recognise democracy as legitimate. But you don't hear much religious opposition to democracy. There must be some kind of informal truce that someone once negotiated.
Perhaps religions are all hoping that if Hitler can win power via democracy then it's just a matter of time before it's their turn too.

But Hitler had the assistance of a major economic depression. Now that Alan Greenspan has forever cured the world from experiencing another USA-generated global depression then we may never see this come to pass.

47. Russian woman put on trial in Dubai for drinking juice in public

Comment #254633 by Dispiracist on September 26, 2008 at 3:15 am

Comparing trivial religious penalties.

Cars are the dominant religion in Australia. We even have large numbers of born-again cars.

Prices for various related offenses in Sydney are:
Leaving a car unattended with the keys in the ignition $75.
Using an indicator light unlawfully $125.
Honking a horn unnecessarily $225.

As is usual with these matters there is always a twist. Making it a crime to leave keys in a car is a favour to insurance companies intended to void some car theft insurance claims. People arranging for their cars to 'disappear' get a better deal if the car rebirthers don't have to break in and so have less damage to rectify before rebirthing.

Along these lines I wouldn't be surprised to find that there is a privileged Ramadan juice outlet in Dubai, which has some kind of monopoly license on juice sales during this period. Governments everywhere typically extract significant revenue from the sale of such privileges and special favours. If this kind of thing didn't happen you would have to question whether the place really had a government in the normal sense of the word.

48. More atheists are sharing their views

Comment #254546 by Dispiracist on September 25, 2008 at 9:54 pm

"As long as they believe in the legitimacy of people of faith furthering what they believe, I don't see any problem with groups like this furthering their agenda," he said.

Translation:
Athiests don't believe religious faith is legitimate. So I have a great problem with atheists.

So I'm not sure how welcoming of atheists' involvement he will actually be.

54. Comment #254299 by Steve Zara on September 25, 2008 at 2:24 pm

no evidence can ever support the supernatural, as there is always the possibility that the apparently magical is the result of a simulation in a natural system

I'm not sure where I read it, might have been David Deutsch, but things like miracles and other such unexplainable flaws in the matrix might indicate that we are actually existing within a simulation. He thinks it is much more likely that we do live in a simulation, if only because there might be so many of them compared to the number of real universes.
So it would be worthwhile project keeping an eye out for genuine miracles. To the extent that we don't find them then we are justified in believing we inhabit a very good quality simulation. Almost as good as the real thing. Things like time travel would be routine within a sim. Real time travel and real miracles can only never occur in the real universe.

It doesn't imply nihilism any more than not believing religious doctrine implies nihilism. We can always hope that the kid who's running our sim won't get something more interesting for his next Christmas present. If it really is a high quality of sim then the kid won't get bored with it and might continue playing for while yet.

49. Zehirli Yilanlar, Kaygan Yilanbaliklari ve Harun Yahya

Comment #254536 by Dispiracist on September 25, 2008 at 9:04 pm

52. Comment #254175 by D'Arcy on September 25, 2008 at 12:26 pm

it was me who derailed/ introduced banking to/ this thread

It makes a change finding people who're even worse than creationists: bankers are an obvious choice!


It's more of the same thing anyway. It raises the question of whether there is some kind of socially beneficial aspect to various religious prohibitions on usury.

We apes evolved to cooperate and incur complex reciprocal obligations, enabled by morality and language. We instinctively accept money as embodying naturally arising, voluntary obligations. Money is the relationship, including personal favours and obligations, direct barter, electronic ledgers, banknotes and cheques, precious metals and jewellery, to shells and tobacco. We eagerly spend and earn money with each other - sophisticated forms saving time and effort otherwise required to form deep, trusting, long-term relationships with everyone we'd need to engage. But any hard-coded, predictable behaviour provides opportunities for pathogens; initially virulent and potentially fatal in newly arisen niches.

Now that banks can create huge amounts of credit from nothing, indistinguishable from real monetary relationships, our cooperative instincts are exploitable. This is enhanced by electronic commerce, but fundamentally it's the statutory monopoly of fiat money and central banking, a recent innovation probably driven by the resource transfer demands of international warfare.

Our latest pathogens are a small number of people who we wouldn't trust even if we could get close enough to throw them anywhere. Few bank employees understand banking, so the key individuals driving these exploits are found in the senior echelons. Broader ignorance is maintained, as in all large corporations, because new employees are such a narrow age range. (People younger than late 20's aren't particularly useful, while those older than late 30's present other disadvantages. Established older and wiser employees are periodically pruned.)

Many people with significant home mortgages will lose ownership in this depression. Because mortgage payments depend on jobs, and many jobs support projects that will not produce future assets. Such projects were commenced because people mistakenly perceived real resource inputs were affordable. Enormous real resources are fruitlessly consumed while these projects continue. It is this waste which causes the problem. At some point these projects cease as their true net future asset values become obvious. Present asset prices decline as these cancelled projects no longer consume present resources and no longer bid up market prices. Even for employees who retain their income this means the banks can recall mortgages.

Banks face incentives to convert customers' assets, acquired at inflated prices using the bank's non-existent money, into a stream of real interest payments, and then into to a stream of real rental payments. (Donald is right: this interest or rental money is real money which