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Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Men of their Word

Collected from my exploits on the internet: This was taken from a discussion of George Carlin's suggestion that if soldiers were to stop "showing up" to wars, then war would end. The discussion turned to the oath that every soldier takes to obey his orders, and whether or not a person should be reasonably expected to live up to that oath.

One more point of context, else some of my arguments will likely make no sense: This discussion was taking place in a Libertarian group.



"You need to be more specific , as I think an oath to an institution that theoretically exists to protect a collective abstraction is questionable"

What about non-competition or non-disclosure agreements? What about being contracted in any manner? Your signature on a contract is an oath to be bound by the terms of that contract. You ARE honor bound, as well as legally bound to abide by the terms of that contract.

Even if the other party in that contract is some Corporation or Organization or Government or any other "collective abstraction".

If I suddenly "Don't feel like" finishing paving your driveway, for instance, am I justified in leaving? Or are you justified in holding me responsible for *what I said I would do*? At the end of the day, what will a jury say? That a man who doesn't "feel like" being "forced" to be as good as his word should be allowed to just up and walk out; or will they determine that I am somehow responsible for the completion of the work, whether I do it myself or end up paying for someone more responsible than I to do it for me?

Or consider it in terms of something a goodly number of people here are likely familiar with:

"I, [your name here], do hereby certify that I do not believe in or advocate the initiation of force as a means of achieving political or social goals."

Many people here doubtless signed their names to this pledge. Some of them even did so in sound mind and with witnesses. Such an oath is meaningless if people can say:

"Today, I don't feel like abiding by the non-aggression principle. Tomorrow maybe, but today it is inconvenient and perhaps I may even articulate that it is inherently immoral for me to swear such a thing or even for someone to claim that I be even remotely expected to abide by its language"

You simply CAN'T have a civilized culture without people being expected to maintain their oaths. Unless you're one of those "state's rights" folk who considers slavery "civilized". The Responsibility side of "Freedom and Responsibility" comes in many forms: one of those forms is being able to honor a promise, a contract, or an oath.

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

A Trouncing of a Denialist Truther

I apologize for the spelling errors in this one, but I felt that in the name of integrity I should leave the comments to which I was replying intact. This was a reply to an especially grievously retarded Denialist I encountered in the midst of a debate on 9/11 "Truth".



‎"They determind the official report did not add up and they looked at the info they had and tried to see what conclusions could result"

This is the definition of confirmation bias. You just admitted that they knew what conclusion they wante...d to reach, then they actively looked for evidence SPECIFICALLY to support that conclusion. That is not scientific.

"...but nothing is absolute."

If nothing is absolute, then neither is your statement that nothing is absolute.

"Science its self is flawed and almost everything is theory"

Ahhhh yes this one. You hear it from the religious and the magical thinkers all the time, because they don't understand what exactly science is.

Science is not a God-surrogate. Where a god or religion will claim to have all the answers, science readily admits that there are things to learn. The entire point of the process is a constant and cumulative re-assessment of what we claim to know. Science seeks to create a model of the universe, and through a careful - cautious, even - and rigorous process that model gets consistently more accurate.

People use the word "Theory" as though it implies doubt. What people mean when they say "theory" is closer to what a real scientist would call a "hypothesis". Scientists, however, are much more precise with their language. When a scientist says "theory" it means that whatever being discussed is a model for a phenomenon that accurately and consistently predicts the behavior of a system. What we know of gravity is "just a theory," yet I know if I drop my coffee cup IT WILL fall, and while doing so it WILL accelerate at a rate of 32f/s/s until either drag = gravity (which we call terminal velocity) or it hits the ground.

Besides, if science IS indeed flawed - and I will say right here that it is not, because if it were then the scientific process would have discovered such an error and corrected for it - then you must accept that the conclusions reached by Truthers using so-called scientific methods can be flawed, especially as they were constructed by lay-people instead of scientists. To insist upon a margin for error as an argument against one side and to ignore it on your own is not scientific.

"They have limited information to go off of"

So do scientists. Nobody happened to have any equipment set up in the towers to record the event - no high speed cameras, no accelerometers, nothing. Yet the scientific community has overwhelmingly supported the orthodox view of the events of that day. Of course, there are always outliers, even in the scientific community, but to focus on the extremes of the bell curve is to ignore the whole. And excluding evidence in favor of using a couple of outliers out of context is the epitome of "not scientific"

"the government is capable of getting away with anything" and "The government is not going to give free reign to anyone"

I love this one. This line of thought proves beyond any other how much more Truther thinking aligns with religious rather than scientific thought, because while in scientfic thought we don't generally see absolutes, we encounter such characters all the time in religion. I call this particular character the Omnipotent Malefactor, and this is what reason does to him:

The Omnipotent Malefactor takes many guises in conspiracist thought - the Illuminati, the Elders of Zion, the Lizard People, Zenu - but most are forms of "The Government" or "The Man". The Omnipotent Malefactor has these qualities: it is infinitely powerful, it is monolithic, it is impersonal, and it thrives on acts of evil and hubris. It is responsible for all the evil in the world and yet, despite its power, it tends to prefer to work in secret. It can do anything, it can prevent anything, and it commands millions - if not billions - of thralls. And interestingly, despite its infinite power, money, and influence, it always makes some mistake which reveals its hand in the evil in the world; some little details that only a small group of miraculously enlightened and free people recognize and will use to fight this all-powerful, all-evil being.

Examine that construction closely. We have an all powerful entity for some reason intimately interested in and connected to the events of our dust mote in the cosmos and a small group of people who have recieved "Truth". Stripped of names, dates, places, you would be right in assuming that conspiracism is a religion, the same in content, methodology, and mindset as any of the Abrahamic faiths. There is God, steering world events for good or ill, his angels and ministers to help work his will (for some reason) and a church, who despite never seeing, nor hearing, nor having ANY evidence whatsoever for his existence claims to not only KNOW he exists, but to know his nature, his methods, and sometimes even his innermost thoughts.

And I'll say it here, as an aside, to keep with the theme of my essay: Religion is NOT scientific.

But like many religious constructs, we reach an interesting conclusion. Like all ideas centering on omnipotence, we have the inevitable issue of how one reconciles free-agency with that power. That is, if our Omnipotent Malefactor really is so powerful that it can "get away with anything" then it is powerful enough that nothing exceeds its will.

If the Omnipotent Malefactor makes "mistakes" then it is surely not all powerful - id est, not omnipotent - and cannot "get away with anything" and the entire argument falls on its face. A simple and effective way to prove that line of thought wrong, but not very entertaining. What it means, of course, is that if this entity makes mistakes, then we have to examine the entire Malevolent enterprise with an eye for error.

What happens when you allow such massive mistakes that even an idiot like Alex Jones can see them? The entire thing falls apart. There would be no conspiracy, because the sheer scale of the conspiracy would require that at some point PRIOR to execution that a mistake would occur that would doom the entire thing. We see this in conspiracies MUCH smaller ALL THE TIME - at some point the payoff for selling out the conspiracy outweighs the payoff for carrying it out. The larger and more complex the conspiracy, the more time it takes to pull off, the more likely a traitor becomes. Even if there is not a traitor, simple human nature, expressed so well in Murphy's Law, is such that the more complex an enterprise of any kind becomes, the more likely it is that somebody or something will screw up. While smaller conspiracies can and sometimes do manage to avoid or survive such mistakes, a conspiracy as large as the one that the Omnipotent Malefactor would have had to construct in order to make it appear that Muslim Fundamentalists hijacked planes and flew them into three buildings (for some yet unknown, yet highly conjectured and delightfully malevolent ends) would have suffered BOTH problems MULTIPLE times and the conspiracy would have collapsed in upon itself.

Since it evidentally did not, as no traitors have come forward nor were any mistakes apparently made in the preparatory phase, we must assume that either the Omnipotent Malefactor actually IS Omnipotent, in the full and literal sense, or does not exist at all.

Perhaps, like Jehovah, this Omnipotent Malefactor is a vain entity. In that case, then the Truthers are also its unwitting servants, thralls and sheep like the rest of us, whose purpose is to point at the Omnipotent Malefactor and say "Oh you! I see what you did there! Gee Whiz, was that a grand show of power! By Golly, was that evil! But Darn, you are so good at being secret that nobody caught you! That must be because you're SO powerful!" I especially like this idea, because it makes conspiracists the biggest shills of all. But unfortunately, I do not believe in the Omnipotent Malefactor, and so the conspiracists are simply idiots.

But there is yet another layer in this Malevolent onion, and the one most likely to draw a tear. In order for there to BE a conspiracy of the type proponed by Truthers there MUST be an Omnipotent Malefactor behind it. Because of the capacity for error otherwise introduced, the Omnipotent Malefactor MUST be at least functionally Omnipotent to such a degree that nothing escapes its will. Without such an entity, we are forced to believe less extraordinary explanations for the events of early September, 2001, because without such an entity such a complex conspiracy could not come to fruition. Without an Omnipotent Malefactor, the Truth movement is simply wrong. But if the Omnipotent Malefactor exists, then by definiton nothing - absolutely nothing - can be done about it. Even the Truthers are part of its evil plan.

Yes, the last layer is that the inescapable conclusion that we reach when looking at conspiracists is that they are either hopeless - subjects all to the whims of the Omnipotent Malefactor - or they are wrong.

Monday, April 4, 2011

Anti-Theism and Evangelical Atheism

Collected from my exploits elsewhere on the internet; this was in response to a discussion about this article and in particular it was in response to some who agreed that Atheists should perhaps "tone it down" a little.



I'm certainly not an "Evangelical Atheist", though at the same time I make no secret of my viewpoint. There is another way of defining "Anti-Theist" which is advocated by Christopher Hitchens, which is the meaning I use when I refer to myself as such. Rather than being the sort to seek out and pester those of faith and to actively seek to destroy a person's belief in god or gods (since you cannot destroy something that does not exist, sorry, had to get that jab in), an Anti-Theist - in my parlance - is someone who, rather than being an Atheist who wishes that god was true, is someone who is actually quite glad that the proposition is increasingly absurd.


It seems readily apparent to me that these complaints about people who are openly, publicly and unapologetically atheist is that are based in the recognition that since the Enlightenment religion has done nothing but lose ground. It has had to give up its place as a political authority, and an educational authority, and a scientific authority, and now it is losing its place as a moral authority. The idea of god has been continually modified to be just outside the reach of our knowledge, as our knowledge has invaded god's domain and found him to be absent. He used to live on top of the mountain, then on the clouds, then in space, and now he has been pushed back to the farthest reaches of the universe, to particles so small or so dense or so fleeting that we are just barely learning to recognize their existence. The apologies for Gods absence have made him from a being which was actively and personally invested in the world, who spoke in human language, to a mere spectre of its former self in order that the description of what it is does not rouse peals of laughter from anyone who hears them. Some part of them, it seems, also recognizes the absurdity of their beliefs, and in order to shelter them from the harsh truth (as has always been the motivation and purpose of religion) god has been pushed into the most obscure corners of science and philosophy in the vain hope that he might be safe there.


The Non-Religious, Atheists and Agnostics, considered together, now equal Christians in number worldwide, and that number is growing. Religionists recognize, perhaps not consciously, that god is finally losing its hold on the world, and because they are afraid of the tables being turned, of the world where a presidential candidate believing in god is viewed as a dangerous and unstable relic from a bygone age; where churches are no longer allowed to exist, free from taxes or threats of eminent domain, simply for being churches; where THEIR children will be ridiculed by other children for still believing in god, as children today are ridiculed above a certain age for still believing in Santa Claus. In a debate with Sam Harris, Rabbi Wolpe, and Rabbi Shavit, Christopher Hitchens made the following statement:



"One of the reasons I like doing this - some people say "don't I ever get tired of debating with the religious?" No, absolutely I don't because you never know what they're going to say next.

"Sam [Harris] and I don't mind being called predictable it's very easy: We know what we think, we say straight out what we think we know and what we think is not possible to know, why we don't think there's a supernatural and so on. But this evening already we've had [Rabbi Bradley Artson Shavit's] suggestion that God is only really a guru, a friend when you're in need, I mean, he wouldn't do anything like bugger around with Job to prove a point. And, which if I now tell you that "Well, that must mean that THAT book is NOT the word of God" You'd say "Well whoever believed that that was the word of God?"

"Let me just tell you something: For hundreds and thousands of years, this kind of discussion in most places would have been impossible to have, or Sam and I would have been having it at the risk of our lives. Religion now comes to us in this smiley-face ingratiating way because it's had to give so much ground, and because we know so much more. But you've no right to forget the way it behaved when it was strong, and when it really did believe that it had God on its side."



Religion's death knell has been sounded, and in their fear they are trying to shut us up. They would keep their "John 3:16" t-shirts and their Fish magnets and their "National Atheists Day - April 1st" bumper stickers, but for some reason our equivalent expressions are "offensive" and we are lesser people for making them openly. Well I say this: This is a free country, with free thought, and we will proudly compete in the marketplace of ideas that OUR Enlightenment made possible for all of us, instead of the Inquisitions that STILL exist anywhere that God rules, and if you find that the primitive fear-mongering of religion cannot hold up among people who want to be free then it is no fault of ours.


Fortunately for us, we have no dogma that forbids us from being "out" about our faith, as the Christians do:



"Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven.

Therefore when thou doest [thine] alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men.

Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth:

That thine alms may be in secret: and thy Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly.

And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites [are]: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.

But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.

But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen [do]: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking.

Be not ye therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him." Matthew 6:1-8



For those that are paying attention to such things, those words aren't just any jerk from the Bible, but are as a point of faith the very words of the Christ Jesus himself. And so I repeat my challenge: OUR openness and public statement of our stance is offensive to you, and we are to respect YOUR feelings, but you are to be given license to not only call us fools and damn us to hell, but you are allowed to disobey your God when you do it?


Bollocks. I'll not put up with it and no sane and freedom loving person will.

Sunday, April 3, 2011

Do You Want to Live Longer?

Collected from my exploits elsewhere on the internet.



"Want to live longer? Eat a Mediterranean diet. The Florentine - Elixir of Life?

It takes time to plan and execute a meal. It takes even more time to learn how to cook, and on top of that there are all the mistakes and what-have-you that inevitably come with learning a skill. People seem always to be looking for a quick and easy solution rather than putting forth the effort needed for a gauranteed result. Want to lose weight, get healthy and live longer? You could eat well (which requires planning and preparation) and exercise daily (which requires, well, exercise). OR you could take a gamble on three easy payments ...

For what it's worth, it is actually less expensive to eat well. Take a look at this survey of families from around the world. Each picture is of a family, the food they buy in a week, and what they spend on it (translated into USD where necessary):
One Week's Worth of Food Around Our Planet

Notice anything? There's a sweet spot right around the $200 mark where the people are both well off AND not spending a fortune on food. How do they achieve it? Lots of grains, lots of produce, a fresh meat meal and minimal microwave goods. Surprise, surprise.

The thing is, the culture of convenience is attacking our lifespans in more ways than just our diets. The post which began this discussion was presented with the question "Want to live longer?" and there are many factors that go into a long and healthy life (because who wants to spend the last 20 years out of 100 bedridden?) that are all put in jeopardy by the demands of modern life. Not only is the home-cooked meal now the exception rather than the rule, but so have the morning constitutional, the family game night, and in many cases life-long friends started to become exceedingly rare things. If you want to live to be 100 - and be hale and hardy, too - here's a video ya'll should watch. The presenter found several communities with an unusual number of centegenarians (Yes, one of them was in Italy) and set out to find out what they had in common. The answers may surprise you.

TED.com - "How To Live To be 100" by Dan Buettner

Saturday, April 2, 2011

The Mad Jack Takes On Michael Shanklin

Collected from elsewhere on the internet, these were my comments to Mr. Shanklin regarding his naïve anarchistic beliefs. All anarchism is unrealistic, but his ideas regarding every person being subject to no law other than that which they choose for themselves was especially appalling in its sheer, blind idiocy.



"So what you are saying is that you are someone who would gladly force your will on others, murder for profit, and ensure that NO ONE is free just as long as you are getting something in return?" etc, etc, ad nauseam ...
I love how good you anarchists are at making stuff up. It must be wonderful to have such active imaginations and such a detailed fantasy world to live in.
In fact, I believe quite the opposite. Which is why I am no anarchist and I do not support a stateless society. Anarchy and Statelessness are only possible in a world filled with a type of person that is actually so rare in reality that it is almost fair to say that the advocates of such "systems" are experiencing an almost total disconnect from reality. The truly amusing thing is that for everyone to be "free" absent a state, all ambition, striving and competition will have to be somehow culled from the race: in reality, an anarchist or stateless society would collapse as soon as the first punch is thrown.
That is, anarchy is more dependent on "sheeple" for "success" (for what success is there to be had without striving and ambition?) than any other government concept in the history of man.
Until sociopathy is cured, until there are no jerks left in the world, until a way of imbuing each generation with a total and homogenous sense of morality is accomplished, anarchy and/or statelessness is impossible. And as the proud and rather arrogant owner of certain qualities, such as ambition and a general disregard for useless people; it makes me happy to say that there will be no anarchy or statelessness within my lifetime.
"Once people take the time to research dispute resolution organizations and competing law, they will realize how it is the future ..."
A person who attends Berkeley is more likely to have liberal ideas, a person who attends Georgetown more likely to have conservative ideas. I suppose if you spend all your time reading fantasies, you're more likely to be an anarchist.
Your arguments aren't arguments at all, Shanklin. Simply declarations. "It will NOT be as you say! It will be GLORIOUS!" and waiting for your choir to shout "Amen! Preach it Brother!" behind you. Which I suppose might be construed as an argument to popularity, but I'll grant the benefit of the doubt and not invent things whole cloth the way your friends, such as Mr. Mathewson, have been doing.
You say we need education? Educate us. But I don't believe your system has what it takes to suffer dissent and come out ahead. It takes a society full of anarchists to make an anarchist society, and that sounds like the very antithesis of freedom of thought to me.
Especially given what I've seen of anarchists and their intolerance and hysterical decrial of anything that's NOT anarchy ...since I support some form of a state, I must constitute a threat to your freedom, no? Does that or does that not make me a target for any "freedom fighter" out there who wishes to silence my voice? If it does not, what law will avenge me when cooler heads do not prevail?
If I and people like me are allowed to live, your statelessness will collapse. If we are murdered for the sake of your precious homogeny of thought, then statelessness never was.



The following was my next post in the discussion.


"Murderers would be sought much harder in a free society"
By what law or right? You simply declare it to be so when in fact you have no support for your declaration. They may be pursued harder, but will they be pursued fairly? Who is to guarantee that the right person is pursued? Who is to prevent the phrase "Dead or Alive" (or simply "Dead") from preventing a person seeing trial?
What happens when Posse X, hired by Grieving Widow A, encounters Posse Y, hired to protect Suspect B? With no law, there is nothing illegal about it. It might be immoral, but that hasn't stopped anyone's dollars from buying force, violence, and coercion, which will be valuable and highly sought commodities on an open market. What happens when Posse X is a group of folks who hunt as their day job and take bounties for the general welfare; but Posse Y is a company by the name of Blackwater? After the shootout, has justice been served?
By what law or right does the killing finally stop?
I'm a fan of Westerns, too, but I understand why the people of Texas, Arizona, California, Colorado, Utah, etc, were glad to have real law come about at the turn of the century.
"Government is coercion, and unneeded."
More declarations. I've got one of my own:
Any reasonable study of human history and nature will reveal that total freedom and lawlessness are unsupportable systems. What then arises is the pragmatic issue of What and How Much freedom it is necessary to sacrifice in order for everyone to maximize the amount enjoyed by the largest number of people.

















Friday, April 1, 2011

We Reserve The Right to Refuse Service to Anyone (and TSA Agents)

Collected from my exploits elsewhere on the internet. The following comments are in reply to the support a certain establishment had garnered with its refusal to serve TSA Agents.



"If policy told you to jump off a bridge, would you do it?"

Granted, my condition is quite a bit different than that of a TSA agent, but as a soldier, the answer is "Yes". You can't refuse a dangerous order or a lawful order, and the kicker... is that the definition of "lawful" is up to a military tribunal. I repeat, it's a different situation, but it does render your argument somewhat invalid.

"no one is forcing the tsa agent to grope me before i get on an airplane"

Yes they are. It's their job vs. your comfort. In the same situation, I know what I'd pick. Similarly, do you have any idea what would happen to the TSA agent who lets a bomb through because s/he was squeamish about a pat down? The public, once so adamantly against the screenings, would then be calling for strict enforcement of the rule and the immediate, severe and preferably public castigation of the negligent agent. It's a Catch-22, and one that puts severe pressure on the agents. You act as though they have a choice, when really, they do not.

"harming people even though you know its unethical for a paycheck"

"Harming" is hyperbole and you know it. As for the paycheck, you are certainly aware that there is a recession on. It's not just that "this job is as good as any other", it's that if they don't have this job, it is extremely likely that they won't have ANY. In case you ain't noticed, we're not talking about highly trained and educated people when we talk about TSA. And when I walk into a Waffle House and get served by a waitress trainee who used to be a realtor, as I did this last December in Tucson, you begin to realize that when it comes to a roof over your head and food in your stomach, and the same for your family, you don't get to be choosy about your employment anymore. These folks are NOT going to put their jobs at risk for some mouthy stranger who knew what was likely to happen and decided to fly anyway. Especially when it won't accomplish anything, since the instant they walk out the door there will be ten people clamoring to replace them. Ten people who will either do their jobs or likewise get canned until TSA finds someone who will.

So is it really such a pain to get a little felt up? Ask yourself honestly. TSA's job is certainly important, if a little overinflated, and the "groping" is less invasive as a rule than a trip to the doctor, the locker room at the gym, or one of those men's restrooms with a trough urinal. The same search is performed by police officers regularly and people take it as a matter of course.

Consider it from another viewpoint: Let's say you have a job towing cars. Your bread and butter is impounding cars parked by red curbs, across two parking spaces, or in private lots. It's not a pleasant job, because every single time you take a car in, it means you probably have to deal with that car's owner later on. An owner which, by the way, is now having a bad day thanks in no small part to people like you.

You do your job because it's a paycheck. You went to school to learn acupuncture, but in this economy there's no work because people don't have money to waste on medicine that doesn't work. But you do your job honestly, by the book, and you try to make the process as painless for everyone involved as you can, because you understand: getting your car towed sucks. But its a part of life, and you don't make the laws.

At the end of one day you walk into a bar, still wearing your coveralls, and the barkeep has you shown out. "We don't serve your kind here," the bouncer sneers, "We don't appreciate what you do." You try to protest, but they'll hear none of it. "You didn't have to take that job, and you don't have to do that work. You're just as evil as the gummint that says I can't double park across the handicapped spaces. And I'll hear none of that Nazi talk about orders" he concludes as the door slams coldly in your face.

The barkeep doesn't know about your mortgage, your car payment, and your three kids. Apparently he doesn't understand that if your boss didn't send you out on these City jobs he wouldn't have enough revenue to run the business. More than that, he and his bouncer simply don't care. You slink away across the cold, dark parking lot and drive home, rejected, ostracised, alone, and dead sober.

From what you know about human nature, how do you think you would react when, early the next week, you respond to a call requesting that you tow a car carelessly sprawled between a red curb and an expired parking meter. As you are filling out some forms, preparing to leave, a flustered looking man comes running out, yelling the usual obscentities you almost always hear from the owners of towed vehicles coming across you in the commission of your duties. As the red-faced man's visage resolves, you slowly recognize him as the bartender. That mean bartender who cares not a jot or tittle for you as a human because you took a job he doesn't like. That jerk who doesn't understand the demands of having a house and a family, who doesn't even care to understand what it is to be bound to something beyond yourself. Look at him, screaming and flailing his arms, knowing full well what conversations will ensue, here, and later at the impound lot, and ask yourself, "Do I have any sympathy and mercy for this man? I know that my job visits unpleasantness upon people, but does this man deserve my cooperation and professional insight and aid? Will I, perhaps, cut him a deal so he can get his car home just a little faster or cheaper, at a detriment to my boss but at a benefit to overall goodwill? Or will I make his life just a little more difficult in kind?"

THAT'S why refusing to serve TSA agents is a bad idea.



The following comment was made later in the conversation.


"i also cant agree with the economic argument. so if the economy is... strong and opportunity is rampant, than its ok to oppose unethical behavior in the name of a paycheck?"

That's not the argument we're making. It's that things aren't all... black and white, and sometimes you actually DO have to weigh one evil against another. When the choice comes down to the wellbeing of my family and the comfort of strangers, then you can't really hold it against people for making certain decisions. When the economy improves and people are again able to choose their employment, then the paradigm will have changed.

In any case, I'm glad most of us are agreed that punishing the workers is not the way to be creating the changes we want. If anything, we should be finding ways to get TSA agents on our side.

It reminds me of my experience at MEPS (er ...don't know how many vets are here. That's "Military Entrance Processing Station") which is a generally unpleasant experience for everyone involved. I felt especially sorry for the doctors there, whose jobs, despite a decade of medical school, consisted of checking an endless parade of men for hernias and hemorhoids. I figure that the folks at TSA aren't (as a rule) much happier about having to look at the Backscatter Images or feel people up. Especially when you think back on all the times you've flown and the truly, um, "aesthetically unfortunate" people that are on every flight. I think that a sympathetic rather than hostile approach would be more fruitful.

Thursday, March 31, 2011

(Brief) Thoughts on Vaccines, Skepticism, and Vaccine Skepticism

Collected from my online exploits.



1) Vaccines have been proven to work. See eradication of smallpox and near-eradication of polio; the formerly declining rates of MMR; etc. that cannot have any other explanation.
2) If burden of proof falls to the positive claim, then it is up to the vaccine folk to prove their various claims, e.g. that vaccines kill or that there are "natural" alternatives. Therefore, skepticism of their claims is justified.
3)IF there were pre-existing "natural" treatments/vaccines, as some people claim (the argument being that vaccines work, but are unnecessarily dangerous/powerful) then we would not be seeing diseases that have been controlled with vaccines running rampant in areas without access to the vaccines. Don't even get me started on the supernatural treatments ...

Skepticism is about the discipline and detachment to engage in rigorous systematic testing of verifiable claims. It is not doubt for doubt's sake. So Arturo's definition is somewhat closer, but it still misses the point: There comes a point when it is no longer prudent or virtuous to be skeptical.

Vitamins were not discovered until the early 20th century; the first vitamin supplement (C, for those who care) was not available until the 1930's - yet there doesn't seem to be much skepticism regarding their effectiveness, especially in light of their novelty in the scope of the entire field and history of nutrition.

I would not be surprised to learn that there are, in fact, anti-vitamin activists who believe God is in their whole foods keeping them healthy or some such nonsense (and in fact, now that I think about it, the Raw Food movement may at its roots be a manifestation of Vitamin Skepticism ...) but this does not mean that we, as skeptics, must abandon our certainty in Vitamins due to doubts raised largely by Lay-Knowledge, Magical Thinking, or downright Quackery.

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Jury Duty

Collected from my online exploits.






Jury duty's certainly a pain in the ass (I get called every year. No exceptions. And I usually spend the whole day there) but if we accept the premises that:

1) Some form and quantity of government exceeding zero is necessary to maximizing liberty;
2) One of governments legitimate functions is adjudication of disputes and the enforcement of law;
3) A government may take what measures are necessary to effectively fulfill its obligations and perform its functions;
4) A public trial before our peers is at least sometimes a desireable method of conducting such adjudication; and
5) People hate listening to other people talk about their problems;

Then the case becomes easy to make that jury duty is no misnomer and while we need not be happy to have to deal with the inconvenience, we are better off overall for it.

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Jurors and Law Enforcement

Another short essay collected from my exploits on the World Wide Web, this time on the topic of whether or not the Police should be given the same powers of nullification granted to jurors.



I think that denying the police such license, which by corollary binds them to strict enforcement of the law, is in fact a desireable thing.

Our current legal system is constructed in such a way that we enjoy a number of very important boons.


First, there exist limits placed on the exercise of government. Namely, that all government, from the Fed all the way down to Buttsex, Kansas City Council are bound to conduct themselves in a constitutional manner. (Nevermind whether it actually happens 100% of the time, that's a different discussion)


Second, what laws are passed that are not delineated in the constitution are passed either by the citizens or their proxies; hence the designation of the United States as a Republic, as we all remember (or at least, ought to remember) from our civics classes.


Third, there are limits that apply to the powers held by the citizens and their proxies; these limits prevent mob rule from overriding basic rights or in certain cases using the letter of the law to defeat the spirit of the law. As Justice Walker opined in his ruling on California's Proposition 8 last August:


"The considered views and opinions of even the most highly qualified scholars and experts seldom outweigh the determinations of the voters. When challenged, however, the voters’ determinations must find at least some support in evidence. This is especially so when those determinations enact into law classifications of persons. Conjecture, speculation and fears are not enough. Still less will the moral disapprobation of a group or class of citizens suffice, no matter how large the majority that shares that view. The evidence demonstrated beyond serious reckoning that Proposition 8 finds support only in such disapproval. As such, Proposition 8 is beyond the constitutional reach of the voters or their representatives." It is within this construction that I frame my arguments. Less enlightened or fair systems suffer their own flaws which do not necessarily find their solutions in my argument, yada yada keep it in context =)


Our legal system is not perfect and has, at various times, been unfair to various peoples for various reasons. What it does offer, however, is a methodology whereby both the power-hunger of the leaders and the fanatical fear/greed of the populace are held in check. If we hold that such irrational or frankly malicious desires being held in check is a good thing, then it follows that nullification should not be the purview of police officers.


I will further argue that even if nullification is not granted, then to an extent it still is granted, nonetheless. This isn't a contradiction, it is just a juxtaposition of the legal/pragmatic reality vs. the real-reality, if that makes any sense. I'm getting ahead of myself, more on that later.


The idea of the police having powers of nullification is demonstrably different from jurors having that same ability. A police officer is one man; a jury is twelve. A crime is an act in progress, a constantly evolving scenario; a trial is a presentation of evidence on the past - understood to be immutable; a police officer is charged with the enforcement of the law; a jury is charged with its interpretation. From these differences, we derive that a jury nullification is built from a consensus of the citizenry, who are themselves a sort of representation of that same citizenry in much the same manner as a legislator. They are hearing facts and evidence and weighing the merits of a person, of a case, of a law and of a sentence and as such their opinion is neither the subject of whim nor of subjectivity.


Further, the decision of the jury is subject to review by additional courts and, often, additional juries. Appeal is a luxury of the courts that an officer does not have.


When such broad powers are granted to lone individuals, as police officers are, subjectivity once again becomes a factor. The case for nullification is easy to make when the law in question is possesion of a dime bag of marijuana. But that sword cuts both ways: what about the officer who opposes CA Prop 215 (which are plethora in my home county), or the officer who opposes the Civil Rights Act or any number of other liberty granting legislation?


What about laws regarding what weapons it is appropriate for an officer to carry; or when it is appropriate for an officer to use them?


By handing the power of nullification to single people, as you would be doing with police officers, you would, in reality, create tiny little dictatorships along every beat subject to whatever the whims and fancies of your local officer on that shift might be. And while some of us would be blessed enough to have our own local Tony Ryan, at least as many would be under the whip of Sheriff Joe Arpaio.


If the power of nullification extends to individual precincts or departments, but not to individual officers, then you have simply created - or if not created, certainly augmented - a special interest group whose interests and powers would readily exceed those of the citizenry who are supposed to constitute their charges and employers. Bills that would increase or decrease their workloads (e.g. criminalizing or decriminalizing various activities) would be subject to their approval; as would budgeting and hiring.


It is in our best interests to have the officers bound to the laws as we, the citizenry, pass and interpret them. In such a manner, we have power over the exercise of force used in enforcing them.


I mentioned in my brief digression above that nullification would exist anyway, and here is what I mean: As it stands, many officers will overlook certain crimes in favor of enforcing more important ones anyway. Few officers will harrass a couple of teenagers breaking curfew when a bar brawl breaks out. This sort of prioritizing is a matter of course with police; the upside is that, should an officer take undue liberties with his judgement there is recourse for any negligence.

Shocked Out of Cultural Relativism

I realize I have been neglecting this blog somewhat, but fortunately that does not mean that I've not been opining elsewhere. The following - which will apply to most, if not all, of the posts I will be making over the next few days - comes from a discussion in which I was engaged some time back.




I heard an anthropologist talk about an island tribe that practices ritual homosexuality and pedophilia. The superstition goes that semen = life force, and that for a male child to have enough life force to assure the continuation of the species/race/tribe/whatever that he must ingest semen from the older tribe members. This ritual fellation begins at a surprisingly early age and continues for an extensive period of time until the child is deemed to have absorbed enough life force to marry.

The men jealously guard their semen to such an extent that a husband and wife only cohabitate during a specific part of the year, during which conception is attempted. Women are viewed simply as factories for the production of children and recreational sex - and especially non-procreative sex - is not only frowned upon, but feared. During the remainder of the year, the men live together in communal barracks, segregated from the women as much as is possible.

This anthropologist presented this little tale as an illustration in favor of cultural relativism. The argument was something to the effect that This Tribe has managed to do well enough for itself and does not seem to suffer for its behaviors, which to outsiders seem (to put it perhaps TOO mildly) bizarre.

But the argument, like most of cultural relativism, only stands up in a vacuum. Has the tribe indeed done well for itself? I contend that they obviously have not. They are a stone age culture, speaking a language only they speak, perpetuating a culture that has, in fact, failed to thrive. They have no wealth, no art, and no science. Their only technology is the same technology that every people on the world has managed to develop: means to shelter themselves from the elements, and a means to procure food.

A modern look at their practice shows them to be abhorrent, because our understanding of psychology - a science, by the way, which is advanced literally thousands of years beyond their ken - reveals to us the undeniable and irreversible damage that these people do to their progeny as a matter of course. And it shows in their society: they are a culture of pederasts, fearful and distrustful of the women whom they depend on in order to perpetuate themselves and who must nurture them through those early years before they go off to the abuses of the men's barracks. This is a culture that has managed to survive not for any virtue of its own, but in spite of itself.

This culture (whose name, I'm afraid, escapes me) is not the only one of its kind, though its practices are definitely the strangest and most extreme I've yet heard of. It is tales of peoples like this, who never advanced enough in some cases to even discover fire or writing, that cured me of any Cultural Relativism. We cannot judge people in a vacuum, especially in an increasingly interconnected world. A people is only as good as its contributions to our overall advancement, and a people that never strives, that lurks in prehistoric superstition and rites must be brought forward or left behind in the dusty annals of history.

To listen to Relativists is to risk damning ourselves to the same stagnant fate.