"You also have to admit that science can describe the "How" but not the "Why"."
I fucking hate this goddamn ignorant argument like poison, as if science is somehow deficient and in need of some faith-based concept like religion to fill in the blanks. Here's a 'why' for you: why is it that people are so fucking childish that they need to cling the idea that things are the way they for some Higher Purpose? If I roll a die and it comes up 5, I don't ask why that happened: I recognize that given certain physical realities and a finite number of possible outcomes, 5 was one possibility that just happened to come up. The question 'why are we here' is no different, except replace 5 with 'everything happens in such a way that it produces the world we live in now' and add about a zillion other possible outcomes to your die. We're here because things happened the way they happened--they could just have easily happened a different way, in which case we might not be here to see it. But some people obviously need the security blanket of believing that existence has some kind of magic meaning.
"God has no more right to destroy them at will than you do. If he does, then you've completely evacuated the claim that God is good of all meaning."
I don't really buy your claim. First of all, where in the Bible (or anywhere) is it claimed that the rules God wants mankind to play by are the rules He Himself must follow? In fact, if we agree that right and wrong are defined by God's will (adultery = bad, worshipping on the Sabbath = good) then how can you argue that His will is ever 'wrong?' Secondly, if you believe that God is all powerful and created all existence, then you must believe that He created a world that is susceptible to sickness and death (a Christian might argue that it was human choice aka original sin that caused us to be cast out of Eden, but even the world outside paradise was made by God). So, if God, who is all powerful, creates a world where all living things will age, sicken, and eventually die, then he must be pretty much okay with the idea of those things happening to us.
The way out of this apparent dilemma, as far as 12 years of Catholic school taught me, is to throw up our hands and admit that we small, imperfect humans could never hope to comprehend God's will, and so what appears senseless to us is really the fault of our own hopelessly inadequate perspective. Nobody does guilt and self-loathing like the Catholics!
I totally saw this in a movie once. All they need to do is open a prominently featured can of Dr. Pepper and let the soda spraying out through the hull show them where the leak is. Caveat: this plan carries a small risk of vaccuum-freezing Tim Robbins.
I don't claim to be an expert, but I seriously doubt that the kind of guy who'd go out an rape a woman is going to be satisfied to sit at home with a box of Kleenex and some 'net porn. Rape is usually about exerting dominance, whether out of anger, or out of a desire to prove 'manliness,' or out of a simple desire to hurt and control another person. Sex is just the weapon the rapist uses. So if you're trying to explain a decrease in sexual assault, I think you need to find something else. My two cents.
I seem to remember that an early plan proposed to get to the moon this way was refered to as the 'poor bastard' plan.
How much science is your poor bastard really going to be able to accomplish by himself up there? A few days worth? A few weeks? Is the knowledge we'd gain so absolutely vital that we can't wait until we have the means to go get it and come back alive? If not, then why would any company invest billions to get it? Not to mention that it's hardly the kind of endorsement most companies look for: "Microsoft: we got him there, let's see you bring him home!"
Would screwing your own pitch also include citing an example where mass action by a group of motivated, concerned citizens accomplished absolutely nothing? Because last time I checked, we were still sort of at war. I suppose you could argue that protests such as you describe TALK UP THE HARD ISSUES and raise public awareness, but this really doesn't accomplish a damn thing until you VOTE FOR THE GOOD CANDIDATES who recognize the will of the people and respond to it. Is showing up better even when you've got little to show for it?
In a lot of places, legitimate crops don't pay nearly as well as the illict ones, which makes it a hard for the farmer who's trying to support his family. As for educating users, what additional information (beyond the DARE-type antidrug stuff almost all schoolkids in the US get) do you think is going to convince people not to try drugs? What 'other activities' are you going to offer that you expect to woo people away from getting high?
If it feels good, some people are going to do it, even if it is dangerous, expensive, and illegal. I'm not saying legalization is the answer, just that our efforts at eradication have to date been pretty costly and not hugely effective.
That's the point--what kind of solution could you possibly put forth? Have you got a way to make the masses care about 'important things' rather than TV, or Nintendo, or whatever? Have you got a way to rein in the influence of special interest groups with deep pockets on our politicians, when those same politicians have to woo those groups in order to remain in power?
We shouldn't give up, of course. Keep voting for candidates who serve the people, keep raising awareness about these issues, but don't expect that someone will come up with a capital 'S' Solution to what's wrong with America today.
Let's assume for the sake of argument that dowsing is a real and effective technique. It seems to me that the kind of dowser who's going to volunteer to participate in a studying on dowsing (and there have been a number) must be fairly confident in his own ability to be willing to put it on display. And yet the vast majority of dowsing studies find no significant difference between dowsing and blind chance. So there are three possibilities:
1) Dowsing only works for some people, but most frauds don't realize that they can't do it. If this is true, the results of the research done so far would suggest that most dowsers are frauds.
2) 'The mechanics are not understood.' Maybe dowsing only works under very specific circumstances. But if that's the case, and we can't identify those circumstances, then dowsing is hardly better than blind guessing.
3) Most 'genuine' dowsers avoid objective tests of their ability. Again, certainly possible, but how can you recognize a genuine talent when you see it? If you can't, then it's a blind guess.
"The burden of proof is on the one making the claim" isn't just some meme recited mindlessly. If you accept that Occam's razor is generally pretty accurate (and of course, it's a guide, not a rule) then a more complicated definition of reality has to be supported by evidence. Anecdotes don't count because there are a number of source of interference (ideomotor action, subconscious expertise) that can only be washed out in a larger trial.
To get back to Russell, sure it's possible to show there's no teapot around Pluto. Give me a few billion dollars for a deep space teapot detecting probe and I'll get right on it. However, most people would rightly recognize that as a waste of money--kind of like dowsing, which is why you're unlikely to see large trials of it.
I think Bertrand Rusell covered this one with his 'teapot around Pluto' argument. His point was that he can claim that there's a teapot in orbit around Pluto right now, and that anyone who disagrees with him is free to prove him wrong. Similar logic applies to the 'invisible pink Unicorn' and the Flying Spaghetti monster.
Of course, dowsing advocates aren't compelled to prove anything to dowsing denialist; however, if they're going to claim that dowsing is real, then it would certainly bolster their case to show some evidence, wouldn't it?
It's not dowsing that makes me angry. It's the fact that people would prefer to embrace superstition and pleasant nonsense rather than look at facts. This applies equally well to dowsing, flying saucers, numerology, and major religions. I don't need to prove any of them wrong--but if their proponents say these things exist, they ought to be able to show it. Not for my sake, but for the sake of rationality.
The GP may have been a bit exciteable, but his points aren't necessarily invalid. For example, you may think that Randi is a fraud who's willing to cheat and bend the rules in order to ensure that no one can pass his test, but still--if you were an authentic, honest to God successful dowser, wouldn't you jump at the opportunity to prove your skills in a public forum? Even if it was just the local farm news report, having some independent corroboration of your talents would set you apart from the frauds. And yet, I'm not aware of any such public displays. You would think, if nothing else, that if this was a real phenomenon, some academic would have leapt at the chance to prove it scientifically, and yet nobody has managed it. As the GP pointed out, if something works, it works--under bad conditions, on camera, with an army of skeptical observers. So are all the real dowsers just shy?
"All those other people are thinking the same thing. It's a reinforcing circle of apathy, with each person reassuring his/her neighbors that there really is nothing they can do about anything, better to just live quietly and only worry about yourself."
In game theory, this sort of scenario has been christened a 'Stag Hunt.' The idea, applied here, is that while we'd all be better of as individual voters if we all became politically informed and active, it doesn't pay for any one man to swim against the tide--he's better off not wasting his time in a futile endeavor. But since everybody thinks like this, we all tend to become apathetic over time. The game has two stable Nash equilibria: everybody acts, or nobody does. Once you arrive at one of these points, it's very difficult to coordinate a move to the other one.
And I think I disagree: why would anyone do anything if there wasn't some degree of personal satisfaction in it for them? Maybe it's for the pleasure of knowing you're leaving a better world for your kids, or maybe you're proud of yourself for standing on principle, but as you yourself pointed out, it's all about the prize, however remote it might be.
As I already, there was obviously a great deal of idealism amid the Founding Fathers, which is why they upheld principles such as liberty, self-determination, and freedom when they established the government. But the fact remains, they were by and large happy and content British subjects until the bill came due for nine years of transatlantic protection. So maybe this idea of a land of the free and home of the brave was truly brewing in their collective mind for years, and the taxes were the final act of tyranny that drove them to open revolt. It seems equally likely that they were just pissed off about having to foot the bill for England's war.
Ah, you're right! I should protest the things I don't like in government, like all those anti-war protestors who have been failing to make a difference for about 4 years now. Maybe I, individually, will accomplish what hundreds of thousands of far more motivated people have to date failed to do. Or maybe I could write some big headline stories about possible voter fraud in the past elections...oh, wait, Robert Kennedy, Jr. did that, and everybody more or less ignored it. I suppose I could write more letters to my Congressman, but of course, seeing as I'm not making any thousand dollar campaign donations this election cycle, I guess it's basically his choice whether or not to ignore me.
But you're right, I don't have to go it alone. I can inspire others to see things my way, too...as soon as I overcome the apathy and stupidity that produces a 40% voter turnout and gives the election to Bush, jr. twice. While I'm at it, you got any windmills you need tilting at? Or you could just see my earlier comment about the complete failure of the antiwar movement if you want to get a sense of the value of collective action.
I love hearing about how veterans died for my vote. Of course, apart from the revolution, most of the time they didn't, really. They fought to kill people from other countries who would otherwise have tried to kill us, or they fought because some politico (the giant douche or turd sandwich of the respective era) thought it was necessary. But by all means, appeal to patriotism at the expense of rationality, because THAT sure hasn't caused any problems in the world lately.
But the problem is that, I, the individual, can't stop that irresponsible government from doing whatever it wants just by voting against it. Technically, maybe, I can (if I have the deciding vote) but the odds against that happening are miniscule. One the other hand, a million dollars in my pocket now is something tangible. Add to this the fact that the last two American elections have been fraught with allegations of illegal vote tampering and disenfranchisement, and it should be very clear why some people don't put much value on voting nowadays.
I do wonder, though...the folks who see voting as most important are probably also the best informed about the candidates. Now, assuming there's not a systematic bias that causes one party to be better informed than the others (e.g., assuming that most politically observant people don't naturally become Democrats), then maybe this will just eliminate random noise in the results.
In any case, I figure that if a given bit of policy strongly effects me, I'll go vote for or against the candidate advocating it. If it doesn't effect me, then why should I care anyway? It's easy to bleat about civic duty, but what duty have I really done if my vote doesn't change the results?
Make your own money? The main reason the British started levying taxes after the French-Indian War was to pay for the cost of defending the colonies. Is it unreasonable to for them to expect that their colonies pay something back against the cost of their own protection?
And while I don't claim to be an expert on revolutionary history, I seem to recall that in one point leading up to the war, the colonies were offered representation in parliament, but by then, people were too pissed to back down.
Not that I as an American haven't benefited enormously from the values and freedoms secured in the Constitution, but let's acknowledge that our forefathers were just as subject to greed and jingoism as folks are today. The fact that something good came of it is a credit to their higher ideals.
I wonder, though. I mean, there have been a number of scientific discoveries that you'd think would necessitate a change in their perspective: the recognition of extinction as a phenomenon, evolution via natural selection, etc., and yet they either dismiss it entirely (more common in the fundamentalist sects) or claim that it's entirely consistent with their world view. If E.T. landed in the center of Rome tomorrow, I have no doubt that the Pope would be out on his balconey telling anyone who would listen about how god put them in the universe to show us that His majesty extends far beyond our own tiny planet.
It's kind of exciting to ponder how we'd react to something like that. I'm sure it would make us all pause for a moment and think, but I suspect we'd be up to our old tricks again pretty shortly thereafter.
I agree that the program should continue, but I've gotta say, even if we find them, the idea of any immediately accruing benefit is pretty slim. For one, let's say an advanced civilization is broadcasting, trying to reach folks like us. The first round of communications would probably just be to attract our attention and establish a mathematical basis of understanding--not sending us diagrams for a star drive. Plus, who's to say any tech they might send us would be compatible with out current capabilities? You could have given Leonardo da Vinci the plans for a TV set, and it wouldn't have done him much good. And of course, unless they happen to be in the neighborhood, the time lag on communication is such that we probably wouldn't even be able to open a dialogue within our lifetimes.
But hey, so what? For the relatively minor investment, we get to aspire to something that's bigger than us in a way that the world hasn't really known since the moon landing--bigger, even. Well worth the price, if you ask me.
I raise the issue of uncertainty not, as you suggest, because of a need for perfect knowledge prior to action, but rather to illustrate that a one-size-fits-all response ("arrest anyone who threatens a school," as you suggested) is foolish in a situation that's overwhelmingly shades of gray. Neither of my posts suggest that authorities do nothing in response to a threat; rather, the response needs to be proportionate to the perceived risk. A kid doodling a picture of himself shooting other students might merit a trip to the guidance office; on the other hand, a kid who's spending his time in the basement wiring timers to propane tanks probably needs a more aggressive intervention.
Seriously, ignore every other reason why your suggestion is idiotic and think solely of the statistics. The odds that any kid who makes threats will actually hurt somebody are so damn tiny that even a really good screening mechanism will bust far more posers than actual shooters. That means an enormous amount of time and money that could have been used in meaningful ways wasted on a bunch of kids who weren't going to do anything in the first place. But of course we must THINK OF THE CHILDREN! Who cares if the schools can't afford decent teachers--you can't put a price on safety!
Okay, so now your position has changed from 'any threat merits arrest' to 'specific, actionable threats warrant arrest'.
I don't know, how many videos are there up on youtube with kids brandishing guns and talking about shooting shit up? How many of them would really do it? And how many are you willing to lock up to prevent the rare nutjob?
Or hell, let's take this case. Say somebody had seen his videos, and connected it with him, and contacted the authorities. They'd probably take his gun away and make him see a counselor or something, but without having actually done anything, they probably can't lock him up (not familiar with the laws in Finland). So two months later he's out, and he finds another way to get a gun. Or he builds a bomb. Or whatever.
I don't disagree with you that situations like this present a clear opportunity to intervene, but it's tough to sort out the real threats from the posers, and arrest isn't the optimal solution in any case.
Seriously, kudos to you for that comment. I mean, it takes so little to treat a person with some decency and respect, and yet all too often we fail to do even that. Maybe no amount of friendship or understanding would have stopped this kid, or others who have acted out violently, but why wouldn't you try anyway?
Fine, but what constitutes a threat? There was a story on the news the other day where I live about some 2nd grader being suspended for pointing a 'gun finger' at another student and yelling "bang, you're dead." Is that a threat? What if a teenager says he'd like to kill a teacher who just gave him a detention? Or the class loser commiserating with a friend and saying he wishes he could 'blow the whole school up.'
Are any of these threats? None of them? If we arrest the people making them, are we removing a valid threat to society, or are we just giving them a REAL reason to be pissed off at the world? And do you really want to totally discount the circumstances (I'd be a lot more worried about the rocket launcher wielding neo-Nazi than about some kid who sits at home on the weekend and watches 'Heathers.')? How many non-threats are you willing to lock up for some nebulous, hypothetical increase in safety?
Simple rules like 'if you do X, then you should always get Y' don't really satisfy us in the real world. The consequence of a more nuanced approach, unavoidably, is that sometimes bad things happen despite out efforts.
There was a really good article by Malcolm Gladwell in the New Yorker recently about the FBI's profilers, and he makes an excellent point that much of what they do is similar to the kind of 'cold reading' employed by so-called psychics and other performers. Namely, they make statements that are broad enough to fit almost anybody and throw in some flimsy statiscal guesses. By the time the bad guy is caught, all anyone remembers is how well the profile matched him.
Gladwell describes an experiment done (I think in Britain) where a group of detectives was given the case file (including the profile) of a previously solved murder case and a description of the man convincted of the crime. The detectives rated the profile as highly accurate. The researcher then made up a murderer totally unlike the actual killer and gave THAT description to another group of detectives, along with the case file. Again, the detectives rated the profile as 'highly accurate.' And yet this supposed discipline remains enormously popular, both with the public and with many cops.
"My point was (and remains) that religion is fundamentally and admittedly NOT forward-looking (hence my tirade against blind ancestor worship) and definitely NOT self-correcting (to fix something you have to first admit to yourself that it's broken - something that religion is not built for). Biases in science do exist but must of necessity bow before evidence."
My point in bringing up Einstein was not that people refused to believe him until there was evidence supporting his conjecture--contrarily, even AFTER eclipse observations showed the bending of light by gravity, there were physicists who refused to break with the old ideas. Einstein himself never accepted quantum mechanics, despite a preponderance of experimental evidence in support of it. Which speaks precisely to MY point: science as an institution is forward-looking and self-correcting, but as practiced by humans, there will still be instances of bias and 'ancestor worship.' And of course, once the new 'truth' has supplanted the old, it's easy to look back and laugh at the naivetee of those who ignored the 'evidence' in favor of 'dogma.'
And while it may be true that no individual religion is self-correcting (i.e., don't expect the Pope to issue any amendments to the Sermon on the Mount), I would argue that religion, as a phenomenon, is self-correcting. What would you call Martin Luther's reformation other than an attempt to 'correct' a set of 'incorrect' beliefs? Or take Jesus, who stated that he came not to destroy the old laws, but to fulfill the covenant they described. Or take Islam, which recognizes both Jesus and Moses as prophets who didn't quite get the message correct (which is why it fell to Muhammad to straighten us out). To me this represents an iterative process by which new beliefs arise to address the failings of the old ones. Unlike science, none of these things may represent objective, provable truths,but I guess that really depends on the depth of your faith, as I know plenty of religious folks who swear they see proof of God's existence in every sunrise or maple tree.
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"You also have to admit that science can describe the "How" but not the "Why"."
I fucking hate this goddamn ignorant argument like poison, as if science is somehow deficient and in need of some faith-based concept like religion to fill in the blanks. Here's a 'why' for you: why is it that people are so fucking childish that they need to cling the idea that things are the way they for some Higher Purpose? If I roll a die and it comes up 5, I don't ask why that happened: I recognize that given certain physical realities and a finite number of possible outcomes, 5 was one possibility that just happened to come up. The question 'why are we here' is no different, except replace 5 with 'everything happens in such a way that it produces the world we live in now' and add about a zillion other possible outcomes to your die. We're here because things happened the way they happened--they could just have easily happened a different way, in which case we might not be here to see it. But some people obviously need the security blanket of believing that existence has some kind of magic meaning.
"God has no more right to destroy them at will than you do. If he does, then you've completely evacuated the claim that God is good of all meaning."
I don't really buy your claim. First of all, where in the Bible (or anywhere) is it claimed that the rules God wants mankind to play by are the rules He Himself must follow? In fact, if we agree that right and wrong are defined by God's will (adultery = bad, worshipping on the Sabbath = good) then how can you argue that His will is ever 'wrong?' Secondly, if you believe that God is all powerful and created all existence, then you must believe that He created a world that is susceptible to sickness and death (a Christian might argue that it was human choice aka original sin that caused us to be cast out of Eden, but even the world outside paradise was made by God). So, if God, who is all powerful, creates a world where all living things will age, sicken, and eventually die, then he must be pretty much okay with the idea of those things happening to us.
The way out of this apparent dilemma, as far as 12 years of Catholic school taught me, is to throw up our hands and admit that we small, imperfect humans could never hope to comprehend God's will, and so what appears senseless to us is really the fault of our own hopelessly inadequate perspective. Nobody does guilt and self-loathing like the Catholics!
I totally saw this in a movie once. All they need to do is open a prominently featured can of Dr. Pepper and let the soda spraying out through the hull show them where the leak is. Caveat: this plan carries a small risk of vaccuum-freezing Tim Robbins.
I don't claim to be an expert, but I seriously doubt that the kind of guy who'd go out an rape a woman is going to be satisfied to sit at home with a box of Kleenex and some 'net porn. Rape is usually about exerting dominance, whether out of anger, or out of a desire to prove 'manliness,' or out of a simple desire to hurt and control another person. Sex is just the weapon the rapist uses. So if you're trying to explain a decrease in sexual assault, I think you need to find something else. My two cents.
I seem to remember that an early plan proposed to get to the moon this way was refered to as the 'poor bastard' plan.
How much science is your poor bastard really going to be able to accomplish by himself up there? A few days worth? A few weeks? Is the knowledge we'd gain so absolutely vital that we can't wait until we have the means to go get it and come back alive? If not, then why would any company invest billions to get it? Not to mention that it's hardly the kind of endorsement most companies look for: "Microsoft: we got him there, let's see you bring him home!"
Would screwing your own pitch also include citing an example where mass action by a group of motivated, concerned citizens accomplished absolutely nothing? Because last time I checked, we were still sort of at war. I suppose you could argue that protests such as you describe TALK UP THE HARD ISSUES and raise public awareness, but this really doesn't accomplish a damn thing until you VOTE FOR THE GOOD CANDIDATES who recognize the will of the people and respond to it. Is showing up better even when you've got little to show for it?
In a lot of places, legitimate crops don't pay nearly as well as the illict ones, which makes it a hard for the farmer who's trying to support his family. As for educating users, what additional information (beyond the DARE-type antidrug stuff almost all schoolkids in the US get) do you think is going to convince people not to try drugs? What 'other activities' are you going to offer that you expect to woo people away from getting high?
If it feels good, some people are going to do it, even if it is dangerous, expensive, and illegal. I'm not saying legalization is the answer, just that our efforts at eradication have to date been pretty costly and not hugely effective.
That's the point--what kind of solution could you possibly put forth? Have you got a way to make the masses care about 'important things' rather than TV, or Nintendo, or whatever? Have you got a way to rein in the influence of special interest groups with deep pockets on our politicians, when those same politicians have to woo those groups in order to remain in power? We shouldn't give up, of course. Keep voting for candidates who serve the people, keep raising awareness about these issues, but don't expect that someone will come up with a capital 'S' Solution to what's wrong with America today.
Let's assume for the sake of argument that dowsing is a real and effective technique. It seems to me that the kind of dowser who's going to volunteer to participate in a studying on dowsing (and there have been a number) must be fairly confident in his own ability to be willing to put it on display. And yet the vast majority of dowsing studies find no significant difference between dowsing and blind chance. So there are three possibilities:
1) Dowsing only works for some people, but most frauds don't realize that they can't do it. If this is true, the results of the research done so far would suggest that most dowsers are frauds.
2) 'The mechanics are not understood.' Maybe dowsing only works under very specific circumstances. But if that's the case, and we can't identify those circumstances, then dowsing is hardly better than blind guessing.
3) Most 'genuine' dowsers avoid objective tests of their ability. Again, certainly possible, but how can you recognize a genuine talent when you see it? If you can't, then it's a blind guess.
"The burden of proof is on the one making the claim" isn't just some meme recited mindlessly. If you accept that Occam's razor is generally pretty accurate (and of course, it's a guide, not a rule) then a more complicated definition of reality has to be supported by evidence. Anecdotes don't count because there are a number of source of interference (ideomotor action, subconscious expertise) that can only be washed out in a larger trial.
To get back to Russell, sure it's possible to show there's no teapot around Pluto. Give me a few billion dollars for a deep space teapot detecting probe and I'll get right on it. However, most people would rightly recognize that as a waste of money--kind of like dowsing, which is why you're unlikely to see large trials of it.
I think Bertrand Rusell covered this one with his 'teapot around Pluto' argument. His point was that he can claim that there's a teapot in orbit around Pluto right now, and that anyone who disagrees with him is free to prove him wrong. Similar logic applies to the 'invisible pink Unicorn' and the Flying Spaghetti monster.
Of course, dowsing advocates aren't compelled to prove anything to dowsing denialist; however, if they're going to claim that dowsing is real, then it would certainly bolster their case to show some evidence, wouldn't it?
It's not dowsing that makes me angry. It's the fact that people would prefer to embrace superstition and pleasant nonsense rather than look at facts. This applies equally well to dowsing, flying saucers, numerology, and major religions. I don't need to prove any of them wrong--but if their proponents say these things exist, they ought to be able to show it. Not for my sake, but for the sake of rationality.
The GP may have been a bit exciteable, but his points aren't necessarily invalid. For example, you may think that Randi is a fraud who's willing to cheat and bend the rules in order to ensure that no one can pass his test, but still--if you were an authentic, honest to God successful dowser, wouldn't you jump at the opportunity to prove your skills in a public forum? Even if it was just the local farm news report, having some independent corroboration of your talents would set you apart from the frauds. And yet, I'm not aware of any such public displays. You would think, if nothing else, that if this was a real phenomenon, some academic would have leapt at the chance to prove it scientifically, and yet nobody has managed it. As the GP pointed out, if something works, it works--under bad conditions, on camera, with an army of skeptical observers. So are all the real dowsers just shy?
"All those other people are thinking the same thing. It's a reinforcing circle of apathy, with each person reassuring his/her neighbors that there really is nothing they can do about anything, better to just live quietly and only worry about yourself."
In game theory, this sort of scenario has been christened a 'Stag Hunt.' The idea, applied here, is that while we'd all be better of as individual voters if we all became politically informed and active, it doesn't pay for any one man to swim against the tide--he's better off not wasting his time in a futile endeavor. But since everybody thinks like this, we all tend to become apathetic over time. The game has two stable Nash equilibria: everybody acts, or nobody does. Once you arrive at one of these points, it's very difficult to coordinate a move to the other one.
And I think I disagree: why would anyone do anything if there wasn't some degree of personal satisfaction in it for them? Maybe it's for the pleasure of knowing you're leaving a better world for your kids, or maybe you're proud of yourself for standing on principle, but as you yourself pointed out, it's all about the prize, however remote it might be.
As I already, there was obviously a great deal of idealism amid the Founding Fathers, which is why they upheld principles such as liberty, self-determination, and freedom when they established the government. But the fact remains, they were by and large happy and content British subjects until the bill came due for nine years of transatlantic protection. So maybe this idea of a land of the free and home of the brave was truly brewing in their collective mind for years, and the taxes were the final act of tyranny that drove them to open revolt. It seems equally likely that they were just pissed off about having to foot the bill for England's war.
Ah, you're right! I should protest the things I don't like in government, like all those anti-war protestors who have been failing to make a difference for about 4 years now. Maybe I, individually, will accomplish what hundreds of thousands of far more motivated people have to date failed to do. Or maybe I could write some big headline stories about possible voter fraud in the past elections...oh, wait, Robert Kennedy, Jr. did that, and everybody more or less ignored it. I suppose I could write more letters to my Congressman, but of course, seeing as I'm not making any thousand dollar campaign donations this election cycle, I guess it's basically his choice whether or not to ignore me.
But you're right, I don't have to go it alone. I can inspire others to see things my way, too...as soon as I overcome the apathy and stupidity that produces a 40% voter turnout and gives the election to Bush, jr. twice. While I'm at it, you got any windmills you need tilting at? Or you could just see my earlier comment about the complete failure of the antiwar movement if you want to get a sense of the value of collective action.
I love hearing about how veterans died for my vote. Of course, apart from the revolution, most of the time they didn't, really. They fought to kill people from other countries who would otherwise have tried to kill us, or they fought because some politico (the giant douche or turd sandwich of the respective era) thought it was necessary. But by all means, appeal to patriotism at the expense of rationality, because THAT sure hasn't caused any problems in the world lately.
But the problem is that, I, the individual, can't stop that irresponsible government from doing whatever it wants just by voting against it. Technically, maybe, I can (if I have the deciding vote) but the odds against that happening are miniscule. One the other hand, a million dollars in my pocket now is something tangible. Add to this the fact that the last two American elections have been fraught with allegations of illegal vote tampering and disenfranchisement, and it should be very clear why some people don't put much value on voting nowadays.
I do wonder, though...the folks who see voting as most important are probably also the best informed about the candidates. Now, assuming there's not a systematic bias that causes one party to be better informed than the others (e.g., assuming that most politically observant people don't naturally become Democrats), then maybe this will just eliminate random noise in the results.
In any case, I figure that if a given bit of policy strongly effects me, I'll go vote for or against the candidate advocating it. If it doesn't effect me, then why should I care anyway? It's easy to bleat about civic duty, but what duty have I really done if my vote doesn't change the results?
Make your own money? The main reason the British started levying taxes after the French-Indian War was to pay for the cost of defending the colonies. Is it unreasonable to for them to expect that their colonies pay something back against the cost of their own protection?
And while I don't claim to be an expert on revolutionary history, I seem to recall that in one point leading up to the war, the colonies were offered representation in parliament, but by then, people were too pissed to back down.
Not that I as an American haven't benefited enormously from the values and freedoms secured in the Constitution, but let's acknowledge that our forefathers were just as subject to greed and jingoism as folks are today. The fact that something good came of it is a credit to their higher ideals.
I wonder, though. I mean, there have been a number of scientific discoveries that you'd think would necessitate a change in their perspective: the recognition of extinction as a phenomenon, evolution via natural selection, etc., and yet they either dismiss it entirely (more common in the fundamentalist sects) or claim that it's entirely consistent with their world view. If E.T. landed in the center of Rome tomorrow, I have no doubt that the Pope would be out on his balconey telling anyone who would listen about how god put them in the universe to show us that His majesty extends far beyond our own tiny planet.
It's kind of exciting to ponder how we'd react to something like that. I'm sure it would make us all pause for a moment and think, but I suspect we'd be up to our old tricks again pretty shortly thereafter.
I agree that the program should continue, but I've gotta say, even if we find them, the idea of any immediately accruing benefit is pretty slim. For one, let's say an advanced civilization is broadcasting, trying to reach folks like us. The first round of communications would probably just be to attract our attention and establish a mathematical basis of understanding--not sending us diagrams for a star drive. Plus, who's to say any tech they might send us would be compatible with out current capabilities? You could have given Leonardo da Vinci the plans for a TV set, and it wouldn't have done him much good. And of course, unless they happen to be in the neighborhood, the time lag on communication is such that we probably wouldn't even be able to open a dialogue within our lifetimes.
But hey, so what? For the relatively minor investment, we get to aspire to something that's bigger than us in a way that the world hasn't really known since the moon landing--bigger, even. Well worth the price, if you ask me.
I raise the issue of uncertainty not, as you suggest, because of a need for perfect knowledge prior to action, but rather to illustrate that a one-size-fits-all response ("arrest anyone who threatens a school," as you suggested) is foolish in a situation that's overwhelmingly shades of gray. Neither of my posts suggest that authorities do nothing in response to a threat; rather, the response needs to be proportionate to the perceived risk. A kid doodling a picture of himself shooting other students might merit a trip to the guidance office; on the other hand, a kid who's spending his time in the basement wiring timers to propane tanks probably needs a more aggressive intervention.
Seriously, ignore every other reason why your suggestion is idiotic and think solely of the statistics. The odds that any kid who makes threats will actually hurt somebody are so damn tiny that even a really good screening mechanism will bust far more posers than actual shooters. That means an enormous amount of time and money that could have been used in meaningful ways wasted on a bunch of kids who weren't going to do anything in the first place. But of course we must THINK OF THE CHILDREN! Who cares if the schools can't afford decent teachers--you can't put a price on safety!
Okay, so now your position has changed from 'any threat merits arrest' to 'specific, actionable threats warrant arrest'.
I don't know, how many videos are there up on youtube with kids brandishing guns and talking about shooting shit up? How many of them would really do it? And how many are you willing to lock up to prevent the rare nutjob?
Or hell, let's take this case. Say somebody had seen his videos, and connected it with him, and contacted the authorities. They'd probably take his gun away and make him see a counselor or something, but without having actually done anything, they probably can't lock him up (not familiar with the laws in Finland). So two months later he's out, and he finds another way to get a gun. Or he builds a bomb. Or whatever.
I don't disagree with you that situations like this present a clear opportunity to intervene, but it's tough to sort out the real threats from the posers, and arrest isn't the optimal solution in any case.
Seriously, kudos to you for that comment. I mean, it takes so little to treat a person with some decency and respect, and yet all too often we fail to do even that. Maybe no amount of friendship or understanding would have stopped this kid, or others who have acted out violently, but why wouldn't you try anyway?
Fine, but what constitutes a threat? There was a story on the news the other day where I live about some 2nd grader being suspended for pointing a 'gun finger' at another student and yelling "bang, you're dead." Is that a threat? What if a teenager says he'd like to kill a teacher who just gave him a detention? Or the class loser commiserating with a friend and saying he wishes he could 'blow the whole school up.'
Are any of these threats? None of them? If we arrest the people making them, are we removing a valid threat to society, or are we just giving them a REAL reason to be pissed off at the world? And do you really want to totally discount the circumstances (I'd be a lot more worried about the rocket launcher wielding neo-Nazi than about some kid who sits at home on the weekend and watches 'Heathers.')? How many non-threats are you willing to lock up for some nebulous, hypothetical increase in safety?
Simple rules like 'if you do X, then you should always get Y' don't really satisfy us in the real world. The consequence of a more nuanced approach, unavoidably, is that sometimes bad things happen despite out efforts.
There was a really good article by Malcolm Gladwell in the New Yorker recently about the FBI's profilers, and he makes an excellent point that much of what they do is similar to the kind of 'cold reading' employed by so-called psychics and other performers. Namely, they make statements that are broad enough to fit almost anybody and throw in some flimsy statiscal guesses. By the time the bad guy is caught, all anyone remembers is how well the profile matched him.
Gladwell describes an experiment done (I think in Britain) where a group of detectives was given the case file (including the profile) of a previously solved murder case and a description of the man convincted of the crime. The detectives rated the profile as highly accurate. The researcher then made up a murderer totally unlike the actual killer and gave THAT description to another group of detectives, along with the case file. Again, the detectives rated the profile as 'highly accurate.' And yet this supposed discipline remains enormously popular, both with the public and with many cops.
"My point was (and remains) that religion is fundamentally and admittedly NOT forward-looking (hence my tirade against blind ancestor worship) and definitely NOT self-correcting (to fix something you have to first admit to yourself that it's broken - something that religion is not built for). Biases in science do exist but must of necessity bow before evidence."
My point in bringing up Einstein was not that people refused to believe him until there was evidence supporting his conjecture--contrarily, even AFTER eclipse observations showed the bending of light by gravity, there were physicists who refused to break with the old ideas. Einstein himself never accepted quantum mechanics, despite a preponderance of experimental evidence in support of it. Which speaks precisely to MY point: science as an institution is forward-looking and self-correcting, but as practiced by humans, there will still be instances of bias and 'ancestor worship.' And of course, once the new 'truth' has supplanted the old, it's easy to look back and laugh at the naivetee of those who ignored the 'evidence' in favor of 'dogma.'
And while it may be true that no individual religion is self-correcting (i.e., don't expect the Pope to issue any amendments to the Sermon on the Mount), I would argue that religion, as a phenomenon, is self-correcting. What would you call Martin Luther's reformation other than an attempt to 'correct' a set of 'incorrect' beliefs? Or take Jesus, who stated that he came not to destroy the old laws, but to fulfill the covenant they described. Or take Islam, which recognizes both Jesus and Moses as prophets who didn't quite get the message correct (which is why it fell to Muhammad to straighten us out). To me this represents an iterative process by which new beliefs arise to address the failings of the old ones. Unlike science, none of these things may represent objective, provable truths,but I guess that really depends on the depth of your faith, as I know plenty of religious folks who swear they see proof of God's existence in every sunrise or maple tree.
That loud wooshing noise you hear is the sound of the joke whipping over your head.