Rights versus Stupidity

There seems to be a pretty major misunderstanding in the US about the definition of a "right." Especially when it comes to the ones outlined in the Bill of Rights. I'm sure it is some extension of privilege in general, but it still amazes me how fast some people come up with new ways to completely ignore the actual meaning of a given right.

Jezebel has an article about how yet another business owned by evangelicals mistakes their "right" to the free practice of religion to be the right to impose said religion on their employees. Employers around the country have jumped on this one, thinking that somehow being forced to pay for medical related fees such as birth control is infringing on their right to believe in magical sky fairies. The logical process is right out of your standard privileged dumbass handbook, like when white folks complain that PoCs can now like, get jobs and stuff they must be infringing on said white folks rights - to be better than the PoCs. I am against even blatantly church related jobs being exempt, like preachers and nuns, but the general consensus in law is that employers and schools and others cannot deny some right to their employees or students because they feel like they don't have to. The same way tax dodgers don't get off because they feel like they don't owe taxes, religious people and institutions can't discriminate because they want to. If we could ignore the law or other people's rights because we felt like it then no one would actually have rights.

Another favorite of mine is free speech. Poke around the internet for a bit and you can find comments sections and Facebook posts where someone says something stupid, offensive or just plain awful and someone else corrects or bans them. Cue complaints about free speech and violations thereof. It is as if they don't know the difference between a blog and a government. Or that they don't have some right to be free from critique. Not only is it the critics right to free speech being exercised when they blast a moron, it is a forum owner or blog writer's free speech to ban a commenter. No one has a right to be published in any arena they feel like and once again the right doesn't only apply to the whiniest people.

These privileged idiots love to blather about their first, and second, amendment rights all while ignoring other people's same claim to the rights. They love to pretend a right is absolute to the point of infringing on other's rights. They love their privilege and think getting their way is a right. I have gotten to the point where I just want to slap them with a dictionary, a big heavy one like the OED or something. I doubt it would do much, though, since they already live in their own little world.

Logic Priest

STEM Fields and Mental Elasticity

One thing I have noticed by spending time in and around academia is a certain predisposition of personalities within broad sets of majors and fields. This isn't to say you can say all biology majors are going to be x or y, since that is a fallacy of composition, but in general I have noticed features shared in common among those in a given grouping of majors.

Stem includes a few major separations with large gray areas. Firstly I would say you have the theoreticians. These are those whose work differs from philosophy only in how rigorous the work actually is. They use the rules of logic to build complex sets of algorithms that can be used by other fields but are often sought for their own sake. People such as mathematicians and many computer scientists spend most of their time thinking abstractly, separated from the physical world's ills and limitations. They seek relationships and algorithms and create frameworks necessary for the rest of science to work.

These individuals, in my experience both in person and reading the things they write, seem to be intelligent and very good at abstract thinking. They can construct beautiful algorithms and see relationships between things that most would never think of, much less be able to describe. The downside to such abstract thought, however, seems to be a certain affinity for abstracting reality a bit too far. To these people the relationships can take on meaning of their own accord, regardless of any application or evidence. They buy into crank hypothesis with little to no real world backing, like mind uploading and the AI singularity. Mathematicians sometimes like to think their pet numerical relationship has meaning beyond the numbers, despite evidence to the contrary. Logicians and rationalists, this group sometimes likes to over simplify the world into an abstract algorithm, since most of what they do is abstract and give general cases for things. They end up thinking they can use logic with no premises to describe all of reality.

The opposite end of these rationalists are the pragmatists who strongly populate the fields of engineering. Studies have shown that those who have engineering degrees are more conservative than the general populace and far more so than those in the other STEM fields. It is now established that conservatism tends to bear a strong relationship to mental inelasticity and it is easy to see the attraction to a field where much of the work done is the application of established theories. The grunt level of engineering is the reapplication of the same formula over and over again, allowing problem solving without genuinely abstract thought or rational analysis. Conservatives shy from abstract thinking, having a sort of mental laziness or fear of over complex ideas. The natural inclination towards shying from analytical thought may may intelligent but conservative people go into engineering. This way they can avoid anything which could upset their world view or cause them to doubt the simplistic mental constructs they build but still be challenged with problem solving.

The third group could just be called the scientists. This includes, of course, physicists and biologists but it also includes applied mathematicians and computer scientists and research engineers. The main feature of this group is the ability to think abstractly and question everything, something strongly lacking in many engineers, and the grounding in reality necessary to reevaluate their algorithms and hypothesis. These scientists must be willing to experiment and observe, to include new evidence into old abstractions and to discard said abstractions when necessary. Scientists may not lay the groundwork for rational analysis but they are capable of it. This group makes all the discoveries in nature and tends to be the most progressive and self analytical, since having something you work on for years be discarded can give you a fairly flexible outlook on life.

The logicians and theoreticians make it possible to analyze. The scientists use those tools to discover the world. The engineers get shit done, making the tools for the scientists and creating the civilization around us. Many people are in two or even three of these groups, and they are the best balanced, mentally. Abstract thought is good for us all, but practical reason is a necessary temper to it. The ability to apply our discoveries is the basis of all we have built, but being able to think critically is just as urgent. Ideally scientists could learn from engineers and logicians from scientists, and engineers could apply the reason of scientists and logicians.

Logic Priest

Opportunities

There is nothing wrong with taking advantage of opportunities that present themselves, but sometimes it goes too far. The Family Research Council was the target of a failed attack the other day, and now they are using this to claim the Southern Poverty Law Center, a relatively neutral group, of inciting terrorism. They are claiming this is evidence for their persecution complex, the so called war on christianity by some nebulous liberal conspiracy in a country that is mostly Christian and conservative. Most liberals, too are Christians.

And all this is right after the supposed assault on Chick Fil'As free speech by the grave crime of criticism. These people openly call for violence and armed insurrection, then cry the second anything happens to them. Their ideological allies in the violent extremist groups, like the KKK and various Neo Nazi groups, constantly attack abortion clinics and non white people of various religions, but somehow calling Dan Cathy is destroying free speech. Somehow one lone and mentally unhealthy individual is an all out war on the majority they claim to represent. The same people who talk about the death of the president as a good thing claim the incredibly rare violence from left associated people is representative of a liberal violence.

These persecution complex they foster, the fear they foster, the violence they encourage is beyond reasonable discourse and it is becoming clearer every day the only things they can say other than violent rhetoric are parroted from criticisms of them. Read the wording, they seem to copy exactly what people said about the Sikh temple attack, about Gabby Gifford's attack, about any given argument with these people. "I am rubber you are glue" seems to be their best argument these days. Accuse them of fostering a violent culture, they repeat it word for word the first chance they get. Critique them for bigotry, they claim calling them bigots is bigotry. Try to show them their logical fallacies, they accuse you of illogic, though they never back up their rebounded accusations. They claim to be a majority and a persecuted minority. The strange compartmentalized minds are beginning to confuse the hell out of me.

Logic Priest

Crybaby Romney

We as a voting public in the US have grown used to the majority of ads being negative, or attack ads against the other candidate. With the Citizens United decision allowing unchecked corporate money to pay for ads, it has only gotten worse. But at this point anyone involved in the campaign should expect such negativity, yet somehow Romney seems blind to his hypocritical moaning and crying over attack ads. Now he claims Obama is "running on hate," something I find more than a bit hilarious. Both Obama and Romney ads are mostly attack ads, and both stretch and bend the truth to some degree to shine a negative light on their opponent, but Romney has by far outspent on negative ads and his ads are less stretches of the truth and more pulled out of his ass lies. For example, the CBO (congressional budget office, a bipartisan committee) said that the repeal of the Affordable Care Act (obamacare) would raise the cost of medicare some $700,000,000. Seven hundred billion dollars. Somehow, Romney claimed that this meant Obama had removed that much from medicare, using something I like to call conservative math, also known as bullshit. See below:

Knowing it would face attacks on Ryan's Medicare proposal, the Romney campaign counterpunched Tuesday with a new ad accusing Obama of cutting more than $700 billion from the popular entitlement program.

Romney continued that tone Wednesday, saying in a morning interview with CBS that the Obama campaign is "about division and attack and hatred," adding it is "designed to bring a sense of enmity and jealously and anger."

"The president seems to be running to hang on to power," the former Massachusetts governor said. "I think he'll do anything in his power to try and get re-elected."

A spokesman for the Obama campaign responded to similar comments by Romney on Tuesday by saying the Republican candidate also had gone negative in the campaign.

"Gov. Romney's comments tonight seemed unhinged, and particularly strange coming at a time when he's pouring tens of millions of dollars into negative ads that are demonstrably false," said Obama campaign Press Secretary Ben LaBolt.

After a blatant lie, Romney has the balls to say Obama is a big meanie. After implying Obama is un-American, after deliberately misquoting him and the CBO, after pulling lies from thin air, Romney dares say the Obama campaign is mean. LaBolt's quote, above, seems to sum it up perfectly. Romney has become unhinged. He is so absorbed by his own little GOP/Fox media machine that he cannot handle critique in an election season. And this is common to the whole Republican party, apparently. On CNN, of all places, a reporter did her job for once. She actually called out a GOP talking head for blatantly lying, and he freaked and called her an Obama drone.

It seems the conservatives in the US have gotten to cozy with owning an arm of the media and with no one being willing to call their bullshit. Finally we have a Democratic politician fighting mud with mud, not necessarily the best thing but better than lying back on the defensive. Besides, at least a good portion of the Obama ads are true, compared to the Romney ads I have seen which seem universally false. Obama has disappointed me on 4th amendment issues and copyright/patent laws, but when the choice is between an oligarch who sells out to corporate interests and a blatant corporate puppet, I suppose the one who is pro gay rights and pro regulation (somewhat) is better?

Logic Priest

Pushing the Blame

Mitt Romney and the Republican party have recently taken to demonizing the half that "don't pay taxes" in the US. Besides ignoring payroll, Social Security, sales and property taxes, this doesn't mean much since that half doesn't make much. Income inequality is so bad right now that the top ten percent own nearly all the wealth earned, even more so when counting disposable (as in not debt based) income. Now we can see that they, in turn, pay far less. In an article on the New York Times website, the wealthiest Americans pay far lower than the rest of us. Partly due to capital gains maxing out at 15%, partly from tax shelters and deductions, even in bad years the wealthy make money. In 2009, for example, the richest 400 paid little to even zero in taxes, using quirks of the system obviously designed for them to exploit:

The data show that the ultrarich typically pay low tax rates every year, but 2009 was a special case. In 2008, people with large stock portfolios and other less liquid assets were disproportionately hit with large losses on paper. One of the oddities of the tax code is that capital gains taxes are discretionary, since they must be paid only when gains are realized. And they can be offset by losses. The silver lining in a bad year like 2008 for wealthy people is that they can “harvest” losses by selling assets, then use those losses to offset any gains. They can also carry forward the losses to offset gains in future years.

Apparently the ones who actually have money are the ones avoiding the taxes. Romney himself reportedly only paid 13.6% or so, under the rate that people considered in poverty by the US government pay, which is 15% or so. The ones who pay the highest percent are the middle class, and while true the wealthy pay the most in taxes by amount, they disproportionately make the most money to begin with. Demonizing these imaginary welfare queens and lazy poor people is beyond dishonest. The so called half who don't pay taxes work over 40 hours a week to afford housing and food, yet the Republicans dare to claim they don't pay their fare share? The exact people demonizing the poor pay less in taxes by amount earned than they do, and they will never even use that much money. When you live paycheck to paycheck, any amount paid is a big deal, but when you hold millions in secret accounts how much does it hurt you to pay some out for social programs?

The best, most ironic part is that a good portion of these bottom 50% people will go to the polls and vote for the people who rob them and blame them for it. They will show up and yell about Obama ruining the country with welfare and go collect their food stamps and Social Security checks. They will complain about the lazy poor (Read: black people/immigrants "others") while being poor. Tragic irony.

Logic Priest

A New Identity for Rational Empiricism

In my mind there seems only one basic, moral conclusion from skepticism and rational empiricism or even atheism. As a human, I should care about humanity's well being. The best way to do this, from the evidence and from the logic that there is no good reason not to, is to allow the best spread of privilege and equality possible at a given time.

This is not to say communism or some such, this is about rights and opportunities. One of the biggest holes in various "rational" movements, or even civil rights movements, is an inherent selfishness and blindness from privilege. The defensive nature of people like DJ Grothe when confronted with a sexual harassment issue, or when certain feminists are confronted by trans people, among others (many, many others), is a betrayal of rationalism. This isn't a No True Scotsman thing, either, but about the principles these people claim to hold and then immediately fail to live out.

A current, horrifying example is over at Freethought blogs where a short lived member invited from youtube, thunderfoot, is running amok. He was expelled after showing himself to be sexist, petty and abusive of his fellow bloggers, and has not gotten over it sense. Apparently he is now threatening to reveal personal emails and identities of bloggers over there, many of whom write under pseudonyms like me, but for their protection. People like Natalie Reed and Zinnia Jones and Taslima, who could be genuinely hurt if their identities or addresses were revealed. Thunderfoot is being a petty asshole, and he is part of an increasing number of awful people associated with the skeptical and atheist "communities." I am increasingly uneasy associating with those terms now, although I am an atheist and skeptic, I really don't want to be mixed up with a bunch of petty, selfish and defensive people in the same type of denial that theists always are.

These people only embrace skepticism as a way to feel smarter than theists, but they really have far more in common with the religious than they do with genuinely rationalist people. At its heart, rationalism is based around the idea that you can be wrong. Passionate defense of your ideas is great, and certain things are foregone conclusions (no god, etc) but if your only defense is accusations that your opponent is radical or playing victim, fuck you. No punches to be held back, if a woman says she felt unsafe and someone's response is to accuse them of being dramatic, fuck them. If a trans says they identify with being X gender and some self identified feminist claims they don't mean it because blah blah gender isn't real, fuck them. I don't care what movement someone claims to be in, if they are wrong, if they are supporting irrational beliefs and refuse to even think they could be wrong, they can fuck off and go hang out with the god botherers.

We need a new group, a new movement that is there to make humanity better. Atheism is a label merely saying you don't believe in god. Good for us, we don't believe an obvious fairy tale. Skepticism is vague, not really describing any sort of goal. Great for them, but why bother if you don't care about results? Feminism is a bit better, at least subscribing to some goal, but I know of too many who are transphobic and the same goes for many LGB rights people, ignoring the trans, gender fluid, and even the bisexuals sometimes. We need something new, something with these elements but a clearer goal. We need a movement whose goal is to accept being wrong, a movement that strives for the best results for humanity as a whole. It needs to expel cultural artifacts that cannot be defended with logic and evidence, it needs to finally unroot itself from a history of religious thinking and patriarchy. We need something for the new generation, with its sights set higher than merely getting slightly better for a specific group.

We need a movement where atheism is just a fact, not a purpose, and where rational thought is applied to all things, not just pet issues. The only real focus is on humanity, and making it better. Science makes it better, equality makes it better, knowing about the world makes it better, and admitting you are wrong makes it better. Anyone can be wrong, though as a side note this doesn't mean repeated arguments sans proof should be considered. Any good argument (by the definition of good in logic, not personal preference) must be considered.

We need this movement because it is too easy to identify and claim membership to broad labels with no meaning beyond a coincidental conclusion that obvious things are wrong, like god or magic tricks or alternative meds. One that Objectivists and libertarians would shy from, one that would make MRAs angry to think about, one that makes those whose rights are threatened feel welcome and one that is willing to be wrong and correct itself. One that argues passionately within itself and can then move on with the correct, or at least better conclusions. One where pettiness is a disqualified. One where a violation of trust is grounds for expulsion and one where we can rely on each other to have the same broad goals, not the same random conclusion about life.

We, not the atheists and skeptics but we, humanity need this group to help push us forward. Humanity won't last without these elements of thought being combined.

Logic Priest

Funny Ends to Arguments

Human beings suck at being wrong. We have a lot of psychological baggage preventing us from gracefully accepting defeat in an argument, probably due to the negative consequences, socially in our distant past. We have built many forms of proper debate and argument to supposedly work around this, and all of science is really built specifically to alleviate this. But even scientists can become attached, and can become petty in their defense of wrong hypothesis. This all leads to rather sad, pathetic attempts to recoup a loss. What follows are the funniest.

1: "I'm done with you/this" or "I'm going to be the bigger man and (last wordism)" etc-
      This one would be fine if the argument had no clear answer, such as a topic with no evidence on either side yet, or one based purely on opinion. The problem is that it is often used to get the last word, where someone will say it a dozen times, failing to actually stop responding.

2: Ad hominems in general. They often take roundabout forms like "I make money/have a girlfriend" or "go get a life/real job/girlfriend" (financial and sexual assumptions abound).

3: My personal favorite, always make me laugh my ass off "I can do what I want/free country/freedom of speech/etc". This one is a really childish way of admitting you are wrong. If you cannot argue or leave peacefully (actually stopping is fine if it becomes annoying or stupid) but must withdraw to "I am allowed to be wrong" then you lose. End of story. I run into it constantly on Facebook and internet forums. One person keeps making points, good or bad, until the other, failing to have a counter argument says they are free to keep saying or doing or believing whatever, which was never the argument in the first place. They believe they have some freedom from critique, rather than the basic freedom to be stupid. Common in religious arguments or in anything with high emotional content, but it appears in other places. A good example from today, personally:

 I criticized someone for typing an illegible comment on a friends Facebook post. They replied claiming I had no life or money or something (it really was very hard to read). I pointed out that no one speaks the way he writes and that it isn't a matter of grammar or misspelled words, but deliberate obfuscation of his writing. Communication is about passing ideas, and erecting artificial barriers (such as uncommon spellings of words, randomly dropped vowels and word substitution) was just stupid. He then responded that he is a grown up (ok odd) and was allowed to type how he wanted.

The point obviously was some minor irritant of mine, nothing of real importance, but the fact that he retreated into being "allowed" because he was a grown up to type any way he pleased didn't really mean much. He had exactly zero points in his defense, he only threw ad hominems and retreated into his right to be wrong. Fine. Be wrong, but don't expect the rest of us to be silent about it.

Logic Priest

Magic Words, Part 2

Another example of magic words is in law. Law is all about interpretation of words, either as written laws or prior rulings, but there is an entire movement out there whose entire existence is based around the idea that if they cut words out of context and assert hard enough they get to re-invent their own legal system. There was some nutter claiming conservatives could re-interpret the SCOTUS decision about the Affordable Care Act since SCOTUS could interpret the constitution, since the word interpret appears in both clauses.

More entertaining, or dangerous, depending on if they like guns or not, are the 'Sovereign Citizens.' Or 'Freemen' or whichever name they go by this generation. Normally these are just tax evaders claiming that since they 'don't agree' with some part of the social contract they are free from its laws and, more importantly, taxes. Now they of course fail to realize their entire lives depend on this same contract, but that is the least of their issues.

Once again they are a group who cling desperately to magical words. Calling the government a corporations etc somehow makes it different? Really, just read over what they claim. http://freethoughtblogs.com/dispatches/2012/07/17/americas-shadow-government/

Logic Priest

Argumentem ad infinitum

Very miniature post.

When arguing with theologians, apologists philosophers, bible thumpin' preachers, new age hippies or anyone else who likes to claim they can 'prove' the existence of this or that magical thing, keep in mind that you must agree on the premises to start. I always make sure the premises are very, very clear and spelled out. I never let my opponent start his argument until these basics are settled.

Some wonderful examples come from Christian apologetics. All of Aquinas's 'Five Ways' start with premises I and any materialist, humanist, rationalist or empirical rationalist would instantly disagree with, making anything that follows pointless. They all begin with the basic premise that you must have a first of everything, but somehow that first can be exempt and must therefore be a thinking being called God. This is both the premise and the conclusion, and if we shut down the premise we don't have to deal with the painful tautological and circular shouting logic.

Another favorite is of course the ontological argument, in it's myriad forms. It depends entirely on no one paying attention to the premise. It quietly offers a (very fuzzy) definition of perfection, then tacking on the idea that existence is in itself a quality of something and fails to even mention these two points. Many long and quite eloquent deconstructions and defenses of the ontological argument exist, but they can be entirely avoided if we simply refuse to allow the poorly thought out and fanciful premises.

None of this means you can just be disagreeable or ignore reasonable premises, but it is a good way to kill many arguments. The premises must be agreeable, they must make sense from either earlier arguments, evidence, or they must be self evident in the simplest way. Otherwise no amount of argument will decide anything.

For those of you trying to prove some god or another, don't whip out arguments without stating your premises clearly. If you try to gloss over them you can't win, you can only bully.

Logic Priest

Magic Words

One of my many academic and philosophical interests is language. Not in the sense of literature, but in the sense of linguistics, the study of language and it's psychology. We have been speaking, as a species,  for far longer than we have been writing or building cities. Language is what enabled the construction of abstract ideas, and it is an integral part of not just human culture, but our physiology.

All children are naturally talented at learning languages. Under a certain age, usually set around 12 by most linguists, you can drop them into a group of anyone and they will learn the language, or even invent a fully featured new one. Language is built into the structure of our brains, and if we are cut off our brains don't develop. Linguistics is a broad field of study now, finally coming into the respect of other sciences since its revolution by Noam Chomsky.

For more on it, the Wiki has good information on linguistics. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistics

This isn't really about linguistics though. While fascinating, it is tangential to my point in this post. A side effect of language being so integral to our thought is a tendency to put more weight on the words themselves. You see this in everyday usage, with 'curse' words making people genuinely upset. Almost every culture has at least an historical trope about powerful words, with things like names having some innate, magical connection to the object or person in question.

From this obsession with words, with labeling, we as a species have developed a unique hole in our reasoning ability. When we label something, we assign the label's properties to it. We believe we can define things, and should they contain similarities to other words, we then assign the related properties to it.

Many  of the favorite arguments of the religious involve such word play. A short, and by no means comprehensive list follows:

1. Creation requires a creator - this one is obvious. They label the universe creation, then make the false connection to a related word. Aside from their own arbitrary label, words sharing a root don't logically follow that they must share a relation.

2. God is perfect, and the most perfect being must exist as a quality of perfection. This one is actually a quite high end theological argument, perhaps belying the inherent issues in the entire field of theology. Arbitrarily labeling a hypothetical being as 'perfect' and proceeding to define perfection however you see fit has no effect on reality.

3. God is (insert emotion/vague concept here). Such as the Christian apologetic "God is Love." This is another attempt to define a being into existence. More liberal religious theologians spend a lot of tie denying the human like god of the Bible and try to claim god is some vague emotion or concept. Like the perfection argument, this one is an arbitrary redefinition of a word with the intent of controlling reality.

A recent example: The discovery of the Higgs Boson 'god' particle. Because of its nickname there are many Christian pundits and bloggers and everyday people claiming it proves the existence of god. Because of its nickname.

But this magical words phenomenon is not limited to theologians and under educated theists. I've read works from otherwise brilliant logicians abuse this notion as well. They fail to catch their own circular logic simply because of names. This is, in fact where the notion of defining perfection equals god exists came from. This is the entire basis of the Ontological Argument. It has been refuted time and again by philosophers such as Kant, who point out that existence isn't really a property, but this is just shorthand for the fact that defining something doesn't make it true. Wordplay and hypothetical logic are fun and all, but they don't really affect reality. The universe doesn't much care that you can define it to be the science project of an old, bearded white man in the sky.

Back to non-theistic logicians now. Philosophers of such a logic bent seem to enjoy similar wordplay to the theologians. Starting with any type of premise they often claim they can prove anything. Many of the logic puzzles taught in discrete math classes are really just terrible plays on words. Now this is not to say logic is poorly constructed, merely that many of its biggest fans don't quite grasp the purely hypothetical nature of any given logical construct. Without genuine input, defining your premises however you please is mental masturbation.

For one of the best treatments of logic and truth in a reality based way, see Bertrand Russell's "The Problems of Philosophy" where one of the greatest philosophers of all time explains just how pure philosophical and logical reasoning tend to fail alone.