I am not going to be the least bit polite to you in this post. Racism doesn't deserve gentle words. If you're reading this, it's because either I or one of my readers caught you saying something racist, but also because you said it in such a fucking casual manner. Polite language isn't going to grab your attention or force you to look in the mirror. I also think some of my fellow skeptics could use a bit of a nudge to pay attention to this sort of thing. It's sad that many of us have just gotten used to your brand of casual racism and/or gotten too tired to point it out."Eastern" people are not almond-eyed gods with wisdom beyond our "Western" understanding. They are human just like the rest of us, and thus they are subject to the same cognitive failings we are. I don't care how fucking long they've been using some herb or poking a particular spot with needles. The invisible hand of the market isn't that great at figuring out what medicines work. That's why we "Westerners" insist on rigorous, transparent safety and efficacy trials for medicine.
The only reason people like me place any trust at all in the local pharmacy is because we have all sorts of organizations keeping the manufacturers in check. We support the existence of regulations that force people to test medical claims before they unleash their product on the market.
Some people, most likely including you, dear racist, seem to think that "Eastern" people are just so magical and so wise that they are immune to the failings of us mere mortals. Because you think this, you can just trust the blind market traditions. Human perception is flawed, regardless of what part of the globe that human was born in. Because human perception is flawed, all sorts of bad and useless superstitions can persist over long periods of time.
I have little reason to doubt that there have been useful treatments to come from that region of the world, despite what your Big Placebo indoctrination would say. Just by sheer coincidence, there's bound to be some useful treatments out of any culture group. Of course, there's also going to be lots and lots of useless and harmful treatments as well. Remember the first emperor of China? Acute mercury poisoning by his alchemists. Why mercury? Because mercury dissolves the "immortal" metal of gold, and supposedly that's supposed to extend life because Ancient Chinese Tradition or whatever says the human body is like an ingot of gold. Even if I got that wrong, I doubt the actual answer makes better sense.
What we are demanding isn't a "Western" standard, it's a human standard. It's your fucking racism that makes you label it "Western." One of the chief premises behind science is that people are fallible, thus we undergo all those trials, retesting, verification, and statistical analysis so that we can be sure that it's more likely the force in question doing the work than our capacity to deceive ourselves.
But racist assholes like you don't want complex stories or the uncertainty of noisy data. You want superhuman god-men to look up to and obey, and ooooo! the East is so exotic and mysterious! They must be somehow fundamentally better than the boring old West.
That's how you come across when you say that "Western" standards can't measure "Eastern" things, as if the historical accident that caused modern scientific thought take its first steps on one location instead of another somehow magically contaminates the very concept of inquiry. Good science involves making the "who" of the experimenter completely irrelevant. Authoritarian epistemology does the opposite: Trust the authority because it's an authority, and it's an authority because it says so.
I don't trust the guys in lab coats because they have lab coats. I trust them because they're being forced by scientific insistence on rigor, peer reviewers, consumer protection laws, and government organizations to show their work as thoroughly and unambiguously as nature will allow. The "authority" is in the work, not the person. There are no gurus or priests, only the answers nature gives us when we take the time to ask the question properly.
So don't give us any more shit about how superhuman some people on a particular half of the globe are. Everyone is fallible, therefore every idea should be equally open to scrutiny. Race and nationality are not free passes.
Very sincerely,
Bronze Dog.
19 comments:
You're right BD, I hear this so often I forget the ethnic prejudice that goes along with it.
They almost certainly don't even know they're doing it. And if they do, they're piles of shit to begin with.
And the reason that the Invisible Hand doesn't work here is that markets do not generate accurate information (well, some do, but they're exceptions) they satisfy preferences. If people want placebos with feel good vibes overlaid, the market will provide them. In abundance.
Markets are not magic. They are institutions, powerful but human. Many human failings become market failings. Of course this is true of all human institutions, including government.
This reminds of how the people who believe that the Nazca Lines were created by aliens are considered incredibly racist in Peru, because of the unspoken assumption that Peruvians don't have what it takes to make big impressive things.
This whole eastern knowledge thing is similar, like people in Asia can't handle science so they have to use magic instead. Utter rubbish, and pernicious and dangerous to boot.
Valhar -
I live on the West coast - home of the Spiritualist freak show - and it's hilarious how many people I encounter who think every frikkin' philosopher and religious figure is an alien. Because, you know, mere humans couldn't do a thing like that...
The racist assumption is clear, even if it's a "reverse racist" compliment. However, there's a hidden insult outside of "they are different" I think gets overlooked. By saying Asian people are using a completely different thinking "paradigm" that's just plain better at finding answers, they're implying that they are incapable of thinking "western" style. Not just that they do things differently, but that our way of thinking is just as impossible for them to contemplate as their assumed way of thinking is to us. It's racism pure and simple, even if it's now a "separate but equal" form of racism. Making as big a deal as you are about it here may be "dickish" as the latest meme would have it, but I can't think of a better way to get it out in the public consciousness than by hammering the point home.
The "invisible hand" always sounds like a sort of god to me. Personally I think markets are great at one task. It's the absolute best way to find out what people WANT, that is, what they are willing to pay for. It's also the best way of finding out how much they're willing to pay for it. The existence of a free market is far more efficient at that and is better than any other system I can think of at that. It's what enables people to start up businesses and start turning profits as fast as it can on it's best days. However, the limit is that what they WANT may not work. The market does not, in spite of Ayn Rand's claims, make people honest. It also does not insure that people will think of things long term. Time and again huge companies put their entire fortunes on incredibly short sighted immediate money gains ignoring the dead end just around the corner. Ayn Rand objectivists compare evolution to their market ideal all the time, and they're right, but the fact is, evolution is a poor model for how to live your life. A species can evolve itself into a corner and die out just as easily as it can evolve into a vast group like beetles. Lions can get an incredible advantage over gazelles one day in the distant future, and nothing will stop them from going extinct. The choice every lion will have to make is "do I kill a little more than I need, or do I not?", and the answer every time is that the ones that kill as much as they can will always be better off in terms of making that next generation than the ones that don't. In the long run, they'll drive their food supply into extinction and they'll follow, but evolution can't take "dips" like that to reach a long term solution. The market is the same way. In it's own way, it's great at many things, but it isn't an all knowing god.
Speaking of spiritualism, I have had some encounters with one particular person who has shared, unbidden by me, all manner of strange beliefs she has about the world. I never once try to engage this individual. The latest one was a real killer though. This person, knowing that I was a bit of a techy, decided to bring up fiber optics and how amazing that technology is. Had I only known I would have changed the subject... The claim next made was stunning... Fiber optics were stolen from a space craft! I mean, they just showed up out of nowhere in the past couple of decades, and no one thinks to ask where they came from right? This person had seen a shown on the "History Channel" describing this. It was all totally feasible! Yeah, fiber optics are scraped up from alien craft! Right, it's Perfect Dark. This person then, with all the sureness of someone convinced of their rightness, ask me what I thought, if I could even name the inventor, it HAD to be true, because well if THEY couldn't think of anyone that laid claim to invention... Further, it was claimed that fiber optic technology is "barely understood", that no one knows how it actually works.
My only response was to immediately, as I was on my laptop at the time, pull up Wikipedia and look it up. This thought had never occurred to this particular nut. Oh no, the History Channel's bizarre shows fitting a preconceived notion of the world to this person was more than enough.
The Wikipedia article, here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiber_optics , says as follows: Fiber optics, though used extensively in the modern world, is a fairly simple and old technology. Guiding of light by refraction, the principle that makes fiber optics possible, was first demonstrated by Daniel Colladon and Jacques Babinet in Paris in the early 1840s. John Tyndall included a demonstration of it in his public lectures in London a dozen years later.[1] Tyndall also wrote about the property of total internal reflection in an introductory book about the nature of light in 1870: "When the light passes from air into water, the refracted ray is bent towards the perpendicular... When the ray passes from water to air it is bent from the perpendicular... If the angle which the ray in water encloses with the perpendicular to the surface be greater than 48 degrees, the ray will not quit the water at all: it will be totally reflected at the surface.... The angle which marks the limit where total reflection begins is called the limiting angle of the medium. For water this angle is 48°27', for flint glass it is 38°41', while for diamond it is 23°42'."
In other words, the basic concepts were not only fully understood, but had been for over a century. I actually responded like I was humoring this individual as I said "Let's see here what we can find", and just read the article aloud. The response, after a few seconds, was very strong. Complete denial that what I was reading could be right at all, it was unbelievable! That's silly! I kept reading further about the specific way it works, and this was enough to end the discussion, as this person walked off in a huff of disbelief.
The whole incident was stunning. I've tried, as you can tell from somewhat awkward phrasing, to completely hide the identity of the person involved. I was told later I shouldn't have "gotten in a debate" with that person. I've often been told that. Honestly, I never would have brought it up, but I had no idea how to respond. It was all I could do not to laugh at the absurdity of it all or be offended at the suggestion that, basically, this person knew more about my hobby from one hour of pseudo-historical nonsense than I had from working with it my whole life. I honestly had no easy way to get out of it. I could have said "oh that's interesting" but ever since becoming a skeptic that way of handling such nonsense feels like a cheat to me. I could have just ignored it, but that seems far more rude than actually just trying to have a conversation with someone clearly directly addressing me. If I was rude here, all I can think is there was no reasonable alternative given how it all started. And yes, this person is someone I run into fairly often, and this is just one of the multitude of bizarre beliefs I get subjected to.
Oooone more thing!
It's of note that the scientific community in first world asian countries work by the same rigorous scientific standards as "the west", and there's plenty of them that shake their heads at the multitude of nonsense there. Further, recently I had my suspicions confirmed that there are those in Japan, at least, who view certain bizarre alt-meds of western origins with the same mystical air of "foreign brilliance" that people over here view their nonsense with. Specifically, Japanese medical authorities noted a recently imported phenomenon on the rise with "homeopathy", the western nonsense of choice, which had started getting people who needed good medication killed by the fact they wasted their time with homeopathy instead of valid medicine. They actually outlawed the use of such "medicine" as a claimed treatment of anything. It's purely a "for fun" thing if anything now. I'm sure there's similar apologists there claiming that they just don't understand the deep wisdom of the west, and it's just as racist.
http://www.livescience.com/health/homeopathy-treatments-dangers-placebo-effects-100901.html
Further, it was claimed that fiber optic technology is "barely understood", that no one knows how it actually works.
Good grief... I did my sixth-year (12th grade to you guys I think?) physics project on bending losses in multimode optical fibres. This shit is pretty well understood.
Don't hold back, BD, tell us how you really feel :)
Righteous rant, and something I'm dealing with right now in a history classes right now. Apparently, the fact that the powerful used "science" to justify racism/sexism means that the scientific method is useless. I wish I was kidding.
[DM ramble deleted]
Whee. DM agrees with the Ratzi's deliberate lies about the Nazis being atheists. Read a real history book, DM. Heck, just read what Hitler actually said.
Of course, any idiot should be able to tell that modern atheists in no way, shape, or form, resemble Nazis. We hate eugenics not just because it's immoral, but it's stupid, too. Evolution has taught us that genetic diversity is a hedge against extinction, and eugenics cuts down on genetic diversity.
Of course, that's probably one of many reasons Hitler had The Origin of Species on his list for all the book burnings.
Not only that, but eugenics doesn't work. You can't know that you should stop someone from reproducing until...after they've reproduced. Unless you're open to genocide, I don't see that as a very successful program.
We did a segment on eugenics in one of my anthropology classes and they got around that little problem by just assuming certain things were true, things like "Stupid people will have stupid children," and "Violent people will have violent children," and then they'd forcibly sterilize the people they had a priori decided they didn't want to reproduce.
Good times.
NEW GAME WITH YOU LITTLE F*CKERS - SPEAK N DIE. Come see the latest DM videos for your viewing pleasure!
the WORLD TRADE CENTER PROPHECY - THE DANCE OF DEATH
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0Hez25fFrg
http://media.depechemode.com/micro_sites/remasters/gr/wallpaper/violator_8_640.jpg
_______________
And the Pope is 100% correct: The Nazis and the atheists both wish to ABOLISH FAITH....
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11332515
________________________
hawking is WRONG
science cannot explain NOTHING!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMRJJcfEXls&
FAIR AND BALANCED!
________________
http://dissidentphilosophy.lifediscussion.net/philosophy-f1/the-boobquake-911-t1310.htm
Speak and die? That's not really a game so much as a threat isn't it? This really wasn't a post about religion, but whatever.
Check your history by the way. The nazis used religious symbols and messages to justify themselves all the time. You'd be better off claiming Stalin as a tyrannical atheist, better off, but still completely irrational about it.
So...
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/10/dennis_markuze_exposed.php
That's what the DM meant. I wasn't aware this fellow had spread so far. So someone pulled a fire alarm and this guy comes running along?
Huh...
So anyway DM, since you appear to be exactly the same person running around with all this stuff, how about changing the way we discuss things? So far you've tried the same tactic over and over again, with no results. I'd be more open to simply stating what your position is. You're angry, I understand that, heck we all do at this point. There's no reason for death threats any more is there?
Oh, I'd check up on that Hawking fellow. What's he's saying is there's a strong theoretical explanation for how the big bang occurred, a "something from nothing". Not to make your arguments for you, but you can still argue that there's no current explanation for why the laws of physics themselves exist. However, I'd say the physicists working on these sorts of things are probably pretty reliable. "Nothing" isn't really nothing, for example, at least the stereotypical "empty void of space" nothing.
Also, your wording leads to a rather funny misinterpretation. "Science can't explain nothing" seems funny because it sounds like asking science to explain nonexistence itself. Yeah I know what you really meant, but it's rather oddly worded.
DJ - you do realise that DM is genuinely mentally ill, and that you've literally got as much chance of meaningful discussion with a rock, right?
He might as well be a spambot, except spambots usually fare better on the Turing test...
I wasn't fully aware of that, no. At any rate, I figured it was worth it just to say I tried.
Here's a relevant article at Cracked:
http://www.cracked.com/article_18821_5-examples-americans-thinking-foreign-people-are-magic.html
Ahh, Cracked. One of the best sites on the 'net.
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