A Very Silly Show

During a recent visit with my folks, my mother was watching a series called NCIS, which apparently was playing "follow the leader" with all the CSI series. I don't know how good the series as a whole is, since I only have a sample of two episodes to go by, and boy was this one a stinker. Funnily enough, it falls into a subject I have taken classes for: Remote Sensing.

So, story involves a guy who worked at radiology at the local hospital, and has security clearance for the radioactive materials involved. He gets shot, and the investigation team finds this odd residue on him. They dig in, and meet up with a US intelligence officer who tells them it's a chemical marker they use to track terrorists by satellite.

Really?

Somehow, these spy satellites can even identify which individual is being tracked.

Seriously?

And tracking is "spotty" indoors.

Only spotty?

And the satellites can track in real time on their monitors, which is how they track the guy (it turns out he wasn't a marked terrorist, just that a paranoid guy who designed the system was marking Americans he considered suspicious with a spray bottle.) when the terrorists who originally shot him steal his head to get past the retinal scanner to pick up the radioactive material.

Anyone who's paid the slightest bit of attention to middle school science should have some decent guesses with what's nonsense about this system.

1. The obvious one: Only geosynchronous satellites can "hover" over an area to monitor it, and outside of a certain zone, the view gets too tilted to be all that useful. Thus, you can't track something in real time by satellite unless you specifically put it in orbit in the general area ahead of time. That lack of mobility would severely limit the utility of a spy satellite.

2. How does the satellite sense the chemical? The chemical would need to generate or reflect some form of electromagnetic radiation. If it generated enough energy to be seen by satellite, it would eventually run out of chemical energy for doing so. And for a small spray of the stuff to be seen from orbit, it would need to generate a LOT of EMR. Additionally, it would have to emit this EMR at some frequency that stands out against all the background noise. Gamma/X-ray radiation? Would poison the terrorist and the people around him, and raise the chemical energy demands straight into nuclear reactions like radioactive decay. Ultraviolet? Would have trouble getting a clear signal out of the atmosphere, much less through the roof of a building. Visible light? Yeah, a glowing spot is going to be unnoticed. Near Infrared? How does the satellite tell the difference between that and plant life?
Middle infrared? Moisture. Far infrared? Would get lost in any heat source, not to mention it'd be a warm spot on the body. Microwaves or Radio waves? It would generate interference with other devices and be lost in the noise of those devices. You might as well start inventing Minovsky particles to explain it.

3. How does it tell one marked target from another, assuming you could get some magical signal? If it's just a chemical, I don't see how you could get it to emit a unique signature unless you tailor made each mixture for each target. Supposedly, you could get around that by telling the system "this spot is terrorist X, and this spot is terrorist Y." and it could track the spots as they change positions over time. But what if X and Y get close to each other? Then their "spots" would blend into one.

This nonsense goes off the deep end of "Big Brother" scenarios. They put a little token objection to the use of this sort of monitoring ability, but it comes across as half-hearted, even with the paranoid control freak, who decides to help them gain access to it to solve the case. This episode was just a wish fulfillment exercise, treating technology as if it were a magic tool that solves problems without any mental effort on the part of the humans. The computers do it all. The computers and satellites will catch the terrorists for us, and the only work we have to do is punch a few buttons instead of, you know, outsmart the people who avoid security for a living.

I'm glad my mother knew enough about science to be embarrassed by the show.

You Know What's Bullshit?

I think to spite Gabriel, I'll try once again to get back to regular blogging. Since it broke his brain to find out that I don't fit any of the stereotypes seen on his sitcoms, I'm going to list a lot of stuff that I consider nonsense, and thought so for most of my adult life. He'll probably return to whine about my disbelief in some other sacred cow of his. So anyway, here goes the list, subject to updates...

Oh, wait. Fair warning: There's a little bit of mild language below the fold. Not a whole lot.

Acupuncture: Bullshit, but not just any bullshit. It's Maoist bullshit, for that double bullshitty taste.

Alien Spacecraft and Abductions: Why would some shitheads from another planet build causality-defying FTL engines and fly a ship all the way over here to investigate our shitholes?

Area 51: The alien story is bullshit. Probably an old air force testing base that may have turned into an illegal waste dump for the government to throw away its really nasty shit. After some officer goofed by denying the place existed, they used the bullshit alien story to bullshit the Communists into wasting intelligence resources investigating the shithouse. And some of their gullible shitheads probably fell for it.

Atlantis: Bullshit that got flushed down the toilet when no one was looking. In fact, they want you to take their word for it that it was ever there.

The Aurora Stealth Aircraft: Possibly bullshit, possibly a development code name for an existing, publicly known aircraft, or possibly a project that got canceled for being shittier than the other stealth aircraft.

Ayurveda: Bullshit, with a hint of arsenic and mercury.

Bigfoot: Bullshit so steamy, all attempts to photograph it end up coming out fuzzy and indistinct.

Communism: Bullshit that stinks so bad, you'll be made into an unperson by The Party if you point it out.

Creationism: The bullshit belief that nothingness randomly shitted out a perfect, complex, sentient god, who made the universe and somehow did a shitty job on designing our eyes, despite allegedly being perfect.

The Crocoduck: Textbook example of bullshit the Creationists should be looking for if they want to be taken seriously. I'm not holding my breath.

Distant Healing: Bullshit you can smell from miles away.

Dragons: Cool bullshit that's fun to pretend to slay with polyhedral dice, but despite Creationists attempts to argue otherwise, are completely bullshit in reality. Besides, dinosaurs are cooler because they were real. Even without the fire breath. We have the fossils. We win.

Fairies: Bullshit that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle believed in because he didn't think it was possible that some girls could cut out pictures and pose for photographs. Therefore, he bullshitted, the fairies, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.

Faith: The bullshit belief that you're an infallible god, thus you can't bullshit yourself, therefore you are right. Period.

The Flood: Bullshit story about a family who somehow rounded up all the animals of the world in a boat. When Flood believers were faced with the logistics of handing all the food and shit for so many animals on such a tiny boat, they made up a bullshit Super-Duper Evolution theory (but decided not to call it that because someone might call them on being inconsistent with their other bullshit) where the animals could super-mutate into multiple species overnight and somehow gain enough genetic diversity to make it look like nothing happened at all. Oh, and some bullshit about land plants being able to live underwater, and salt water magically knowing not to mix with fresh water so as to not kill all the fish.

Hitler, Adolph: Anti-Semite bullshitter Creationist who believed God commanded him to perform eugenics and burn books like The Origin of Species for not buying into his bullshit. Had a line about bullshitting so big, no one would believe someone could bullshit so big without evidence... Which turned out to be bullshit. Inspired by Martin Luther, a guy believed reason was evil because it gave people bullshit detectors, and you can't have that. Adolph entertained bullshit fantasies about joining the Catholic and Protestant churches together, trying to put his religious bullshit into school curricula and mandate state-led prayers in class.

Homeopathy: Bullshit that isn't watered down.

Iridology: You won't believe your eyes when you see this bullshit.

The Loch Ness monster: Bullshit that stinks so bad, you could make a profit from building a tourist trap around the spot where someone allegedly smelled it.

Lysenkoism: Bullshit with Joseph Stalin and Sarah Palin's seals of approval, so you know it's quality bullshit.

McCarthy, Joseph: Bullshitting witch hunter who was inspired by Stalin to save America from Stalin by trying and failing to turn America into an authoritarian Christian Communist State. Got publicly called out on his incompetent, illegal authoritarian bullshit and lost all support. Now, Texas is trying to bullshit us into thinking he's a hero.

Nationalism: Bullshit pretending to be patriotism. Nationalists are happy to let their country go down the toilet and still call it the greatest on Earth and throw feces at anyone who dares to suggest the country isn't as great as it used to be. Patriots actually care enough about their country to get their shit together and work to make their country great.

O'Reilly, Bill: Bullshitter who doesn't know what causes the tides. No, I'm not shitting you. He really doesn't.

Psychics: Bullshitters who often don't realize they're bullshitting you with cold reading and similar shit like that. A bunch of real gullible shitheads in America tried training soldiers in their techniques because the Communists fell for this bullshit, and you just know Communist science can't be bullshit.

Race: Quite often a bullshit excuse self-entitled lazy high school dropouts (it doesn't matter what race they are) use to feel better about themselves for not doing anything and blame The Other for their inability to get a job or an education. Also, with hopefully increasing rarity, a bullshit excuse an employer uses to give special privileges to a high school dropout who looks like his phenotype instead of hiring the guy who can actually do a full day's work to actually earn a full day's pay. Doubly bullshit since blood groups are probably a much better indicator of race than skin color.

Reflexology: Bullshit, freshly stepped in.

Reiki: Bullshit that's not touching you! It's not touching you!

Theraputic Touch: Bullshit that rubs on smooth.

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This is easily the most profane post I have ever written. Want to add your own?

Tabloid Facepalm

Just a small post, hopefully to help me get back into the swing of blogging. I used to strive to average at least a post a day. Anyway, onto an observation:

Yesterday, when I was buying some Dr Pepper bottles I saw a tabloid at the checkout line (I think it was National Enquirer or something like that) with the fake Kenyan Obama birth certificate on the front page. It's bad enough that printed media was writing an article on that hoax, presumably without any reference to the myriad deliberate anachronisms, but it's just sad that they were reacting as if they had just now read about it on their Twitter feed.

...Sounds like what I've seen of Glenn Beck, actually.

Texas, Other Details on DOOMED! Status

From Phil Plait. Something about Joseph McCarthy just pushes my berserk button.

The Historian's Fallacy and Conspiracy Nuts

I've had to deal with a certain phenomenon with conspiracy nuts: When asked for evidence of a conspiracy, they start citing who benefited from the central event. The problem with this, of course, is that benefit does not prove that the person in question planned it. Hindsight is 20/20, but our past selves do not benefit from it. Neither do previous generations.

For one example of the fallacy, many 9/11 twoofers point out how much the Bush administration was able to expand their power and influence after the attack. To someone who thinks governments have a supernatural prescience, this is incriminating evidence. To a more sensible person, this is easily explainable by opportunism, rather than an elaborate conspiracy: They didn't plan it, but they were able to take advantage of it anyway.

People are people, and only have access to certain fields of knowledge. In war history, this is the fog of war: Decision makers don't have instant access to all the relevant information. It could be anything from enemy disinformation to accidentally skipping over a critical bit of a report. Some intelligence agencies prefer not to share information, preventing it from getting to the relevant people in time. This tendency was one of the reasons for the founding of the Central Intelligence Agency in the US. Of course, even with this, government secrets still run the risk of remaining secret to the non-CIA portions of the government.

Large organizations are made up of small parts, namely people, and their means of communication. All too often, conspiracy theorists are unwilling to even think about the difficulties involved in running them. Just because certain information is readily available today does not mean that it was always so. Confusion is, and always has been a part of civilization.

SIWOTI!

I've got a real case of it concerning a member of the Mercury Militia over on one of Akusai's videos.

I've worked up a nice sweat dealing with that troll. I need to take a shower.

Fear

It's one of the key ingredients of woo. Health scares try to convince people that trace amounts of everyday chemicals or life-saving medical practices will irrevocably corrupt your pure body (unless you buy their product). Conspiracy theorists try to convince you that the omnipotent, omniscient government is planning to get you sometime next Tuesday. Religious fanatics invent invisible, allegedly inevitable horrors for your soul if you don't bow down to their arbitrary rules.

Fear and panic fuel poor decision making. Dramatic but improbable threats naturally seize our attention more than simple, everyday risks. The former also tend to have an urgency created about them to discourage a potential victim from thinking things through or performing genuine research. This quite often leads to sloganizing statements to spread the word: Don't think about the topic, just spread the word as fast as you can.

For those who dare question the supposed hazard, sowing distrust is the preferred method: Don't waste time debating the actual details, go straight for the ad hominem, make up connections between them and the eeeee-ville establishment out to get you, and denounce open-mindedness towards evidence as too limited and constrained to handle the issue.

This is what we as skeptics are up against much of the time.

Conspiracy Theories and Logistics

There's a quote in military that I think applies to just about any large-scale goal. It usually goes something like this:

"Amateurs study tactics, veterans study strategy, but masters study logistics."

That's probably why I'm almost always a Worker when I play Fat Princess.

But onto how this relates to conspiracy theories, and something I hope Debra will think about:

Usually, when I hear a conspiracy theory, I try to ask what I consider to be important questions that can be summarized as this: How did they get the resources, and how did they get them to where they needed to be?

If the conspiracy posits some unknown technology, they tend to run into trouble on how science works: The days when a lone scientist could make large breakthroughs is pretty much gone. There's little reason to believe that the government could hire only a handful of scientists and make something the rest of the world working together couldn't. The reason for this is we've gotten some very good broad strokes of how the universe works. The new technology-enabling discoveries we have to work on involve very large undertakings: Huge machines to smash particles together, large clinical trials on drugs to see if they actually have an effect, and so on. Science is a team sport, and whenever you increase the number of people involved, the harder it is to keep it secret.

In other cases, many conspiracy theories posit a government that is perfectly efficient, which is no better than invoking magic as an explanation. There's no reason to believe that the people working for the government or the conspiratorial faction are superhuman: They can make mistakes. They can have their own agendas. Ideally, governments are designed to prevent anyone from having undue influence because of various checks and balances. In reality, this often makes everything the government can do inefficient or incompetent.

The difficulty of any conspiracy increases with the level of secrecy involved: There's always someone who can grow suspicious if resources go missing. Many bureaucrats exist to keep an eye on money supplies and others to keep an eye on the ones keeping an eye on the money. For military supplies, especially nowadays with added fear of terrorism, you'd think someone would notice if a shipment of explosives went missing.

And finally, any large endeavor requires manpower. Every new person added to the conspiracy is a potential security risk. The more people you add, the more likely someone might grow a conscience or a brain and blow the whole thing wide open. Not only that, each new person, even if you could somehow guarantee their loyalty, adds to the number of people who could make a mistake or let something slip out.

Who the Hell is Dr. Silverstein and Why Should I Care?

My apologies for making yet another post for the ongoing troll roast.

When I thought I might get somewhere by asking for clarification on an analogy, Gabe brought up some glurge about an irrelevant professor named "Dr. Silverstein." I'm not particularly motivated to find out if he's a real, stupid person, someone intelligent whose had his views misrepresented, or some conveniently fictional straw man, but I'll press on with burning the straw man he was used for.

I'm against the Disneyfication of history in history classes. Unfortunately, there are a lot of "PC" hippie douches out there who don't want to say anything remotely bad about someone's ancestors, and far too many people who are too milquetoast to shoulder the "controversy" of telling the truth. Yes, there were some great figures in just about every culture, but there was also a lot of barbarism. Humans are all capable of great good and great evil.

The image of Dr. Silverstein, as described by Gabe, is a racist: He wants non-whites Disneyfied, but doesn't want to convey the same "privilege" to whites. I find that sort of thought disgusting, just like I find the Disneyfication of my white ancestors disgusting. Lots of humans did wonderful things, coming from many cultures and races. Those same cultures were brutal and superstitious. The people who were able to discover or invent new things deserve their kudos.

It's only recently, with the Enlightenment, that human brutality is waning (with no shortage of setbacks and obstacles). The ideas that our society is founded upon are not a product of racial genetics, just some people in the right social, economic, and scholastic circumstances getting inspired and successfully promoting those ideas. Freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and the scientific method are not encoded into anyone's DNA. Someone raised in an environment where others share these ideas and pass them onto the next generation will be more likely to prosper.

I'm sure a lot of us as kids went through a phase of being angry over the crimes of someone's ancestors. I imagine some very rare hippie douches never did. It'd be nice if, for example, the European settlers got together with the Indians for a turkey dinner in November and puppy-hugging like in the saccharine Thanksgiving specials, but they didn't.

One of my history professors had a saying: "Nostalgia is the destruction of history." Yes, you can celebrate great figures of the past and their contributions to the world, but don't whine like a hippie douche when someone points out the darker parts. To me, it doesn't matter if you're Gabriel or this Dr. Silverstein. Disneyfying history is wrong, and even more so when you do it selectively.

Doggerel #206: "Toxins"

This honorary Doggerel entry brought to you by YouTuber C0nc0rdance:

Part 1:


Part 2:

[Appeal_to_Ridicule] #5.0: Gabriel, Summarized

Thanks for putting up with this extended troll roast, everyone. And Gabe, before you point out that appeal to ridicule is a fallacy, you should know that ridicule done right can highlight someone else's logical fallacies.

Here's something you should think about, Gabe: I think I've got a pretty good summary about how you respond to arguments. Try doing something different.

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Stimulus: Oh, no! BD's asking for genetic data!

Response A: Change the subject to World of Warcraft and/or Wikipedia! (Thankfully he's at least learned not to do this anymore.)

Response B: Say that genetics is irrelevant, and that it's actually culture, like BD's been arguing, only instead argue that there's some metaphysical "blackness" about the bad parts of the cultures of impoverished nations.

---

Stimulus: Oh, no! BD's pointed out that people are heavily influenced by culture and resources!

Response A: Pretend he didn't say anything.

Response B: Rant about responsibility, as if everyone is an island who can just bootstrap themselves up like one of Ayn Rand's Marty Stu characters.

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Stimulus: AIDS!

Response: Pretend that there's some metaphysical "blackness" about a virus that just happened to start in Africa but affects whites just as readily!

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Stimulus: Oh, no! BD's pointed out that it's a logical fallacy to assume correlation means causation!

Response: Declare that caring about logic is "telling."

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Stimulus: Oh, no! BD's pointing out that anecdotes are inherently unreliable!

Response: Copy/paste stereotypical anti-science rhetoric from some psychic wannabe and replace "psychics" with "whites."

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Stimulus: Oh, no! Something happened with Obama outside this blog!

Response: Assume BD worships Obama despite his recent complaints about his inaction.

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Stimulus: Oh, no! BD mentioned the Dark Ages!

Response: Pretend he never mentioned it, and never attempt to explain the cause.

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Stimulus: Oh, no! BD mentioned the advanced-for-its-time nature of ancient Egypt!

Response: Change subject to modern Egypt.

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Stimulus: Oh, no! BD acknowledges the crappy state of many African nations, but explains their problems as a result of bad resource distribution, culture, and myriad other non-genetic causes!

Response: Pretend BD thinks Africa is full of prosperous first-world nations.

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Stimulus: Oh, no! BD asks for me to use race to explain scientific progress in first world nations!

Response: Ignore the question or pretend it's obvious.

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Stimulus: Oh, no! BD explains scientific progress as a result of available resources, cultural, educational, and communication-related factors! He also ridicules me by pointing out that alternative hypotheses require that scientists have formed a conspiracy to lie about how science is done!

Response: Pretend educational institutions have nothing to do with science.

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Stimulus: Oh, no! BD pointed out that a person can't choose what ideas are in the heads of the people they grew up with!

Response: Pretend that culture is witchcraft because no one person is completely responsible for a region's culture.

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Stimulus: Oh, no! BD pointed out that if Asians were too stupid to develop modern technology on their own, they wouldn't be able to understand current technology or improve it!

Response: Use the word "stole" as if it meant anything in this context.

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Stimulus: Oh, no! BD points out that many of the black people he's met, who have had access to similar cultural and educational standards, act and understand the same things white people do!

Response: Pretend he's trying to generalize from them, rather than provide exceptions I can't explain. (Invert and repeat for stupid white people.)

---

Stimulus: Oh, no! BD points out that the racial differences I talk about shrink as legal, cultural, and educational differences also shrink, like they're doing in first world countries.

Response: Change subject back to third world countries where BD's alternative explanations are even more prominent.

---

Stimulus: Oh, no! BD's given me a post specifically for explaining my hypothesis in detail!

Response: Waffle on and off topic for a couple weeks.

Doggerel #205: "The Mainstream Won't Publish My Stuff!"

Welcome back to "Doggerel," where I ramble on about words and phrases that are misused, abused, or just plain meaningless.

This bit of doggerel is often a sort of preemptive "sour grapes" rationalization: Because the mainstream allegedly won't publish something, they don't have to bother trying. Even if the doggerel-user has tried and failed to publish in a prestigious journal, they can still publish in many other locations. If their work is actually worthwhile, it should show through. If it's not, criticism is still valid.

Science is not a religion. The prestigious journals are not a form of canonization. A study or experiment that follows good scientific procedure should be able to stand on its own merits, whether or not it's published. Heck, it could be self-published on a blog for all I care. As long as it contains all the relevant methods used, data gathered, etcetera, there shouldn't be any problem with reviewing that work. The good journals are the ones that maintain good standards. If there's some form of corruption preventing a good paper from getting published, the correct response is to publicize that paper as much as possible and expose the corruption, such as pointing out logical fallacies used in the rejection.

Unfortunately, instead of putting forth the effort or giving skeptics something meaningful to look at, this doggerel is used as a cynical excuse for laziness and martyr complexes. Science is not a game of politics. You can't "win" by having a more tear-jerking performance than your opponent: You have to gather data with hard work and/or expose fundamental flaws in your adversary's thinking. You can't allow yourself to fall into fatalism.

A Rant About Conspiracies

Ended up following my site traffic and bumped into this Live Journal entry.

Conspiracy is one of the first refuges of woo. It's a easy defense mechanism to create a "THEM" who are against sunshine and bunnies when your pet hypothesis fails all the relevant tests. People naturally want to think in terms of agency: That someone or something causes certain things for a reason. It's a useful instinct when you're dealing with sharp-toothed critters on the savanna, but it's easy to apply the principle when you should instead consider the possibility that you're wrong.

Woos take that easy path all the time, no matter how silly or cynical the conspiracy they invent is. Alties seem to believe that doctors cover up miracle cures because they're greedy bastards with no family or friends who might be affected by those diseases. 9/11 Twoofers believe that thousands of people with useful evidence can all be easily silenced with threats or money. Ufologists believe that men in cliched black suits and sunglasses show up to perform cover ups. Heck, any unpopular theory often gets people complaining about "political correctness" as if that has anything to do with their lack of basic plausibility or data.

It's often an ego-saving defense mechanism. They backed the wrong horse, and don't want to admit it. So, they make a conspiracy so that they can play victim: They're right, and anyone who says otherwise is obviously an evil member of the conspiracy out to suppress the truth they're privileged to be in on. They're above the "sheeple" who are simply programmed to respond to the impractical idea that evidence matters.

It's the ultimate ad hoc hypothesis: Why can't they find evidence? Because the conspiracy covers it up. Why do the skeptics' predictions come true? Because they're in on the conspiracy and arranged things in their favor. Conspiracies can be invoked to explain anything that goes against a woo hypothesis's predictions.

It's Hollywood! Reality's boring when you can be the star of your own suspense thriller flick! In the movies, it's never the obvious answer! Things are never what they seem, EVAR! Of course, reality doesn't operate by the rule of drama: Sometimes things really are what they seem to be. Sometimes the obvious answer is the correct one. Reality isn't a movie genre.

Suggestion Box: Woo of the Moment

I'm contemplating trying to pick up on some off-brand woo: Usually, I've stuck to alties and IDiots as my usual targets, but I'm thinking about doing a bit of roasting of woos outside those categories: Free energy nuts, psychics, ufologists, way-out-there conspiracy nuts, that sort of thing.

Anyone got ideas for someone specific I could analyze and roast?

Pointless Question #68

Okay, so you understand the symbolism, figured out that the cross-eyed angel statue in the Vatican comic shop is a reference to an unreleased Beatles song, and are about to blow the whole masquerade wide open so that people will KNOW the squirrels from Ceti Alpha 5 are pulling the Illuminati's strings.

Why the heck did they leave those clues? Who does the lead squirrel think he is? The Riddler?

What "Skeptic" Really Means

I thought since tomorrow is Blasphemy Day, I'd post this before sharpening my tongue. This post is intended for the various types of believers new to the skeptical blogosphere. Please forgive my use of the term. I can't think of one that would cover the variety of people I want to address: Those who believe in things such as religion, alien visitations, alternative medicine, psychic powers, worldwide conspiracy theories, cryptozoology, ghosts, free energy devices, and so on. I know plenty of you don't like to be lumped with those others, but I do that because I tend to see similar methods used to reach those beliefs, and that they generally neglect the demands of logic and science. It's my hope to teach you about what skepticism really means and to counteract all the negative stereotypes spread in the mainstream and by other believers. It has a nasty habit of preventing communication and understanding. To this day, I still get trolls who cite stereotypes rather than answer questions.

The first point I really want to emphasize: Skepticism and science are not collections of beliefs. They are methods of using logic and evidence to reach tentative conclusions. We recognize these conclusions to be tentative, and can question and test them when new evidence arrives. This is what makes skepticism a self-correcting process, which is antithetical to dogma. Skeptics do not, as a matter of definition, disbelieve in, say psychic power. We are skeptics because we try to examine the evidence. To date, that process just happens to lead to our lack of belief in psychic powers. If a genuine psychic were to repeatedly demonstrate their powers under carefully controlled conditions designed to eliminate the possibility of trickery or self-deception, we would be convinced of that psychic's powers. Colloquially, you could say we're no longer skeptics, but I do not use that form of the word to describe myself. We're skeptics because we stick to the rigorous standards.

Science is full of new discoveries being made and tested. As skeptics, we know that the theories we use to explain the universe are always going to be wrong: We're just getting more accurate (less wrong) as we gather more evidence. We don't expect to achieve 100%. If Gödel is right, it's impossible. That won't stop us from trying our best, though. This leads into what I see as the inherent optimism and open-mindedness of skepticism: We can never allow ourselves the closed-mindedness of certainty. "Science knows it doesn't know everything otherwise it'd stop," as Dara O'Briain says in a comedy routine. We also know that people can make mistakes, and science is primarily a method of counteracting that.

As you probably gathered from the opening paragraph, I'm something of a firebrand skeptic. I have plenty to say for my own "deconversion," but I will try to summarize. These firebrand skeptics were harsh, but they were honest, determined, and passionate. I watched debates online between them and believers, looking beyond the simple insults to see the points being made. Ridicule, done right, can bring hidden logical fallacies to the surface. A consistent demand to a simple, honest question can be a powerful point if the adversary only evades, delays, and spits venom for an answer. The skeptics were the ones asking important questions, illustrating holes in their opponents' arguments, and so forth. They were worthy adversaries, and, when I displayed genuine curiosity and a willingness to learn, they gave me much to think about when they met my politeness with their own.

Most of all, they cared. People were being cheated out of their money, harmed by ill-evidenced quackery, and psychologically put down for innocent actions. Like them, I now blog out of a passion for helping people. Science gave us many great wonders we often take for granted. The hucksters and incurious wanted us to abandon the rigor that brought forth all that knowledge so that they could remain in an ivory tower where their ideas and only their ideas could be coddled. Such closed-mindedness was repulsive in the face of the hope science and skepticism presented.

Skeptics demand great rigor because everyone is capable of being biased or mistaken. Anecdotes cannot be taken at face value because the person who experienced it may have missed important details, be ignorant of alternative explanations, or connect events that might have just been a coincidence. These anecdotes aren't worthless. They can be used as a lead for something unusual to investigate, but they are never the end of the story. For a conclusion, we need objective evidence, some way to measure success or failure of the explanation, and a way to reduce or eliminate alternative explanations.

Skeptics such as myself tend to find the most frustration on these points. First, many believers dismiss alternative explanations for no rational reason. Many of us have a good grasp of science and how we can be deceived by others, and most importantly, ourselves. We're often brimming with ideas to explain various happenings, and we don't like getting slapped down when we speak up or ask questions to narrow down the possibilities.

Second, we've faced many believers who talk about events that actually aren't unusual at all. With enough people watching the world, "weird" coincidences happen all the time. One person's ghostly image is often a photographer's annoying dust reflection or passing insect. There are many people out there who know enough about certain fields to render various things mundane and readily explainable. Science is a team sport, and we try to apply the knowledge others have discovered to whatever the current discussion is. When we're presented with an interesting mystery, many of us will put in the effort to solve it. When someone new presents a nearly identical "mystery" that we've dealt with over and over, we can get frustrated and bored.

We're not Gloomy Gusses trying to rain on someone's parade. We're mystery solvers who want to find the truth, regardless of your sense of aesthetics. We don't dismiss all the magical things people believe in because we want the world to be dull and gray: We just want to know the truth, and when I look back at the history of science, the universe is always more interesting than what believers say. It's not without disappointment, but knowing the truth is the first step to solving problems. Self-deception and low standards are not the answer.

We need standards to evaluate the evidence for claims. Most people we argue with don't seem to realize that we can't lower our standards without opening up a quagmire of problems. Without controls against alternate explanations or verification to negate self-deception, the result can easily be eternal indecision: There are nearly an infinite number of possibilities. If we don't use our knowledge to favor the most probable answers, we can't know what to do or what to expect. Everyone practices critical thinking, but not everyone tries to be consistent. Usually, belief in the supernatural comes from making unwarranted exceptions for those beliefs.

Many of you are probably familiar with the phrase, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." Though it is often a useful quote, many people don't appreciate that the mundane claims we live by already have extraordinary evidence behind them. It's not that we're raising the standard, it's that simpler claims tend to have more evidence already in their favor.

This post has gone on for a bit, but it will be subject to updates if I remember something to add or from suggestions.

Open Twoofer Thread

Had breakfast with my parents today and saw how well their efforts at getting settled in are going. My dad's Man Cave is looking less cave-y and slowly looking like it might turn into an office. Anyway, over breakfast he told me about a National Geographic show he watched and recorded on the DVR. (My parents love it because they don't have to fetch me to program the VCR whenever they go out.) I believe the title was "9/11 Science and Conspiracy." So I watched about the first 45 minutes of the two hour program. I'm looking forward to seeing the rest when I'm in a better mood.

Anyway, what I've seen so far moves pretty well in favor of the science. It goes through the general idea behind the official story (which happens to be backed by science, from what I can see). They got a couple of twoofers to look at an experiment they performed, showing that a (smaller than the support pillars) steel beam loses its strength under the heat of a jet fuel fire. It only took 3 minutes, 50 seconds, and the building fires lasted about half an hour. The segment started off talking about investigating how the twoofers interpret evidence, and one bit particularly caught my attention. One of them called "straw man" on the experiment because it doesn't debunk the controlled demolition (AKA the ninja drywall worker) theory. Uh, guy, that wasn't the point: It was about verifying one of the basic principles behind the official story: Intense heat can weaken steel without melting it. You were the one erecting a straw man there.

Anyway, that, along with everything getting cut and/or rattled by the impact of a 767 with a lot of inertia pretty well cemented the reasonableness of the official story. One point my dad covered more explicitly in our conversation was static and dynamic load. Once you had one floor falling on another, the expected happened. If if a floor had a high static load, that doesn't translate into dynamic load. I may have been able to carry some of my furniture to my apartment with my dad, but we'd have a much harder time catching that same weight.

Still more to come, from my dad's description. I'll update in the comments when I see it. I'm looking forward to the thermite experiments: It sounds like it's a lot of flash with little result: The stuff apparently burned off far too quickly to maintain any sort of high temperatures. I'll be seeing it myself, soon. Maybe stop over later on Labor Daybor.

As for the "feel" of the show: It's kind of like Mythbusters with a straight face. I don't expect any surprising results, though.

Doggerel #196: "Anomaly"

Welcome back to "Doggerel," where I ramble on about words and phrases that are misused, abused, or just plain meaningless.

"Anomaly" is one of those 25 cent words that probably sees much more use than warranted. It's used to describe oddities, outliers, statistical clustering, individually unlikely events, and counter-intuitive results. Someone aware of statistics, some relevant science, and various tricks people can use to fool themselves might end up thinking "anomaly" means "everyday boring event."

Most so-called "anomalies" I hear about from parapsychologists, alties, and so on are exactly that boring. Anecdotes don't control for well-known alternative causes. Many statistical "anomalies" are well within the realm of chance, or the result of overzealous data mining: They essentially tilt their heads and squint as they look at many, many angles until they see something, rather than comment on their original hypothesis.

Many successful scientific theories are counter-intuitive to our middle world brains. We can easily fool ourselves. Someone who understands those things often knows an explanation for many things less knowledgeable people would consider odd. When dealing with parapsychologists, Creationists, alties, and so forth, I end up groaning when they point out a well understood or easily explained fact and treat it like a mystery. That's why I often find woo itself boring: There's nothing new or mysterious to look at. I have to entertain myself with figuring out how best to explain why I'm so unimpressed, and how to get that explanation to stick in my adversary's head.

WILD THREAD: What's Up With the Wingnuts?

I've always known the bulk of them are crazy, but... Wow. They've cranked it up to 11.9 over the last year. Birthers. Truly off-the-wall Godwining. What's up with that?

This thread is hereby WILD! Comment policy does not apply within.

Simple Questions

I've had to ask a couple.

Of course, as you've seen with Gabriel, I've had to ask repeatedly, "If the Wright brothers were raised in a nomadic hunter-gatherer society, would they invent the airplane? If not, why not?"

This is, quite frankly, a question I think any bonehead could produce a cogent answer for. It also gets right into the heart of the matter behind inequality in scientific progress across the planet: Geniuses who do not have access to knowledge and technology will have their potential greatly stunted, regardless of any genetic advantage they may have.

Another troll I've been dueling with was an annony identified as Graeme Bird by Tom Foss. Graeme lives in denial behind fundamental concepts behind the philosophy of science such as the null hypothesis (and, by extension, falsification thereof as a basis for a positive conclusion) and burden of proof.

I repeatedly asked Graeme what the alternative method for concluding "unicorns don't exist" there is. Dodged every time.

I mean, geeze, is it that hard to humor me for a simple question that gets to the fundamentals of the matter?