Bruce Schneier vs. Sam Harris

The debate on profiling has been going on, and is now published. I think Schneier has rather thoroughly demolished Harris’s arguments. Here’s his wrap-up, if you don’t want to read the whole thing.

The topic of this exchange, and the topic I’ve tried to stick to, is whether it makes sense to implement a two-tiered security system at airports, where "Muslims, or anyone who could conceivably be Muslim" get a higher tier of security and everyone else gets a lower tier. I have concluded that it does not, for the following reasons. One, the only benefit is efficiency. Two, the result is lower security because 1) not all Muslims can be identified by appearance, 2) screeners will make mistakes in implementing whatever profiling system you have in mind, and 3) not all terrorists are Muslim. Three, there are substantial monetary costs in implementing this system, in setting the system up, in administering it across all airports, and in paying for TSA screeners who can implement it. And four, there is an inefficiency in operating the system that isn’t there if screeners treat everyone the same way. Conclusion: airport profiling based on this ethnic and religious characteristic does not make sense.

And while you’ve objected to bits and pieces of this, the only argument you have made for this profiling system is that it’s common sense.

But here’s the real bottom line:

But perhaps most importantly, we should refuse to be terrorized. Terrorism isn’t really a crime against people or property; it’s a crime against our minds. If we are terrorized, then the terrorists win even if their plots fail. If we refuse to be terrorized, then the terrorists lose even if their plots succeed.

The terrorists have won their battles over the last ten years: they’ve got Americans pouring money into showy efforts at security, while convincing everyone to be in terror — when will we all wake up and realize that that’s exactly what terrorists want?

I had a better impression of Canadians before I read that tripe

Stop me if you’ve heard this before: “Atheism is another religious belief”. “I don’t have enough faith to be an atheist.” “Someone curdled the contents of my brain pan and replaced them with a thurible.” Yeah, familiar nonsense, isn’t it? And now a Canadian “legal philosopher, writer, professor and practicing legal consultant”, Iain Benson, is forcefully regurgitating them again, with the added bonus of amazingly false claims.

“Atheists, agnostics and religious of all forms are believers and all have faith. The question is not whether they are believers but rather, what they believe in,” he says and insists the “new atheists” such as the late Christopher Hitchens or Richard Dawkins, who pride themselves on “not having any beliefs,” are wrong.

“Atheists are men and women of faith. Their faiths are different but they are still faiths and their beliefs still beliefs, no matter how much Dawkins and those like him wish it was different. Humans are stuck being believers, and that’s all there is to it,” he says.

We pride ourselves on not having any beliefs? Really? I have lots of beliefs, and I question them whenever necessary; I also expect my beliefs to be supported by evidence. I believe the earth orbits the sun, and I have evidence for that. I believe the earth is 4½ billion years old, and I have evidence for that. I believe life evolved, and I have evidence for that.

I don’t have faith, though, unless you’re willing to redefine “faith” to such a degree that it has no relationship at all to what theists mean by the term.

Here’s the problem: it’s not belief, because of course everyone has beliefs. It’s false beliefs. It’s beliefs that contradict reality, or are internally self-contradictory, or dogmatic beliefs that cannot be revised in the face of new evidence. Atheists try their best to get rid of those (although even there, we’re not perfect), while theists like Benson embrace such nonsensical jibber-jabber enthusiastically, and try to use their demonstrably false beliefs to guide public policy.

We all have a body of common beliefs: you’ll die if you jump out of a tenth story window, you should have a competent mechanic check out that used car you’re planning to buy, we can learn more about the world by observing and testing it. These are the set of pragmatic beliefs that allow all of us to function from day to day.

Then there are the set of entirely bogus and nonsensical religious beliefs layered on top of the useful common beliefs: you will live after death, a god cares about what you do in the privacy of your bed, we’re all damned sinners who will go to hell unless we belief in a zombie blood sacrifice. Sensible people reject those.

Although “dogmatic” doesn’t necessarily mean being rude, common usage helps prevent any real understanding of what dogma is. “Which is why so many atheists and men and women in the street think, like Dawkins and Hitchens, they don’t believe in anything. But they do.”

But a lack of understanding has enabled contemporary atheists to present their belief system as the only one that should have public recognition, forcing their own so called “non beliefs” on others.

No, you can believe whatever you want. What you can’t do is determine public policy by your dogma, which poorly reflects the realities of the physical world, nor can you use the state to indoctrinate children into your set of falsehoods.

Contrary to Benson’s freaky views, atheists aren’t trying to demand that politicians and teachers be atheists — we insist that they be secular. Big difference. Use secular principles to work out what is best for people in the material world. Weirdly, Benson seems to understand what “secular” means.

“We need to reclaim the true meaning of the ‘secular,'” Professor Benson says, pointing out that the word is misunderstood in today’s world and taken to mean “non-religious” when its real meaning, and legal definition is derived from the Latin word “saeculum” meaning “world.”

“Secular was used historically to distinguish between those things that were deemed to be ‘in the world’ and those that were expressly and technically ‘religious,'” he explains using the Catholic tradition to distinguish “secular priests” or those who work “in the world” from “religious” for those men and women who have taken specific religious vows and may live a cloistered life.

Yeeeeeessss? Atheists know what “secular” means. Perhaps Mr Benson should talk to a few sometime — his babblings reveal a profound ignorance.

According to Professor Benson, religious believers have as much right as anyone else to function in society according to these beliefs.

“Likewise religious institutions have as much right as non-religious institutions. Everyone has a belief system of some sort and those who draw on religious sources should not be put at a disadvantage,” he insists.

His support of equality for religious and secular institutions is commendable. Then I suppose he’d agree with me that the special privileges of tax exemptions and lack of regulatory oversight for changes should be abolished?

Since both religious people and atheists can share secular values, I don’t think it’s depriving the religious of their rights by insisting that everyone should be competent at their secular role; the special knowledge of religion/spirituality ought to have as much relevance to secular positions as knowledge of the rules of Dungeons & Dragons.

Let them have coathangers

He had to be named Bubba. He just had to fill every possible stereotype of the Southern good ol’ boy, the shallow, narrow-minded redneck who treats his women like he treats his dogs. Only he’s a state representative, elected to serve in the Mississippi congress — and Bubba Carpenter is proud to have stripped medical services from the women of his state.

We have literally stopped abortion in the state of Mississippi. Three blocks from the Capitol sits the only abortion clinic in the state of Mississippi. A bill was drafted. It said, if you would perform an abortion in the state of Mississippi, you must be a certified OB/GYN and you must have admitting privileges to a hospital. Anybody here in the medical field knows how hard it is to get admitting privileges to a hospital…

It’s going to be challenged, of course, in the Supreme Court and all — but literally, we stopped abortion in the state of Mississippi, legally, without having to– Roe vs. Wade. So we’ve done that. I was proud of it. The governor signed it into law. And of course, there you have the other side. They’re like, ‘Well, the poor pitiful women that can’t afford to go out of state are just going to start doing them at home with a coat hanger.’ That’s what we’ve heard over and over and over.

But hey, you have to have moral values. You have to start somewhere, and that’s what we’ve decided to do. This became law and the governor signed it, and I think for one time, we were first in the nation in the state of Mississippi.

“You have to have moral values.” I agree. I truly wish Bubba Carpenter had some.

It’s not just coathangers. Poor women will also use clorox, turpentine, quinine, misoprostol, and back-alley butchers. They’ll bleed out, they’ll have perforated bowels, they’ll suffer unbearable agony, they’ll die. These are “moral values” at work. And note that he even acknowledges the other inequity: if they’re wealthy enough to go out of state (read: Republican), they won’t have to worry about the coathanger. This is open warfare on both women and the poor.

Bubba let slip the naked truth about the Republican agenda. The video of his statement is on youtube, but I suspect it won’t be for long: they’re scrambling to hide it away right now. I suppose it’s good that they exhibit a little shame, but it seems to be embarrassment that they were caught openly expressing what they think, not shame at their callousness.

The unbearable squishiness of Jonathan Haidt

I’ve been reading Jonathan Haidt’s work over the years with an attitude that follows an unfortunate trajectory, downwards. At first, it was with interest — his ideas about moral intuition being defined by a kind of emotional response first with the intellectual response forming a veneer of rationalizations after the fact seems valid. But then he went off on this “moral foundations” stuff, where he identified different axes of motivations, like care vs. harm, and then the axes started proliferating, and pretty quickly it all became a lumpy mush without much utility. He’s succumbed to Labeling Disease, something that hits some psychologists hard, in which they observe that which they measure, stick a name on it, and try hard to reify it into existence, even if it has no correspondence to any substrate in the brain at all. Id, ego, superego, anyone?

Then he won a Templeton Prize, shredding most of his credibility. Lately he’s been wandering around in a fog of sincere open-mindedness, letting his brain sublimate into a kind of misty moral ambiguity that looks more like blithe nihilism than anything else.

And now he’s done an interview on Freakanomics, where glibness rules, and manages to be so vapid I’m completely turned off to the new book he’s flogging. He did manage to solidify my opinion of him, though…just not in a good way.

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Congratulations on the divorce, Norway!

Divorce is a good thing: when a couple can no longer find happiness with each other, there’s no point in clinging to a damaging relationship. Move on. Especially when one of the partners in the relationship is a deranged fabulist with a long history of abusiveness, separation is the only reasonable choice.

So I’m happy to see that the secular Norwegian government has moved to sever its long historical ties to that psycho, Lutheranism.

All parties stand united when the Norwegian constitution is changed, so that the state will no longer be a part of the Norwegian church. The amendment is to be presented Tuesday.

The amendment which will be passed later in May, historically changes the state’s relationship with the church. Parliament will no longer appoint deans and bishops, and Norway will no longer have one offical state religion.

Derbyshire finds a new home

You knew he’d be just fine. After getting fired from the National Review for his ghastly racist views, he’s now been picked up by the openly racist VDARE. He’s come out now with a little post wondering about what label he should apply to his political camp. Before settling on calling his in-group the “dissident Right”, he considers this one:

Leaving aside the intended malice, I actually think "White Supremacist" is not bad semantically. White supremacy, in the sense of a society in which key decisions are made by white Europeans, is one of the better arrangements History has come up with. There have of course been some blots on the record, but I don’t see how it can be denied that net-net, white Europeans have made a better job of running fair and stable societies than has any other group.

Wait — he forgot to consider “The Racist Assholes” as a possibility. I think that’s the real winner.

Then he speaks the truth openly about the Republican party, or “Conservatism, Inc.” as he likes to call it. It’s one of the good things about Derbyshire: he’s so shameless that he isn’t at all hesitant about describing himself and his political pals in terms he finds copacetic, and the rest of the world finds contemptible.

I don’t mind the word “white” in either of those expressions. Conservatism, Inc. or otherwise, is a white people’s movement, a scattering of outliers notwithstanding.

Always has been, always will be. I have attended at least a hundred conservative gatherings, conferences, cruises, and jamborees: let me tell you, there ain’t too many raisins in that bun. I was in and out of the National Review offices for twelve years, and the only black person I saw there, other than when Herman Cain came calling, was Alex, the guy who runs the mail room. (Hey, Alex!)

This isn’t because conservatism is hostile to blacks and mestizos. Very much the contrary, especially in the case of Conservatism Inc. They fawn over the occasional nonwhite with a puppyish deference that fairly fogs the air with embarrassment. (Q: What do you call the one black guy at a gathering of 1,000 Republicans? A: “Mr. Chairman.”)

And why is this? It can’t be simply because conservatives are racist assholes, no…it’s got to be because minorities are parasites.

It’s just that conservative ideals like self-sufficiency and minimal dependence on government have no appeal to underperforming minorities—groups who, in the statistical generality, are short of the attributes that make for group success in a modern commercial nation.

Of what use would it be to them to embrace such ideals? They would end up even more decisively pooled at the bottom of society than they are currently.

A much better strategy for them is to ally with as many disaffected white and Asian subgroups as they can (homosexuals, feminists, dead-end labor unions), attain electoral majorities, and institute big redistributionist governments to give them make-work jobs and transfer wealth to them from successful groups.

Derbyshire has been fired from his more mainstream position, and he’s dying of cancer — he’s got nothing to lose. It’s quite bracing to see an old-school bigot open his yap and vomit forth his prejudices without the mealy-mouthed cliches all the others use so freely.

But still…he’s a racist, homophobic, bigoted asshole. I think he should even more freely embrace that label.

Guess what the election is going to be all about?

Oh, boy. Mitt Romney gave a speech at Liberty University, and made it clear what side he’s taking.

The American culture promotes personal responsibility, the dignity of work, the value of education, the merit of service, devotion to a purpose greater than self, and, at the foundation, the pre-eminence of the family. The power of these values is evidenced by a Brookings Institution study that Senator Rick Santorum brought to my attention. For those who graduate from high school, get a full-time job, and marry before they have their first child, the probability that they will be poor is 2%. But, if those things are absent, 76% will be poor. Culture matters.

Wait, what? Has this man never heard of cause and effect? So if you’re a high school graduate and get a good job, you aren’t poor. If you’re poor, you’re less likely to graduate from high school and get a good job. Sure, culture matters: so why are the Republicans trying to perpetuate poverty?

I don’t see where getting married before having children has a causal relationship to the problem, either, or where it’s relevant to gay marriage.

As fundamental as these principles are, they may become topics of democratic debate. So it is today with the enduring institution of marriage. Marriage is a relationship between one man and one woman. The protection of religious freedom has also become a matter of debate. It strikes me as odd that the free exercise of religious faith is sometimes treated as a problem, something America is stuck with instead of blessed with. Perhaps religious conscience upsets the designs of those who feel that the highest wisdom and authority comes from government.

What’s the probability that a gay married couple are poor? I think if he’s going to try and justify a particular pattern of relationships by correlating them with socioeconomic status, I suspect the lesson might be that the god of the prosperity gospel actually favors gay couples.

I expect that this is going to be a major talking point on the Republican side in the coming months. I hope Obama is ready to sharpen his rhetoric and come out a lot more strongly on the issue than he did in his tepid announcement.

Good, bad, we’re the ones with the big guns

Watch this little sketch first, and think about it.

I am relieved to say that skulls are not an official motif in US military uniforms, although some units do use them. However, we instead have Nazi-like minds at work in our military. Here’s an excerpt from a presentation at the Defense Department’s Joint Forces Staff College, composed by Lt. Col. Matthew A. Dooley as a proposed model for how to deal with Islam.

It’s a little worse than decorative skulls.

When I hear the phrase “politically correct”, I’m afraid my knee tends to jerk, usually in the direction of some jerk’s groin. It is the tired excuse of the fanatic trying to rationalize the unforgivable. “Oh, excuse me, I’m going to talk about incinerating civilians in a nuclear holocaust, take your ‘politically correct’ objections out of the room.”

And that’s exactly what he’s discussing. Let’s forget civilized accords limiting the conduct of war, and frankly discuss nuking Mecca and Medina. It’s OK, we’re going to remove protections for those caught fighting out of uniform, and pretend that every inhabitant of those two cities is a spy, a terrorist, or a criminal.

You can download the whole presentation; it’s an awful mess of jargon and pointlessly busy military diagrams that say pretty much nothing at all, and it’s main point is to redefine every Muslim in the world as a military combatant who deserves everything we do to them.

It closes with this message:

It is therefore time for the United States to make our true intentions clear. This barbaric ideology will no longer be tolerated, Islam must change or we will facilitate its self-destruction. Let it be known that the United States remains, and will forever be, a beacon of freedom, self-determination, hope, and representative democracy. The American people will not be converted. We will not submit. We will not be intimidated, and we will not be driven from this earth.”

That is remarkably tin-eared and hypocritical. It accuses the other side of being a barbaric ideology while planning to nuke the civilian population centers of the Muslim world…oh, wait, “facilitating their self-destruction.” So we’re going to drop a bomb on them and then innocently declare that it was their own fault?

It rather deflates the grand ideals of “freedom, self-determination, hope, and representative democracy” when you use them as buzzwords to justify the murder of millions.

But perhaps that scale of terror is too immense for your brain to absorb. How about this little morsel, instead?

The American military claimed responsibility and expressed regret for an airstrike that mistakenly killed six members of a family in southwestern Afghanistan, Afghan and American military officials confirmed Monday.

…

The victims were the family’s mother and five of her children, three girls and two boys, according to Afghan officials.

This family was just quietly living in this house in Afghanistan, when the full weight of American freedom, self-determination, hope, and representative democracy dropped into their living room in the form of a military airstrike.

I think we’re the baddies.

But at least we apologized nicely. I’m sure that made it all better.