Pathologizing analytical thinking

NewScientist reports:

People with autism appear less likely to believe in God – a discovery that has strengthened theories that religious belief relies on being able to imagine what God is thinking, a capacity known as "mentalising".

One of the hallmarks of autism is an impaired ability to infer and respond to what other people are thinking, so the investigators wondered whether this would affect their likelihood of believing in God.

In a study of adolescents questioned on their beliefs, those with autism were almost 90 per cent less likely than non-autistic peers to express a strong belief in God.

The study – along with three others that questioned hundreds of people about religious belief and mentalisation abilities – also showed that men are worse than women at mentalising. This correlated with them being less likely than women to believe in God.

"We reasoned that if thinking about a personal god engages mentalising abilities, then mentalising deficits would be expected to make belief in a personal god less intuitive, and therefore less believable," says Ara Norenzayan of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, and joint head of the investigation. "We found support for this in four different studies."

So you are more likely to believe in God if you also believe that you can read God's mind as well. The strange part of this story is to describe people as mentally deficient if they do not claim to mindread God. That is backwards.

Claiming to be able to able to mindread God should be considered a symptom of schizophrenia, along with hearing voices in your head.

The researchers caution, however, that the findings do not prove that belief in God relies exclusively on mentalisation. "We cannot infer causality without further research," says Norenzayan, pointing out that there are many other reasons why people may or may not believe in God, whether or not they are good at mentalising. Norenzayan's own research team has shown, for example, that analytical thinkers are less likely to believe in God.

Conversely, says Norenzayan, people may adopt religion for a host of psychological and cultural reasons independent of "mind-reading" abilities.

Yes, people believe in God for various reasons. It seems obvious that analytical thinkers would be less likely to believe in God, and less likely to suffer mindreading delusions.

This is another example of psychologists trying to pathologize analytical thinkers.

The study is here.

Coyne bans me from his blog

I criticized a paper by leftist-atheist-evolutionist Jerry Coyne below, and left this comment me on his blog:

This paper is sillier than I expected. It is based on a “Successful Societies Scale” that rates the USA as the least successful nation in the world.

Coyne responded:

It’s not based on that at all – that’s an EXPLANATION for the high degree of religiosity in the US. The main point is that America’s creationism come from its religion. Further, other sociological studies (cited in the paper) support the dysfunctionality of the US compared to other First World countries. Finally, you’re flat wrong about the US being the least successful society in the world. As I said, it’s the least successful society among 17 FIRST WORLD COUNTRIES SURVEYED. Did you even read the paper?

You appear unwilling to accept the US’s position here. Fine, but it doesn’t make the paper silly. And stop urinating on my carpet. If you have criticisms, make them in an objective and non-insulting fashion.

He does not restrict to 17 countries. His paper quotes surveys of aa many as 67 countries, and he uses broad language. His paper says:

Religion is an answer that many people do not want to hear, but there is much ev-idence that America’s resistance to evolution is truly a byproduct of America’s extreme religiosity.

His argument is that social dysfunction causses religiosity, which causes belief in creaationism, which causes disbelief in evolution. This argument is not limited to 17 countries. He says, "Paul’s data show that, compared to other countries, we are a sick society."

Coyne is a leftist who wants the USA to become more socialist. His main criterion for being a dysfunctional society is income inequality. He says that higher income inequality leads to higher religiosity, particularly among the wealthy, but it is also true that higher freedom leads to higher income inequality. When he calls us a "sick society" in the Evolution journal paper, he is just applying his leftist political biases.

Here is his message banning me:

Look, Roger, you first should first apologize for your mischaracterization of the USA’s position in the world on the SSS, and now you show complete misunderstanding of how I regard Gould and Wilson. You obviously haven’t followed my website, which has often praised Gould’s scientific writing (while criticizing his views on punctuated equilibrium and NOMA) and Wilson’s contribution in Socibiology, conservation, and his work on ants. They don’t get ALL OF EVOLUTION “wrong,” but have taken positions that I don’t agree with. That’s true of all science. Your statement that I think “leading evolutionists” (you cite only two) “get it wrong” is misleading, and you know it.

You’re trolling without any knowledge of my views, and you mischaracterized my paper, which is not silly.

I suggest you frequent other websites, because I don’t want you urinating on my carpet.

I was not allowed to respond to this on his site.

His paper is silly. It is worse. It is garbage that should not have been accepted by any real science journal, and was only published in a religion-hating evolutionist journal.

I did not say that the leading evolutionists get ALL OF EVOLUTION “wrong,” But they do disagree about the core of evolution. Gould said evolution is random while Dawkins says it is deterministic. Coyne says we have no free will. Dawkins and Coyne say evolution works purely at the gene level, while Wilson says that life on Earth is dominated by social species benefitting from group evolution. Dawkins and Coyne have denounced Wilson for this in the harshest terms. Dawkins implies that Wilson's ideas are unworthy of being published.

Coyne tries to downplay these as disagreements as if they are inherent in science, or "true of all science." No, they are not. Coyne led a group of 140 scholars to publish a 3-page paper denouncing Wilson. The list of authors was longer than the content. This does not happen in real sciences.

Real scientists do not so carelessly combine scientific, philosophical, and political views, and are not constantly lobbying politicians and judges to force others to accept those views. That is what Coyne does. The reason people don't like evolutionist messages from people like him has nothing to do with income inequality or America being a dysfunction society. It is because evolutionists like him cannot resist making evolution a political and anti-religion cause, and people reject all the non-scientific baggage that goes along with evolution.

Why America is dysfunctional

I criticized an article abstract by leftist-atheist-evolutionist Jerry Coyne, and now he has released the full article as published in journal Evolution. He argues that religion and skepticism of evolution causes societies to be less succuessful, and he substantiates that with a "Successful Societies Scale" that rates the USA as the least successful nation in the world, among the 17 surveyed. In particular, he argues that the rich are more religious than the poor, and thereby promote income inequality and a dysfunctional society.

Coyne concludes:

Creationism in America, then, may be a symptom of reli-gion, but religion in the modern world may itself be a symptom of unhealthy societies. Ultimately, the best strategy to make Ameri-cans more receptive to evolution might require loosening the grip of religion on our country. This may sound not only invidious but untenable, yet data from other countries suggest that such secularism is possible and, indeed, is increasing in the United States at this moment. But weakening religion may itself require other, more profound changes: creating a society that is more just, more caring, more egalitarian. Regardless of how you feel about religion, that is surely a goal most of us can endorse.

For Coyne, teaching evolution is just a tool for undermining religion. Earlier he says:

Now, more than at any time in my life, I see Americans awash in popular science — evolution in particular. Bookstores teem with volumes by Stephen Gould, Steven Pinker, Richard Dawkins, Edward O. Wilson, and Jared Diamond; evolutionary psychology is all the rage; natural history museums have become user friendly; there are dozens of blogs about evolution; and entire television channels are devoted to science and nature. Science education for laypeople is not hard to come by, and we have more popular commentary on evolution than ever before. Yet our record of accepting evolution is still abysmal. Why?

Most of those authors are explicitly anti-religion. Coyne's article discusses how Gould was anti-religion. I have discussed Pinker's latest anti-Christian book. Dawkins is probably the world's most famous atheist, and now devote more energy to promoting atheism than evolution. Wilson is an atheist but his ideas have been savagely attacked by Coyne and Dawkins. Dawkins' review today of Wilson's latest book says, "unfortunately one is obliged to wade through many pages of erroneous and downright perverse misunderstandings of evolutionary theory." Diamond's work is widely praised in leftist academic circles, but not well accepted among experts in the subject matter.

Update: Coyne has now banned me from commenting on his blog, because I supposedly misrepresented his views and for "urinating on [his] carpet". Meanwhile he leaves up various ad hominem attacks on me and my mom, such as "you never were housebroken" and "You suck."

Here is my reply to him, that he blocked:

Jerry, I have read your praise of Gould and Wilson, as well as your criticism. You certainly never said that they get all of evolution wrong. But you do harshly criticize them. Wilson just wrote a book on what evolution and human nature are all about, and you just quoted Dawkins today trashing the book in the harshest terms. He says that Wilson's "errors ... are important, pervasive, and integral to its thesis in a way that renders [his book] impossible to recommend." Either Dawkins gets it wrong, or Wilson gets it wrong.

Also, your paper says, "Paul’s data show that, compared to other countries, we are a sick society."

About that last blog item, Coyne blocked the comment, "This shows that our leading experts have profound disagreements over what evolution is all about." Coyne posts scathing attacks on others regularly, but he sure cannot take a little criticism.

Men like meat

SciAm reports:

Americans eat an average of 195 pounds of meat a year, with men consuming much more than women. The study is in the Journal of Cancer Research (pdf).

In a series of experiments, people consistently rated meat as more masculine than vegetables. Researchers also found that meat-related words like “steak” conjured male-related words in free association tests significantly more often than female-related words. The word “chocolate” however, conjured more female-related words in the minds of participants. And foods like raw beef or blood were viewed as far more “male” than “female.” And participants rated male meat-eaters as more masculine than male non-meat-eaters.

This is scientific research? Anyone would say that this is obvious, unless brainwashed by propaganda that there are no sex differences.

As a SciAm comment points out, eating tofu is definitely not manly.

Time to short Google

I just watched Charlie Rose interview Google CEO Larry Page:

Rose: But in 2012, there have been no acquisitions ... or have there?
Page: No, I think we've done a lot of them. ... It seems like I get one every week.
Rose: One acquisition a week, in terms of buying companies?
Page: We have a weekly meeting where we go thru the acquisitions and usually there is something going on.

Page does not seem to know what his company is doing.

Update: It appears that Google has survived the Oracle Java lawsuit. But I attribute that to the incompetence of Oracle lawyer David Boies. A lot of people are very impressed with him, but it seems to me that he has screwed up several high-profile cases.

Censoring the internet

V-Dare reports that a Jewish group is trying to regulate the internet by law and by industry collusion in order to "combat online hate speech, Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism…"

This is so foolish. Censorship is always directed against ideas that have a germ of truth, and not against obvious falsehoods.

Book on famous liars

I was just reading last year's Tangled Webs: How False Statements are Undermining America: From Martha Stewart to Bernie Madoff by James B. Stewart:

With many prosecutors, investigators, and participants speaking for the first time, Tangled Webs goes behind the scene of the trials of media and homemaking entrepreneur Martha Stewart; top White House political adviser Lewis "Scooter" Libby; home-run king Barry Bonds; and Wall Street money manager Bernard Madoff.

Stewart's main argument that Bonds lied is this quote from a judge in a different steroid case:

And that's a very difficult thing to believe; that a top-notch athlete, knowing the razor-thin margins separating the best from the others, would not be keenly aware and very careful about what he or she would put in his or her body and recognize the effects immediately on their performance. ... I am troubled, quite frankly, by the statement." [p. 349] [again on p.359]

This quote appears twice, and differs slightly from elsewhere.

This is no argument against Bonds. He admitted to taking the "clear" and the "cream". He had no FDA approvals or scientific publications or big pharma guarantees or personal biochemistry knowledge to go on. He trusted someone. Maybe it was Greg Anderson, maybe Victor Comte, maybe someone else. We don't know for sure. Whatever the details, here was a top-notch athlete who was putting substances in his body without being keenly aware of what those substances were and what they could do. No one did, as the substances were unknown to modern medicine.

It is safe to say that Bonds thought that the substances would do some good, or he would not have been taking them. But athletes commonly take vitamins, food supplements, spices, special foods, homeopathic remedies, etc. in the hopes that they will be helpful. These beliefs seem to be largely superstition to me. So it is possible for top-notch athletes to not recognize the effects of what they take. It is plausible that Anderson assured Bonds that the substances were worthwhile, and Bonds told the truth.

James B. Stewart fails to mention that Secret Service agent Larry Stewart was charged with perjury for his testimony against Martha Stewart. None of these Stewarts are related, as far as I know. Martha Stewart was convicted of lying in statements that were not under oath and not recorded, and she was not accused of perjury or insider trading or of benefiting from her lies. It seems more significant to me that the prosecution lied under oath in order to put someone in prison.

The case against Libby was even stranger. As the book explains, Libby's defense was not only that he told the truth, but that he said what was necessary for the public to learn the truth about the Iraq War, with Plame's husband telling unrebutted lies to the press.

The core of Libby's conviction is that he had a telephone conversion with CBS's Russert on the day the Wash. Post released a column naming Plame as working for the CIA. The conversaion had no bearing on the column, but Russert and Libby gave different testimony about whether Plame was mentioned in the call.

I see 4 possibilities. Maybe Russert or Libby had faulty memory, or maybe one of them lied.

It is plausible that Russert lied because he had an obvious motive. If he had known about Plame, then he would have been forced to testify about his confidential source. He might have ruined his career, jailed like Judith Miller, and incriminated his source.

Libby had nothing to gain by lying because he had already admitted that he had learned about Plame before talking to Russert. It is possible that Libby lied and somehow thought that the lie would help Karl Rove, but I doubt that Libby would lie to save Rove.

It is plausible that Libby misremembered, because Libby may have mentally prepared himself about what to say if Russert mentioned Plame. Months later, Libby could have confused what he said with his prepared scenario.

Madoff told lies that cost billions of dollars and caused misery to a lot of people. Even if M. Stewart, Libby, and Bonds lied, I do not see how any harm came to anyone. Stewart may have sold stock based on an insider tip, but it was bad info and she would have been better off holding onto the stock. If Libby were lying to prop up the Iraq War, I would want to punish him for that, but his case had no bearing on the war or on anything else, but the career of an over-ambitious prosecutor. Even if Bonds lied, he did not interfere with shutting down Balco or banning steroids. Not even the baseball authorities say that he did anything wrong. He was not convicted of lying. He was only convicted of giving an evasive answer to a question before the grand jury. That conviction ought to be reversed on appeal, because not even the prosecutor seemed to think that the answer was incomplete.

The book has a lot of detail about these 4 cases, but fails to get to the substance of the matters. What were the lies and who were harmed by them? I guess the author is trying to make the case that we tolerate liars too much, but I see it differently. First, if these folks lied so badly, then it should be possible to prove that they lied. Second, perjury is lying about a material fact. The Ten Commandments do not prohibit all lying. Just bearing false witness. M. Stewart, Libby, and Bonds were not witnesses to anyone but themselves. Libby was disliked for the Iraq War, and Bonds was disliked for breaking Babe Ruth's records. I believe that these prosecutions were driven more by politics than by actual lying.

The hot dishonesty trials of today are Roger Clemens and John Edwards. The evidence against Clemens is that his trainer got immunity for testifying that Clemens used steroids. It seems like just the word of Clemens against the word of the trainer to me. Either one could be lying. I believe people are innocent until proven guilty.

Edwards is a snake, and transparently phony. Or so I thought. Millions of Democrats thought that he was fit to be President because they thought that he had empathy for the poor. He certain lied about his affair, and let his rich friends spend millions to cover up his recklessness. But I do not see how he committed a crime.

In favor of profiling

Computer security author Bruce Schneier writes:

The Trouble with Airport Profiling
Why do otherwise rational people think it's a good idea to profile people at airports? Recently, neuroscientist and best-selling author Sam Harris related a story of an elderly couple being given the twice-over by the TSA, pointed out how these two were obviously not a threat, and recommended that the TSA focus on the actual threat: "Muslims, or anyone who looks like he or she could conceivably be Muslim."
This is a bad idea. It doesn’t make us any safer -- and it actually puts us all at risk. ...

Underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab was Nigerian. Shoe bomber Richard Reid was British with a Jamaican father. One of the London subway bombers, Germaine Lindsay, was Afro-Caribbean. Dirty bomb suspect Jose Padilla was Hispanic-American.

His arguments fail. Unless all passengers are equally risky, then it will not be optimal to treat all passengers equally.

Yes, terrorist can take countermeasures as a result of security policies. They might train old ladies to become suicide bombers. So TSA has to search Henry Kissinger. But any policy that induces terrorist to work hard will make us all safer.

Schneier argues that profiling Muslims may offend Muslims. Maybe so. It is more offensive to search people in excess of their risk, just to avoid offending Muslims.

Linday changed his name to Abdullah Shaheed Jamal, as a Muslim convert. How is he an argument against profiling?

Schneier's arguments do not say that avoiding profiling makes us less secure. He just argues that it is not as effective as you might guess. So what drives anti-profiling opinions?

I believe that there are two arguments against profiling. First, a leftist-egalitarian belief that if any group is subjected to suspicion, then fairness requires that all groups should be subjected to the same suspicion. Second, that terrorism threats present an opportunity to deprive all citizens of basic civil liberties.

Maybe the TSA is a necessary evil. But it is not necessary or desirable to treat non-suspicious folks the same as those matching the profile of a Muslim terrorist.

Update: Schneier posted his email debate with Harris. The only argument for profiling he concedes is efficiency, as Harris points out that terrorism is correlated with Moslems. But Schneier doesn't believe that TSA does much good anyway.

When Pro-Vaccine Messaging Backfires

SciAm reports on a new study:

Researchers then showed the participants two reassuring statements that vaccines pose little risk. Half the participants read: “There is only sporadic evidence that repeated vaccinations overwhelm the immune system.” The other half read: “There is no evidence that repeated vaccinations overwhelm the immune system.”

Those who were told there was no evidence for risk reported greater concern about vaccination and less intention to vaccinate their child than those who read the moderate messaging.

That makes sense to me. If someone tells me that some medical treatment has no known adverse reaction, that tells me that either he is lying or the treatment has not been studied. The pro-vaccine lobbyists insist on giving dumbed-down propaganda that is contrary to common sense.

In related science news:

"Evidence is mounting that research is riddled with positive bias. Left unchecked, the problem could erode public trust, argues Dan Sarewitz, a science policy expert, in a comment piece in Nature. ...

There's a brilliant line on this in "The science of discworld" - I won't pretend I can quote it 100% accurately off the top of my head but it goes something like this: "In the media you will often read that a certain scientist is trying to prove a theory. Maybe it's because journalists are trained in journalism and don't know how science works or maybe it's because journalists are trained in journalism and don't care how science works - but a good scientist never tries to prove her theory, a good scientist tries her best to disprove her theory before somebody else does it for her, failing to disprove it is what makes a theory trustworthy." ...

Actually, you need to read "The Black Swan" by N. N. Taleb. Science that tries to confirm a theory is already infected with confirmation bias. There are a pile of examples that demonstrate the fallacy of confirmatory inference. Taleb uses a variant of Bertrand Russell's -- a turkey might reasonably infer, based on his daily experience, that humans exist for the sole purpose of feeding him, caring for him, providing for his every need. This might go on for day after day, increasing the turkey's degree of belief in his hypothesis of a good and beneficent humanity filled with love of turkeys, right up to the day that -- ulp -- something unexpected happens.

These are strange ideas about science. Of course it is possible to positively show that measles vaccine is reasonably safe and prevents epidemics. That is why the vaccine is recommended. The package insert also warns of various adverse effects that were reported in studies.

Books on the mind

There is another new book about how the mind works on the bestseller lists. It is Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior, by Leonard Mlodinow. Other such books are Imagine: How Creativity Works, by Jonah Lehrer and Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman.

There seems to be endless demand for these books. I heard Mlodinow promoting his book, and he does not have a shred of evidence for the unconscious mind ruling behavior. He claimed that it was based on research of the last ten years, but most of it has been known for centuries. His best examples were optical illusions. These illusions are amusing examples of how the mind can get fooled, but they say nothing about the unconscious or behavior. He disavowed Freud, as expected, but quoted Jung who was just as kooky.

Mindreading a talking pineapple

Ever have trouble with reading comprehension tests? The way they work is that the schools buy them from testing companies who hire panel of experts to adapt published literary passages and write questions. The passages are changed for political correctness, and the questions may have little to do with the passages, but instead test for certain thought processes in your mind.

A recent example is an adaptation of a story by Daniel Pinkwater. The test panel changed the rabbit to a hare, the eggplant to a pineapple, added some commentary from other animals, and changed the moral of the story.

It has this summary:

A talking pineapple challenges a hare to a race. The other animals wager on the immobile pineapple winning — and ponder whether it’s tricking them.

When the pineapple fails to move at all and the rabbit [hare] wins, the animals dine on the pineapple.

The grade school students were given these multiple-choice questions:

Beginning with paragraph 4, in what order are the events in the story told?
The animals ate the pineapple most likely because they were...
Which animal spoke the wisest words?
Before the race, how did the animals feel toward the pineapple?
What would have happened if the animals had decided to cheer for the hare?
When the moose said that the pineapple has some trick up its sleeve, he means that the pineapple...

These questions received a lot of criticism for their ambiguity, but the problem is worse. The questions do not even try to test what the story actually said. They try to test mindreading of cartoon-like characters. Instead of asking what the animals said, it asks about their feelings, motivations, and intents.

Some people say that it is important to test the emotional understanding and empathy of children, and they apparently believe that a child should be able to feel how a moose or a crow might be annoyed at a talking pineapple for being tricked into disbelieving that a rabbit can win a marathon race.

This seems dubious to me. I think that the supposedly-correct answers are wrong. One does not eat a pineapple because he is annoyed by the pineapple. Not even a moose.

Regardless of the answers, a reading comprehension test should test reading comprehension of the actual story, not test for psychological feelings about a moose anthropomorphizing a fruit.

White babies recognize other white babies

Science Live reports:

New research indicates that by the time they are 9 months old, babies are better able to recognize faces and emotional expressions of people who belong to the group they interact with most, than they are those of people who belong to another race. ...

In the study, 48 Caucasian infants were given the task of differentiating between faces of their own race and faces that belonged to another, unfamiliar, race. In another experiment, sensors placed on the babies' heads detected brain activity when the babies saw images of faces of Caucasian or African-American races expressing emotions that either matched or did not match sounds they heard, such as laughing and crying.

While 5-month-olds were equally able to distinguish faces from different races, 9-month-olds fared better with their own race. Likewise, brain-activity measurements showed the 9-month-olds processed emotional expressions among Caucasian faces differently than those of African-American faces, while the 5-month-olds did not.

While it is plausible that babies would recognize their own race better, they only looked at what white babies do. Maybe white faces are always easier to recognize than black faces. Or maybe faces are easier when they match the race of the baby's care-givers. They study does not say.

The NY Times has an article on some related research:

In guiding early social leanings, accent trumps race. A white American baby would rather accept food from a black English-speaking adult than from a white Parisian, and a 5-year-old would rather befriend a child of another race who sounds like a local than one of the same race who has a foreign accent.

The Scream and other icons

Art news story:

“The Scream” by Edvard Munch broke the world record for priciest artwork sold at auction yesterday, fetching $119.9 million at Sotheby’s in New York City. ... Munch’s painting is ranked in global polls as the second-most identifiable icon, after the“Mona Lisa” and before Che Guevara’s face.

Che? Is that a joke? Here is what a Russian immigrant professor says about him:

Che Guevara is one of the few communist leaders who still has a broad following in the West. Go to any college campus or hip neighborhood and you’ll see plenty of Che T-shirts, Che posters, and even the occasional Che cell phone message. This is extremely unfortunate, since Che was in fact a brutal mass murderer and terrorist, ...

Wow, I would not have guessed that he is so widely recognized.

Osama Bin Laden and Mao Tse-tung also have widely recognized images, but they are recognized as evil leaders. What is Che recognized for? Do all those people know what a criminal he was?

Christian preacher is closet atheist

I posted below an example of liberals calling Christians hypocrites, and here is another example, from NPR radio:

Teresa MacBain has a secret, one she's terrified to reveal.

"I'm currently an active pastor and I'm also an atheist," she says. "I live a double life. I feel pretty good on Monday, but by Thursday — when Sunday's right around the corner — I start having stomachaches, headaches, just knowing that I got to stand up and say things that I no longer believe in and portray myself in a way that's totally false."

MacBain glances nervously around the room. It's a Sunday, and normally she would be preaching at her church in Tallahassee, Fla. But here she is, sneaking away to the American Atheists' convention in Bethesda, Md.

My guess is that her church is now wondering why they ever hired a female pastor in the first place.

Wikipedia defines:

Hypocrisy is the state of pretending to have virtues, moral or religious beliefs, principles, etc., that one does not actually have.[1] Hypocrisy involves the deception of others and is thus a kind of lie. ...

Hypocrisy is not simply failing to practice those virtues that one preaches. ... Thus, an alcoholic's advocating temperance, for example, would not be considered an act of hypocrisy as long as the alcoholic made no pretense of constant sobriety.

You might also see this definition of a hypocrite:

A person who professes beliefs and opinions that he or she does not hold in order to conceal his or her real feelings or motives

So a Christian preacher is not a hypocrite just because he is a sinner. Christianity teaches that all men are sinners. A black man is not a hypocrite just because he is a Republican. A taxpayer is not a hypocrite just because he favors higher taxes. But a Christian preacher is a hypocrite if she secretly promotes atheism in her spare time.

Psychologists try to pathologize opinions

A NY Times op-ed says:

WHY are political and religious figures who campaign against gay rights so often implicated in sexual encounters with same-sex partners?

In recent years, Ted Haggard, ...; Larry Craig, a United States senator who opposed including sexual orientation in hate-crime legislation, was arrested on suspicion of lewd conduct in a men’s bathroom;...

Craig was not implicated in sexual encounters with same-sex partners. The news media had a huge manhunt for such partners, and never found any.

One theory is that homosexual urges, when repressed out of shame or fear, can be expressed as homophobia. Freud famously called this process a “reaction formation” — ...

It’s a compelling theory — and now there is scientific reason to believe it. In this month’s issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, we and our fellow researchers provide empirical evidence that homophobia can result, at least in part, from the suppression of same-sex desire.

Only crackpots mention Freud and "scientific reason" together.

The theory here, known as semantic association, is that when “me” precedes words or images that reflect your sexual orientation (for example, heterosexual images for a straight person), you will sort these images into the correct category faster than when “me” precedes words or images that are incongruent with your sexual orientation (for example, homosexual images for a straight person).

That's the theory? That a man can recognize homosexual images more quickly if he is repressing his own homosexual urges out of shame or fear?

This is junk research. Where are the studies on the motivations of those who promote homosexuality?

The article is written by two people with the surname Ryan, with no explanation of how they are related.

This is a profession that voted to not say that homosexuality was a disorder, but now they seem to be saying that anyone who disagrees with them has a disorder. This is part of a trend where psychologist try to pathologize a lot of things that are not disorders. Meanwhile, studies of psychologists show that they have mental disorders much more than other professions.

Memory, creativity, and bias

Here is some recent psychology research that seems obvious to me. Freakonomics reports:

New research finds that it’s alarmingly easy to create false memories for people, even when they know an event didn’t happen

Yes. People can be sincerely trying to tell the truth about their own experiences, and yet be completely wrong. Some personal stories should be treated with suspicion.

A SciAm article reports:

However, despite the widespread positive image of Jobs as a creative genius, he also has a dark reputation for encouraging censorship, “losing sight of honesty and integrity”, belittling employees, and engaging in other morally questionable actions. These harshly contrasting images of Jobs raise the question of why a CEO held in such near-universal positive regard could also be the same one accused of engaging in such contemptible behavior. The answer, it turns out, may have something to do with the aspect of Jobs which is so admired by so many.

In a recent paper published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, researchers at Harvard and Duke Universities demonstrate that creativity can lead people to behave unethically. In five studies, the authors show that creative individuals are more likely to be dishonest, and that individuals induced to think creatively were more likely to be dishonest. Importantly, they showed that this effect is not explained by any tendency for creative people to be more intelligent, but rather that creativity leads people to more easily come up with justifications for their unscrupulous actions.

SciAm also reports:

The key part of the experiment was that the participants were fully aware of the setup; they knew that they were only hearing one side or the entire story. But this didn’t stop the subjects who heard one-sided evidence from being more confident and biased with their judgments than those who saw both sides. That is, even when people had all the underlying facts, they jumped to conclusions after hearing only one side of the story. ...

Tyler Cowen made a similar point in a TED lecture a few months ago. He explained it this way:

There’s the Nudge book, the Sway book, the Blink book… [they are] all about the ways in which we screw up. And there are so many ways, but what I find interesting is that none of these books identify what, to me, is the single, central, most important way we screw up, and that is, we tell ourselves too many stories, or we are too easily seduced by stories. And why don’t these books tell us that? It’s because the books themselves are all about stories. The more of these books you read, you’re learning about some of your biases, but you’re making some of your other biases essentially worse. So the books themselves are part of your cognitive bias.

The current top-selling science book (besides the Jobs autobiography) is Imagine: How Creativity Works, Jonah Lehrer. The author is all over TV, giving a bogus Einstein quote to promote the book. Here is a devastating review:

But my main criticism is that the book relies almost exclusively on anecdote. He trots out case after case of well-known successes (masking tape, Bob Dylan, 3M, Pixar, google, and so on.), and some unknown ones (a surfer, a bartender who puts bacon grease and celery extract in drinks) --always in retrospect -- and draws out what he presents as yet another insight into creativity. But many of these are contradictory. For example, does creativity come out of isolation (p 19) or from teamwork (p120); from breaking convention (p 20) or submitting to its constraints (p 23)? Does it help to be in a positive mood (p32) or a depressed one (p76) or an angry state (161) or a relaxed one (50); does caffeine and other stimulants make the epiphanies less likely (33) or more likely (57)? Should stealing others' ideas be encouraged (247) or discouraged (244)? Does broadening one's set of skills and interests increase creativity (41) or should one concentrate on a single goal (95)? Does relaxation stimulate creativity (p 45) or does difficulty do it better (54)? Does creativity drive toward perfection (p 63) or is it a celebration of errors? (87). Does insight come in a flash (p 17) or is it revealed slowly, after great effort (56)? Must a good poem be "pulled out of us, like a splinter," (p 56) or is it best "vomited." (19)

All of these, apparently.

The book could be added to Cowan's list. There are some well-told stories, but forget about actually learning something about creativity.

Cheeseburgers are good for the heart

SciAm reports on research that eating cheeseburgers can help prevent heart attacks:

Haar et al, from the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine have found, ... When she induced an experimental heart attack in mice, mice that had been treated with a high fat diet for a short period of time showed reduced damage when compared to control mice. Haar also showed that 24 hours worth of high-fat diet produces protection for about 24 hours afterward, but not 48 hours (a double cheeseburger every other day, then?).

To make your own, be sure to consult the Boston Globe's grilled cheese melt-ability index.

Of course no one is advising you to eat cheeseburgers. When some studies indicated that alcohol was good for the heart, here is what the supposed experts said:

Also, it's not possible to predict in which people alcoholism will become a problem. Given these and other risks, the American Heart Association cautions people NOT to start drinking ... if they do not already drink alcohol. Consult your doctor on the benefits and risks of consuming alcohol in moderation.

I believe that research will show that the cheeseburger is the healthiest food that you can eat.

Colson's Watergate crime

Stewart Baker suggests that Charles Colson of Watergate fame was convicted only of something that is not really a crime:

But did he deserve it? The theory of his plea was that he intended to gather (apparently true) information about Ellsberg and leak it at a time when Ellsberg faced criminal charges. How is that obstruction of justice, exactly?

Ellsberg was criminally leaking USA military secrets and seeing a psychiatrist. Presumably the Nixon DoJ could have gotten a court order to seize the psychiatrist's files and to release them to the public at Ellsberg's trial.

While Colson may not have followed procedure, I do think that the USA govt should have obtained the Ellsberg files and made them public. Hardly anyone can explain the Watergate crimes. Somehow the Wash. Post tricked the public into thinking that it was a much worse scandal than it was.

The Nixon articles of impeachment included a charge that Nixon deceived the public:

Richard M. Nixon, in violation of his constitutional oath faithfully to execute the office ... has prevented, obstructed, and impeded the administration of justice, in that: ...

8. making or causing to be made false or misleading public statements for the purpose of deceiving the people of the United States into believing that a thorough and complete investigation had been conducted with respect to allegations of misconduct on the part of personnel of the executive branch of the United States and personnel of the Committee for the Re-election of the President, and that there was no involvement of such personnel in such misconduct:

If this is a crime, then every other President was a criminal.

Update: The comments below show how some people mistakenly believe that Nixon admitted to illegal acts. It is difficult to understand how Nixon could be guilty of obstruction of justice when he had executive authority over the justice dept.

Pinker blames Inquisition

Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature is an impressive work, but it is hard to get past his weak historical analysis, hostility to Christianity, squishy view of science, and leftist political bias.

The historian Bernard Lewis is not the only one who has asked, "What wrong?" In 2002 a committee of Arab intellectuals under the auspices of United Nations published the candid Arab Human Development Report, said be "written by Arabs for Arabs." The authors documented that Arab nations were plagued by political repression, economic backwardness, oppression of women, widespread illiteracy, and a self imposed isolation from the world of ideas. At the time of the report, the entire Arab world exported fewer manufactured goods than the Philippines, had poorer Internet connectivity than sub-Saharan Africa, registered 2 percent as many patents per year as South Korea and translated about a fifth as many books into Arabic as Greece translates into Greek.

It wasn't always that way. During the Middle Ages, Islamic civilization was unquestionably more refined than Christendom. While Europeans were applying their ingenuity to the design of instruments of torture, Muslims were preserving classical Greek culture, absorbing the knowledge of the civilizations of India and China, and advancing astronomy, architecture, cartography, medicine, chemistry, physics, and mathematics. Among the symbolic legacies of this age are the "Arabic numbers" (adapted from India) and loan words such as alcohol, algebra, alchemy, alkali, azimuth, alembic, and algorithm. Just as the West had to come from behind to overtake Islam in science, so it was a laggard in human rights. [p.364]

No, Islamic civilization was not more refined than Christendom. That list of Islamic accomplishments is mostly borrowed from non-Islamic cultures. Yes, we got 7 words from the Arabs, but we got far more from medieval Europe, no matter how you measure it.

Pinker then quotes Bernard Lewis, a Jewish Princeton professor:

Lewis notes:

In most tests of tolerance, Islam, both in theory and in practice, compares unfavorably with the Western democracies as they have developed during the last two or three centuries, but very favorably with most other Christian and post Christian societies and regimes. There is nothing in Islamic history to compare with the emancipation, acceptance, and integration of other believers and non believers in the West; but equally, there is nothing in Islamic history to compare with the Spanish expulsion of Jews and Muslims, the Inquisition the Auto da fe's the wars of religion not to speak of more recent crimes of commission and acquiescence.

Why did Islam blow its lead and fail to have an Age of Reason, an Enlightenment, and a Humanitarian Revolution? Some historians point to bellicose passages in the Koran, but compared to our own genocidal scriptures, they are nothing that some clever exegesis and evolving norms couldn't spin-doctor away.

Lewis points instead to the historical lack of separation between mosque and state. Muhammad was not just a spiritual leader but a political and military one, and only recently have any Islamic states had the concept of a distinction between the secular and the sacred. With every potential intellectual contribution filtered through religious spectacles, opportunities for absorbing and combining new ideas were lost. ...

Whatever the historical reasons, a large chasm appears to separate Western and Islamic cultures today. [p.365]

The Auto-da-fé (literally "act of faith") was a public penance ritual associated to the Spanish Inquisition. I don't know how a mideast scholar could say something so silly as "there is nothing in Islamic history to compare with the Spanish expulsion of Jews and Muslims". This expulsion was no more exceptional than the Moors invading and subjugating Christian Spain in the first place. To this day, peaceful Christians and Jews are being driven out of Islamic countries such as Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, and Iran. And the Mohammedans would drive the Jews out of Israel, if they could. Islam has always compared unfavorably to Christianity.
Here is a news story from a couple of days ago:

A Sri Lankan woman has been arrested on suspicion of casting a spell on a 13-year-old girl on a shopping trip in Saudi Arabia. She may face the death penalty as the Middle Eastern country is known to behead convicted sorcerers.

Pinker describes himself as a "Jewish atheist" who identifies with Zionists [p.374], so of course he has much to say about later persecutions of the Jews, such as the Nazis expelling them from Germany. But Hitler was no Christian, and Pinker subscribes to the view that there never would have been a Holocaust without Hitler. [p.209]

Pinker and Lewis are anti-Christian bigots. The Moors invaded Spain and Spain eventually kicked them out. Pinker and Lewis act as if it was one of the great crimes of human civilization for Spain to kick the Moors out, while denying that the Moors ever did anything wrong. Pinker and Lewis are essentially saying that it is okey for anti-Christian forces to try to destroy a Christian culture, but wrong for the Christians to fight back.

Lewis is correct that Islam is not just a religion, and Muhammad mixed his religious, political, and military teachings. You cannot separate the religion from the military jihad against nonbelievers. Christianity is not like that. Europe has a history of wars, but those wars were driven by politics, not religion.

Europe would have been destroyed by Mohammedan invaders if the Christians had been unwilling to fight back. Europe was saved by the 732 Battle of Tours, 1492 Reconquista, 1571 Battle of Lepanto, and 1683 Battle of Vienna. Christian-haters like Pinker and Lewis continue to complain about Spain defending itself against the Moors, and even argue that it was worse than anything that Islamic countries have done. Spain was defending itself from oppressive invaders.

Pinker's book talks about "better angels" but his explanation for the decline of violence involves Jewish atheists and others becoming enlightened enough to reject Christianity and joining liberal causes that eventually embraced feminism, gay rights, and animal rights. Seems dubious to me. I think Christianity did much more to reduce violence. Sure, some Christian countries fought medieval wars, but repelling the Mohammedans had the long-term effect of reducing violence, as well as making modern civilization and prosperity possible.

Martins want money

I wondered below why the Trayvon Martin advocates wanted Zimmerman arrested when he had already been arrested:

“We are not asking that he be convicted; We are asking that he be arrested”

This demand is un-American because we believe that people are innocent until proven guilty, and we only punish the guilty. The Last Refuge blog argues that there is a simple monetary incentive:

Note that in section 2 of the immunity statute 776.032 a person is “immune” from criminal or CIVIL action if they are not arrested.

It is likely that Martin's family has already hired a contingency-fee lawyer to file a civil lawsuit. As I write this, Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-Florida) is giving a speech about how Martin was murdered and we need to have a national conversation about racial profiling. Pres. Barack Obama has also been pouring gasoline on the fire. I think that these Martin national conversations are going to backfire. When all the facts come out, it looks as if Martin will be proven to be the criminal, not Zimmerman. If so, and if the black community continues to defend Martin's behavior, then the public is apt to conclude that Martin was just the sort of kid who should have been profiled as someone you do not want in your neighborhood. In fairness, not all blacks are shouting racism. Bill Cosby says:

Cosby said calling George Zimmerman a racist doesn't solve anything.

The most common black-white crime stories involve blacks beating up whites, such as this:

Maywood, Ill. - Alton L. Hayes III, a west suburban man charged with a hate crime, told police he was so upset about the Trayvon Martin case in Florida that he beat up a white man early Tuesday. Hayes and a 15-year-old Chicago boy walked up behind the 19-year-old man victim and pinned his arms to his side, police said. Hayes, 18, then picked up a large tree branch, pointed it at the man and said, “Empty your pockets, white boy.” The two allegedly rifled through the victim’s pockets, then threw him to the ground and punched him “numerous times” in the head and back before running away, police said. Hayes and the boy are black; the victim is white. After being arrested, Hayes told police he was upset by the Trayvon Martin case and beat the man up because he was white, Cook County State’s Attorney’s office spokeswoman Tandra Simonton said, citing court records.

And it may turn out that Martin beat up Zimmerman because Martin was a violent delinquent and Zimmerman was white/hispanic. For the weakness of the DA affidavit against Zimmerman, see PopeHat or Dershowitz. It gives the impression that the prosecutors are incompetent, corrupt, and have no case.

Update: More comments at TalkLeft on the weakness of the prosecution.