In which I discuss Star Trek at the expense of another.

Update: My sincere thanks go out to Emily (@seelix on Twitter) for recovering this post for me after it went offline.

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Bill Watterson is a sort of personal hero to me for having created the Calvin and Hobbes strip and writing such wonderful stories for 10 years.  Watterson once described that part of the charm of Calvin's character was his ability to precisely articulate very stupid ideas. This incongruence between Calvin's eloquence and his naive ignorance was the source of much of the strip's humor.

Well, today, I had the pleasure of reading some of the most precisely articulated stupidity that I have seen in a while. It is not every day, after all, that one gets to read a Tea and Crumpets Partier take issue with the utopian view that Star Trek puts forward and in doing so, lay bare the intellectual bankrupcy of the TCP movement. Truly, there is comedic gold buried in this bizarrely coherent but utterly stupid rant by Walter Hudson.

It is telling that our inadverent comedian opens with a quote from Roddenberry intended to demonstrate how Star Trek is a bad thing:

The whole show was an attempt to say that humanity will reach maturity and wisdom on the day that it begins not just to tolerate, but to take a special delight in differences in ideas and differences in life forms. We tried to say that the worst possible thing that can happen to all of us is for the future to somehow press us into a common mould, where we begin to act and talk and look and think alike. If we cannot learn to actually enjoy those small differences, take a positive delight in those small differences between our own kind, here on this planet, then we do not deserve to go out into space and meet the diversity that is almost certainly out there. And I think that this is what people responded to.

Ironically, this multicultural meme leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy. Tolerating every idea enables ideas which are destructive. As the franchise has progressed, it has (perhaps unwittingly) demonstrated this flaw in its own message.

Right out of the gate, Hudson has jumped the shark by presuming that his audience shares the same paranoia for the word "multiculturalism" that he does. Nowhere in the quote provided does Roddenberry state that he thought we should embrace or even tolerate all ideas equally, but rather that we should be willing to "take a special delight in differences in ideas." Multiculturalism does not preclude one from recognizing that some ideas have severely negative implications if acted upon, contrary to what Hudson seems to think.

The rest of this gem consists of a list of 10 supposedly destructive social messages espoused through Star Trek. Even a cursory glace at the titles of these ten sections gives one a startlingly blunt view on how Hudson sees the world:

• The U.N. in Space
• Prime Directive
• No Money
• Galactic Peace
• Silly God, Tricks Are For Man
• Occupations and Insurgents
• Set Phasers on Stun
• Cosmic Environmentalism
• Resistance Is Futile
• Can’t We All Just Get Along?

Only in the upside-down reality-starved community that is the Tea and Crumpets Party is this list somehow damning, but inside that petri dish of memetic insanity, words and names like "U.N," "peace," "trick," and "environment" take on the quality of nightmares induced by sleeping in front of one too many rants by Glenn Beck. Far be it from me to try and deconstruct such a perverse framework for understanding the world, for fear of being irrevocably damaged by the Lovecraftian horrors that lie dormant in such twisted logics. (OK, that last sentence was exaggeration bordering on purple prose, but it was fun to write.) Instead, I shall be content to address some of the more LOLworthy points that Hudson hits upon in his psychiatric disrobing so cleverly disguised as an article about Star Trek.

Let's start our journey into madness with the first "message": that the United Federation of Planets is much like the United Nations in the real world. Perhaps surprisingly, I agree! The UFP is transparently modeled after the UN, but I think it stands to reflect the unbridled idealism of Star Trek. Where the UFP differs from the UN is in that it works well to achieve it's intended purpose. That it achieves, finally, after so many false starts, the ideal of a cooperative body that spans across not only nations, but worlds and even species. To Hudson, this utopian idealism seems to be the whole problem:

While the occasional insurrection or insubordination was explored throughout the franchise, for the most part, no one within the Federation really questions their government. As we shall examine in more detail, in Star Trek, the government is a two-dimensional institution which works because it must in order to advance a particular political narrative.

In short, Hudson is arguing that aside from those times that people in Star Trek question their government so brilliantly and so passionately (take, for example, The Drumhead [TNG], The Measure of a Man [TNG], Star Trek: Insurrection, or practically all of Deep Space Nine's seventh season), no one ever questions their government! Hudson sees in the bold idealism of asserting a government that works well most of the time a spectre of timid uniformity. How markedly different from the Pickard, the Sisko, the Odo, the Data, the Spock, and all the other characters in whom I invested so much emotion are these timid spectres that haunt Hudson's Star Trek!

Next on the menu, we are served a deliciously absurd view of Star Trek's Prime Directive. For the uninitiated, the Prime Directive asserts that the Federation is not to go around the galaxy remaking technologically primitive planets into societies unto their own image. The Prime Directive is informed by a history of well-intentioned but disastrous interventions into the progression of other cultures, and aims to allow nascent cultures to get a chance to participate in galactic culture as equals and on the merits of what they offer, rather than to be damned by the accident of a slower technological progression. There are, of course, many points with which one can argue intelligently (and on which many Star Trek characters do!) with the Prime Directive, and I think it'd be a shame to accept the Directive as a given without critical thought. It will come as little surprise, though, that Hudson neatly sidesteps any intellectual basis for disagreeing with the Directive, instead connecting it back to the boogeyman of multiculturalism:

The defining aspect of Star Trek’s Federation is its Prime Directive, the law above all others which its officers are sworn to uphold even at the expense of their life and the lives of others. Stated simply, the Prime Directive is to never interfere with the natural evolution of another civilization. In the original series, this meant refraining from contaminating relatively primitive cultures with knowledge of Starfleet and its advanced technology. Over the years, the Prime Directive has expanded into a kind of galactic Tenth Amendment, assuring member planets jurisdiction over internal affairs.

While the latter may seem attractive to conservatives, it is worth noting that the supreme moral principle upon which the Prime Directive is based is not natural rights or individual sovereignty, but multiculturalism. In Star Trek, the one cardinal sin is applying your values to an alien culture.

Here, I have emphasized where Hudson seems to have been watching a completely different set of shows and movies than I did. What else other than "applying your values to an alien culture" is the whole Dominion War, or the earlier Cardassian War? The idea that the Federation has something to offer other cultures in terms of moral values is so omnipresent in Star Trek that picking a single example would be to miss the point. Where Star Trek differs from Hudson's wingnut world, however, is that the Federation also learns from other cultures. The interactions go both ways, unlike the one-sided ethnocentric and xenophobic ideas on foreign policy espoused by many of the TCP's most ardent supporters.

Since I don't wish to hash through this ridiculous article for the rest of my natural life, or even for the rest of the weekend, let me speed up a bit. I think you get the flavor of Hudson's approach already: isolate something that happened in Star Trek and connect it to a dog-whistle, boogeyman or spectre of the wingnut mind. To wit, "No Money" connects the absence of money in the Federation to communism (gasp!), missing soundly the point that the absence of money derives from an absence of scarcity. There's no point to money when there is no scarcity to drive economies. Whereas the Ferengi solve this "problem" by inventing new scarcities, the Federation embraces the promise of a world not held back by dollars and cents. A world freed to pursue its dreams and its ideals, no matter the price tag.

Hudson next misunderstands the ideals of the Federation rather dramatically by his characterization that "the Federation is a kind of galactic nation vying for power among hostile neighbors on all sides," and thus that "peace remains illusive." That the show documents how its characters deal with adversity in face of their ideals is not a criticism, but part of the wondrous utopia that the shows depict! Peace is so valued and well-understood by the Federation that they will work for peace even when so surrounded. One key transition depicted over the course of four shows spanning 26 seasons was the transformation of the Klingons from a violent adversary to an uneasy ally, then to a valued but misunderstood neighbor and finally to a celebrated friend in the Dominion War. What could better demonstrate the Federation's ideal of peace than their successful diplomatic efforts with a species whose cultural history celebrates violence and imperialism at every turn?

Skipping mostly past "Silly God, Tricks are for Man," I will pause just to note that it is so incoherent as to cite early Star Trek as following "Judeo-Christian tradition," as if such a thing existed outside of the weird premillennial-dispensationalism steeped mind of the modern wingnut. Far more interesting is Hudson's complete perversion of the Star Trek parables of the Cardiassians, Bajorans and the Dominion on display in "Occupations and Insurgents." No amount of analysis on my part could hope to improve simply quoting Hudson on this point:

When the United States deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq, its mission was similar to that of the Federation at Bajor, keep the peace, defend the interests of liberty, and prevent old and new enemies from exerting themselves in the area.

...

[Deep Space Nine] became the Federation’s vanguard, defending a wormhole through which the evil Dominion could attack from across the galaxy. Iraq likewise became American’s vanguard in the global War on Terror. The Dominion’s leaders were shape-shifters who could appear as anyone or anything, and thus conduct insurgent warfare against the Federation.

Anyone who equates the Dominion's grand imperialist schemes with modern insurgents either never watched Star Trek, or suffered one too many concussions to comprehend it properly. The same complete and utter lack of understanding of the ideals of the show is on display in "Phasers on Stun":

Be that as it may, the ability to simply stun enemies rather than kill them lowered the stakes of the drama somewhat. Star Trek frequently failed to address the uncomfortable scenarios such an ability would present in real life. Even if you could stun someone who wanted to kill you, wouldn’t they still want to kill you once they recovered? Have you really dealt with the threat?

Such a flirtation with violence as being the best solution to a problem, rather than as being a poor substitute for understanding, diplomacy and rational discussion says quite a bit more about Hudson and his memetic environment than I might have wanted to see, but there it is. To Hudson, it seems that killing someone is truly the only way to "deal with the threat," and that our fiction should reflect this cruel "fact." It seems that Hudson's comedy now gives way to a brutal exposure of a genuinely unpleasant mind. Luckily, we are spared delving too much further yet by the section on "Cosmic Environmentalism":

A powerful alien probe has come to Earth looking for them, and starts trashing the place when they don’t harmonize with its cetacean song. The moral of the story is obvious. If we do not act to protect the environment today, a race of alien sea turtles may destroy our civilization tomorrow.

Admittedly, Star Trek IV was cheesy and campy, but it was wonderful seeing the denizens of a better future come face to face with their history: a people that treats their environs as immutable, exploitable and lifeless. Hudson describes this in decidedly less gracious terms:

As they peruse the landscape of ’80′s San Francisco, the crew wander about like bemused Westerners stranded among a primitive tribe.

Maybe that should give us pause, Mr. Hudson? How should our decedents see us, and how do we go about making that happen? If we don't want the future to think of us as a what you call a "primitive tribe," maybe we shouldn't act like one!

I'm happy to report that Hudson has saved the best for last, as his sections on "Resistance is Futile" and "Can't We All Just Get Along?" meld together into a single thesis so bizarre, so stupid and so astounding that it alone could have motivated me writing this post. He opens with this doozy:

In a franchise which has clearly been leveraged to promote leftist ideology, one of the most fascinating developments has been the introduction off a villain so plainly emblematic of the Left. The popularity of the Borg, an aggressive race of cyborgs who share a collective hive mind, is no doubt attributable to the psychological horror they represent.

The Borg seek to assimilate intelligent life into their totalitarian society, wholly subduing individuality in service to the collective. In doing so, they believe they are working toward the perfection of their species. Could there be a better metaphor for the Left than these cybernetic zombies?

I dare you to count the number of buzzwords, dog-whistles and boogeymen hiding in that quotation, then add to that the ridiculous characterization of progressiveism as "cybernetic zombies." Any pretense of sanity has now been fully left behind, leaving Hudson standing bare in all his nuttiness, but he's not done yet!

The Borg challenge the Federation’s Utopian ideals, and thus those of the Left, by presenting a threat which cannot be reasoned or negotiated with.

But I thought the Borg was the Left! Oh, wait, they are again a few moments later:

The Borg are also the enemy faced in Star Trek: First Contact. At that point in franchise continuity, Picard has encountered the Borg enough to know there is only one appropriate response.

We’ve made too many compromises already, too many retreats. They invade our space, and we fall back. They assimilate entire worlds, and we fall back. Not again. The line must be drawn here. This far, no further!

So no mention of how that hard-line stance nearly cost Picard his life, his crew, his planet, his Federation, his ideals? No, as Hudson goes boldly on to conclude with this knockout of a thesis:

Again, the Borg stand as a curious contradiction to this sentiment. Strictly speaking, they share the same objective as the Federation, galactic peace. The difference is that the Borg see peace as the end result of destroying or assimilating all free people in the galaxy (a perspective they share with Islam). In this the Borg are correct, because freedom enables distinctiveness, and distinctiveness breeds discord. We will never completely get along so long as some among us remain free.

Setting aside for a moment the obscene perversion of the word "freedom" on display here, note what I have emphasized above: Hudson equates the Borg with Islam, and also with what he calls "the Left," and thus he's done! Liberals are Islam, QED. What better punchline could you imagine for such a coherently stupid manifesto?

While I have done my best to illustrate the comedy of Hudson's tea-stained view of the world, I would be remiss if I left one with the impression that this was all one big joke. The worldview through which Hudson sees Star Trek as not a utopia but a dystopia is currently still seen as a serious contender in the American marketplace of ideas; so much so that we think of Obama as liberal by comparison, so much so that Bill O'Riley has become a voice of reason on his network, so much so that Donald Trump is not immediately laughed off-stage and so much so that Michelle Bachman currently has a job. Thus, my laughter at Hudson's fevered views comes with a barb. I laugh in the hope and the promise of discrediting a bankrupt movement, against which the ideals espoused by a brilliant series of TV shows like Star Trek stands as all the more essential.

When good faith fails.

My previous post notwithstanding, there are many times when one finds themselves arguing some position with someone that has little to no interest in seeking the truth. When one's opponent fails to reciprocate your good faith and intellectual honesty, what remains? One strategy is to shift your goal to demonstrate to your audience the lack of honesty exhibited by your opponent. In doing so, perhaps it can be demonstrated that their argument does not rest upon logic and evidence, but upon emotional appeal and on preconceived notions. If so, then the audience is enlightened for having seen the pretense and facade of rationality stripped from your opponent's counterarguments— assuming, that is, that they truly are violating the principle of intellectual honesty.

The question, then, becomes one of how best to strip away pretense and nonsense from what is claimed to be a logical argument. Enter humor. A long tested technique in discourse, the use of humor to defuse emotional appeals by one's opponent and to lay bare the flimsy pseudologic of their arguments has been elevated to an art form. Take, for example, a rhetorical device such as the Flying Spaghetti Monster. The FSM doesn't make its point directly through well-reasoned arguments, but by a sort of reductio ad absurdum that cuts to the essential absurdity of intelligent design creationism (IDC): the Christian god is added ad hoc without any justification, when any other deity (even a manifestly absurd one like the FSM) would do just as well in its place.

By ridiculing the intelligent design creationist argument, then, the FSM device makes room for a real debate (that is, one based on good faith and intellectual honesty) to occur as it adds a cost to introducing further irrational arguments of a similar kind. In this way, we can see that ridicule acts as a cultural tool to enforce good faith: when one deviates from the principles that enable a debate to be productive, ridicule and sarcasm can be employed to steer the argument back to a potentially constructive state.

One can also think of ridicule as a kind of memetic inoculation against bad-faith arguments such as those used to prop up IDC. Used as inoculation, ridicule works quite well along side well-reasoned and honest arguments, as the ridicule can serve as the mnemonic hook upon which an argument can be hung. For instance, following an argument about the methodological incompatibilities between science and faith, using a term like "faitheist" adds a social cost to using the same discredited arguments (such as "they must be compatible--- to prove it, here's a religious scientist") to justify complete compatibility. In order to be effective, one arguing for compatibility must either provide a novel demonstration of why the arguments packaged up in "faitheist" are wrong, or they must provide novel arguments not addressed in preceding discussions.

In a completely different context, economist and Nobel laureate Paul Krugman effectively uses ridicule in the same way: his use of the terms like "Serious People" and "Confidence Fairy" serve to keep readers in the context of a previously made argument. Whereas the Republicans (and neo-conservatives more broadly) rely heavily upon a small set of arguments even long after they have been discredited, the use of ridicule can serve as an expedient way of connecting such a discredited argument to its rebuttal.

Even beyond the importance to enabling discourse, there is another important aspect to ridicule and even outright scorn that we ignore to our detriment. Many humans implicitly measure the acceptableness of a position by how their peers react to it, so should we not use that mechanism to stymie the propagation of truly hateful ideas? Leaving the material questions of an afterlife aside, for instance, should we not ridicule and scorn the hateful notion that a being worthy of worship would ever create a place of eternal torment? Hidden in such a supposition is the truly despicable idea that people ever deserve to be tormented, much less for eternity. By ridiculing those advancing without evidence claims of a literal hell (see, for instance, George Carlin's hilarious rants on the subject), we can introduce a social cost not just for being illogical, but also for being hateful.


The danger, of course, in the use of ridicule to remedy bad faith and enforce social costs is that it can all too easily become another example of bad faith itself. Put differently, ridicule is a tool that can be used to manifestly delegitimize arguments that aren't actually legitimate in the first place, or it can be used to delegitimize arguments that are in fact made in all good faith. As a step towards addressing this danger, note that ridicule can be its own balance. Someone that uses ridicule poorly or as a bludgeon to cut off reasoned debate instead of fostering it should themselves be ridiculed. After all, the best of applications of sarcastic wit must necessarily draw upon reality, so having reality on one's side lends potency to their ridicule.

In an ideal situation, such a tool should never be needed, but in practice, I posit that there are many situations that call for tools like ridicule to make room for reasoned discourse to start. I look forward to the day where I can assume good faith by default, but until then, I shall have to be content to have a laugh at the expense of poor reasoning.

Thoughts in the endgame.

Welcome to the endgame of a long political play for electoral dominance in the United States. What do I mean by that? I mean that groups like The Family and Koch Enterprises, amongst others, have been playing the long game in American politics, and that they have nearly reached the culmination of their strategy. As Rachel Maddow brilliantly explained, the unrest in Wisconsin can only be understood in the context of a struggle for the survival of the Democratic Party. After all, unions are the last bastion of the left in terms of fundraising, and so cutting off unions means cutting fiscal support for the Democratic Party. Especially post-Citizens United, elections are won with money, and so marginalizing unions means disenfranchising voters from all walks of life.

What would it mean, though, for the Republicans to have won so thoroughly? To answer that, it helps to understand what the Republican Party (under all its guises) is and what they stand for. As much as the Democrats are beholden to the forces of irrationality, the Republicans mark themselves as being still less rational. As much as the Democrats are subservient to unbounded corporatism, the Republicans distinguish themselves as being still more enamored of model of the corporation as state. While the Democrats are weak on issues of human rights, the Republicans are plain monstrous.

This last point deserves some elaboration: witness the unabashed war on women, going so far as to seriously propose that it be legal to kill doctors for providing medical care to women that includes abortion. Faced with economic crisis, they would callously eat the future, all the while saying "so be it." Given the pro-democracy movements in many parts of the world, the Republican taking heads are by and large siding with the dictators and using the movements to inflame Islamophobia. What other word than "monstrous" can describe these kinds of actions and positions?

We must ask ourselves, then, whether we want future challengers in the political arena to be obliged to play by rules written by the current crop of Republicans; rules that increasingly leave no room for reasoned debate, or indeed, for any thought more complex than a sound-bite. Do we want to solve our problems, or are we content to let a small few make them much worse as they pursue their own self-interest? Those that have brought us to this endgame know full well that they will not reap what they have sown, for the consequences are still longer-term than their callous and wicked plays at power. Thus it falls to us, those who care about the world that we inherit and that we pass on to the next generation, to decide what the nature of politics will be.

It's not all so bleak, of course. Given that there's about 90,000 people protesting in Wisconsin against the latest round of union-busting, the Republican endgame may yet be averted or at least postponed. Let us not waste the opportunity given to us by this uprising, but instead use it to remind people of what the stakes really are.

Two wicked tautologies.

The midterm elections in the United States are two days away. Unfortunately, the importance of these elections is not limited to inhabitants of the US and to its expats (such as myself). The interconnectedness of national economies and political systems that defines the modern world means that insanity in the country I call home can spread and upset affairs all over the world. Moreover, issues such as environmental protection know no such thing as political borders, and have consequences all the world over. Increasingly, the vast majority of the world has been effectively disenfranchised by the disproportionate level of influence wielded by the US in world affairs.

It is thus that I feel justified in saying that what I write of today is of the utmost urgency and importance. As I write this, a group of unqualified and militaristic right-wing candidates is poised to take power in the legislative bodies of the US, which would render the already too-moderate Democratic party completely impotent in solving the myriad problems facing the US and the broader world. The impact of this potential swing in political power has already been addressed by others, perhaps most profoundly by Keith Olbermann in his most recent Special Comment.

There is, however, a point that has largely been missed in much of the discussion so far. I myself have said that the Tea Party has no coherent argument, philosophical basis, policy position or political stance. This is, unfortunately, not completely correct, though. The Tea Party does indeed have a coherent basis; not one of politics or policy, but of theology.

To explain what I mean by this necessarily involves a bit of a tangent. In his beautifully written and profoundly chilling book The Family (affiliate link), Jeff Sharlet documents the rise to power of a secretive group of theocrats, both in the United States and globally. The Family (also known as the Fellowship) is largely characterized by their adherence to a theology of power. According to Family doctrine, the powerful people in the world today are powerful by God's will, and thus are to be followed implicitly in recognition of God's choosing them as his agents. This creates, as Sharlet so eloquently puts it, a tautology of power, in which the powerful are powerful precisely because they are powerful. Their religious belief is thus directly connected to their support of many of the world's most despicable men and women; would the people that they support be powerful if not for some quality that God had identified and chosen them for?

In the Tea Party, we see a parallel theology-- a similarly wicked tautology-- driving their actions. If one takes the efficient market hypothesis extremely literally, then the wealthy are rich because the Free Market has chosen them for some quality that they must possess, even if it is invisible to mere mortals. This tautology of wealth states that the wealthy are wealthy precisely because they are wealthy. This doctrine of the Tea Party betrays the faux populism to their movement. Indeed, adherents of this tautology of wealthy are perhaps better referred to as the Tea and Crumpets Party (TCP), as their every policy action seems driven towards accelerating the expansion of the gap between the wealthy and everyone else. For all their cries against the redistribution of wealth, that is precisely what the TCP wants: that as much wealth be transfered to the already-wealthy as possible.

The primary difference between the TCP and the Family, as far as I can tell, is that the TCP is not in the slightest secretive. It is, after all, not as of yet disreputable to put literal religious faith in the efficient market hypothesis, nor to support the whims of billionaires. That we have as a society progressed to the point of understanding that giving aid to genocidal maniacs (such as the literal Nazis that what would eventually become the Family protected following WWII) necessitates a level of secrecy on the part of the Family that the TCP has no need of.

Of course, wealth and power are not uncorrelated. These two wicked tautologies thus interweave in horrible ways, of which I fear we have seen but the shyest echoes. I would rather not find out the terrifying ends produced through such an interweaving by handing the reins of power over to the TCP.

On Tuesday, however, there is a choice put to voters in the US: whether to endorse a wicked hypothesis that parallels that of the Family's power theology, or whether to stand up for policies formed on a rational basis. Those outside the US also have a part to play in the next two days, for in speaking up and reminding your friends and loved ones what is at stake, a further crisis may yet be averted. Please do not allow these wicked tautologies to win out over rationality.

Sex negativity considered harmful, but to whom?

For all our capacity for compassion, we humans can be rather bloody rotten to each other. It shouldn't be surprising that this duality is apparent in children as well. Indeed, it's disturbing to read this story on Salon about how a video of a teenage girl being raped was shared via the Internet by other teenagers. The rape of any person is a tragedy and an outrage; the continuing exploitation of a victim in such a manner nearly defies description.

The reason I bring this article up, however, is because of something far more subtle and insidious [emphasis mine]:

This is the typical predicament law enforcement faces when it comes to online child pornography: Once it's out there, it's usually out there for good. The digital trail is just too difficult to trace. We've seen a similar thing with teen "sexting." A boyfriend gets angry when his girlfriend breaks up with him, so he texts a naked photo of her to all his buddies, they send it to all their buddies, and so on and so forth. In the end, it's hard to know just how many people have seen the image and where it's ended up.

If that paragraph doesn't strike you as deeply wrong, then I suggest giving it another read through. How else other than "deeply wrong" is one supposed to describe the comparison between a brutal rape, child pornography and the fully consensual exchange of suggestive pictures between children. This latter phenomenon can go sour indeed when the relationship between two children changes, and can lead to abusive situations, but that's not what the neologism "sexting" refers to.

By equating the consensual activity to which "sexting" refers with the form of abuse described, the author communicates a decidedly sex-negative position, objecting to the very presence of sexuality in the lives of teenage children. I suspect that this is unintended, or a product of miscommunication and misunderstanding, but it is a common enough position to take that it's worth discussing, to be sure.

Many others have described much more eloquently than I ever could how sex-negativity such as the anti-porn movement harms adults, but children undeniably suffer as well. Even beyond the direct consequences, sex-negativity can tie into other problems, such as sexism, leading to young girls being shamed for engaging in a very natural aspect of human experience.

Perhaps more disturbing is that sex-negative motivated approaches to education leave children ill-informed about their own sexuality, leading them to engage in riskier behavior. Indeed, children often live in a virtual sexual Prohibition, so should we be surprised to find them drinking of moonshine? That this approach of keeping children in the dark is also being applied to higher education by sex-negative advocates is something that we should find very disturbing.

There's another way, however, of dealing with the complexities and problems inherent in teenage sexual relations: treat children as competent, but in need of education. Don't hide them from the complexities of sex, and don't fall into the trap of well-meaning but sex-negative approaches to education. I am glad to see that even a state like Alaska can work towards implementing sex and relationship education programs that deal with such complexities. Rather than engaging in the kind of sex-negativity which so harms adults and children alike by teaching them to be ashamed of their own sexuality, harm reduction based education starts from the radical view that children are people, too.

On loyalty of a peculiar kind.

The Scientific American podcast highlighted today research showing that members of "Generation X" (why is that Godawful name still around?) are on average more loyal to religion than are members of their parents' generation. Setting aside the question of how reliable this report is, since there are very few details given, let us instead treat the article as a launching point for discussion.

Indeed, it is uncontroversial that loyalty to religion exists in some sense. What does such a loyalty mean, however? What courses of action are demanded by such a loyalty? This is at best a problematic question to answer, as it is belief in a set of material claims that may be taken as comprising a religion. Under this view, religions are not adopted as matters of principle, but rather as a matter of that belief. One may as well ask what a loyalty to The Lord of the Rings implies.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but it is a bizarre notion that one can be loyal or disloyal to a set of claims about material reality. Such claims are ideally decided by consulting that self-same material reality, rather than loyalty to one or another set of claims. One that is loyal to a set of religious claims is then someone that is compelled by this loyalty to assert the primacy of their claims over evidence. Such loyalty is distinct from loyalty to a person, ideal or value in that it cannot be a matter of principle without falling into the trap of argument by appeal to consequences.

This sort of religious loyalty is, on the other hand, one onto which principles can be grafted. If some of the material claims to a religion are that certain modes of conduct are inherently morally superior to others by divine edict, then adoption of principles reinforcing those modes of conduct is a consequence of loyalty to those claims. Since correspondence to reality is not demanded from these religious claims about reality, such claims may be manipulated so as to imply any of a wide range of mutually contradictory principles. That is, religious loyalty is not a matter of principle so much as a vessel into which principle can be poured.

Witness, for instance, the latest absurdity from Glenn Beck, his I Have A Scheme speech. As others have noted, the attendees were indeed fiercely loyal, but to no particular principle. Rather, the Tea Party, in buying into and expressing loyalty towards material claims that are demonstrably false, has made themselves into so many empty vessels into which the hateful principles of the GOP may be poured.

Just as with religious loyalty, this political loyalty neither demands nor exhibits correspondence with reality, neither demands nor exhibits principle. As such, it is difficult if not impossible to apply reason to these views. This sort of blind loyalty, made without deference to what actually is, must be seen as a problem if we are to progress in our moral thinking as a society.

Joining the fray, despite better judgment.

After reading Jerry Coyne's take on the NYC mosque project known as Cordoba House, I feel compelled to contribute my own unsolicited views. Let me be perfectly (and perhaps painfully) clear on this: I do not support the building of this mosque any more than I support the building of any other mosque, church, temple or other monument to that source of perpetual irrationality that is religion. Of course, what's brilliant about living in a country that respects human rights is that they do not need my support to build their mosque any more than, say, a Catholic group needs my support to continue expanding that particular institution.

There is an inherent and celebrated right to express viewpoints, including those that I find deplorable and unconscionable, and I am not about to stop celebrating this right simply because of some contrived notion of "ground zero" as being somehow sacred, as is currently being pushed by the right-wingers in my home country. My personal revulsion at a religious institution that offers no better than a compromise with the hateful and inhumane extremes of the worst and most fundamentalist strains of religious practice do not figure in to the equation at all. I cannot, by the same reasoning, let the hatred expressed as an article of faith by the Mormon church in the recent California Proposition 8 debacle lead me to reject the inherent rights of Mormons to practice their faith.

Rather, as I have said before and will continue to say, such institutions are made irrelevant through eroding the cultural support for irrationality. The law has no place in deciding questions of this kind of cultural imperative-- not even zoning laws. To throw away the recognition of fundamental human rights in a case like this is nothing other than embracing the very irrationality that I argue is so damaging.

Note: Thank you to the person who helped me perfect the writing on this one. Left anonymous for search engine reasons.

Deciding What Science Is

Recently, someone at a major newspaper wrote an article about science blogging that is perhaps best described as trolling. This article, penned by Virginia Heffernan, has already led to many pixels being spilt over its careless dismissal of the state of science blogging. See, for instance, PZ Myers' post on the matter wherein he dispatches her arguments quite handily. I don't wish to add to this issue, as too much has already been said about her article.

Rather, I want to address one of the more poisonous and wrong attitudes upon which her article seems to have been predicated. This attitude is far from limited to Heffernan's flamebaiting, and has been reflected in much of the writing that has followed. For instance, one blogger writing on "Christian faith, society, science and culture" had this to say:

One of my chief complaints about many science blogs is that there really isn’t much science to be found there. Many of the most popular consist primarily of diatribes about various political issues (gay marriage, immigration, the tea party, etc) and the personal religious beliefs of the blogger (who is more often than not an evangelistic New Atheist). What one will find very little discussion of science, as in information about current research, particular papers, or the state of various scientific fields. [emphasis in original]

The author, Jack Hudson, has implicitly made the same kind of error that so many face when discussion science: he has decided a priori what is and is not within the realms of what can be discussed as science. Let's take gay marriage, for instance, since Hudson seems to think that this issue has no place on a blog about science. It also serves as a very timely example to pick at, seeing as how the fate of the anti-gay marriage amendment Proposition 8 was just found to be unconstitutional in the decision Perry v. Schwarzenegger. Much of the decision came down to deciding if the law had any rational basis, and thus involved a substantive discussion of material claims made by anti-gay advocates. These claims were found to be wanting, as they were not grounded in scientific fact. Thus, we see that the final decision in the case came down to a scientific question: is gay marriage at all quantitatively different from heterosexual marriage?

Gay marriage, then, is a perfect example of something within the purview of science, as in deciding, we must apply the ideals of rationality upon which science ultimately rests. Advocating against gay marriage is simply not rational from any standpoint with which we should find acceptable in society, and so any blogger advocating for the public role of science has not only the right, but the responsibility to speak out against anti-gay actions like Prop 8. If science bloggers stick had by and large stayed out of the issue, then they would have been complicit in the further separation of science and society.

The trouble that Heffernan, Hudson and other writers run into, then, is that they don't get to set aside some issues as being outside of science. Deciding what science is and is not is not so trivial as to be settled by consulting with one's political positions. We cannot appease the Hudsons of the world by shying away from "whining about creationists," but will only further weaken how science is seen and accepted in society at large.

P. S.: I have to point out that Hudson filed his article under the "Atheist Contradictions" category, begging the question of what exactly is so contradictory here.

What We're Up Against

It's no secret that progressives, secular humanists, rationalists, skeptics and all other manner of forward-thinking individuals face a myriad of different uphill battles, not the least of which is to prevent our own internal disputes from causing us to lose sight of what we're working for. That's why I find it helpful to sometimes take a step back and simply look at what sorts of challenges we face.

In particular, I find that in my own life, I tend to surround myself with people that, while far from exactly like-minded, share enough of my concerns that it's easy to forget that I hold many views that are very far from what is considered normal, even to the point of being taken for granted, in modern society. Advocating for atheism (and more generally, for skepticism), for instance, is not yet seen as acceptable in much of the United States. This makes it even more paramount to look at what those on the other side believe, think, do and say. Were I more into the militaristic metaphors with which so much of the English-speaking world seems to be so infatuated, I would say that we must know our enemies to defeat them. Instead, I'm going to be a physicist about it and say that we must know the potential energy function in which we move about.

Without further ado, then, let me start by noting that ours is a society in which people are fine with saying shallow and narrow-minded things like this:

While I was living there it was voted one of the top 10 cities for singles. What were they smoking? I want some! In Seattle I met the geeky Microsoft guy who used a discount card on our second date at a horrible restaurant. I met the engineer that ensured me he was not “a typical engineer”. Yes, yes you are. Socially awkward. Inappropriate conversation. Typical engineer. Wait, inappropriate conversation? You want more details on that? Okay…well the words “penis” and “vagina” were used, complete with gestures. Yes, that really did happen. On a date. In public. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

This kind of casual prudishness and enforcing of gender norms in dating formalisms (such as how to pay for a meal) should be seen as a large barrier towards creating a tolerant and sex-positive society in which people are free and encouraged to find and make their own happiness.

On a closely related note, the sex-negative and anti-porn group Porn Harms celebrates Facebook's shameful act of censorship:

Thank you Facebook! They just removed a very inappropriate pro-porn page with links to pornography that our children had easy access to.

Keep in mind, this is the same group of people that proudly repeats Gail Dines in saying that "pornography is a 'cultural support system for violence against women,'" at once trivializing violence against women and insulting all those who work hard to make the adult entertainment industry a responsible one.

Of course, this kind of sex-negativity ties into and is fed by religious sentiments, such as those espoused in this Islamic tract that predates on the emotionally vulnerable, or this poster which uses Islam is used to justify the locking of women into narrow and repressive gender roles:

Muslim women dress in a way that is modest and dignified. The purpose of clothing is not only to protect oneself from physical elements, but also to protect oneself from immorality and pride. Some traditions of dress, and more generally, the treatment of women in some Muslim countries and societies, are often a reflection of culture. This is very often inconsistent and even contrary to Islam teachings. Prophet Muhammad said: "The most perfect in faith among you believers is he who is best in manner and kindest to his wife." [emphasis mine]

For all the poster's empty platitudes about the equality of women, there is no reasonable way to interpret the phrase "protect oneself from immorality and pride" here but to mean that women should feel shamed (that is, not proud) of their bodies in ways that men should not.

Not, mind you, that Islam is anywhere near alone in using religion to justify sex-negativity or misogyny. For example, the Christian fundamentalist Reformers Unanimous group advertises support for a questionable list of addictions, including "pornography addiction":

Help for: Addiction - Drug Intervention - Codependence - Rehab - Alcoholism - Meth Addiction - Gambling Addiction - Cocaine Addiction - Marijuana Addiction - Opiate Addiction - Codependence [sic] - Enabling - Nicotine Addiction - Pornography Addiction - Love Addiction

Amongst RU's approaches to what they see as problems is the gem that all we need to do is remember that "Christ is enough." If this reminds you of "Jesus Plus Nothing," pat yourself on the back. This kind of worldview, where religious sentiment is allowed to replace all other forms of thought, is a major driving force behind many of the political problems that we face in the world today.

Sadly, one of the other major driving forces being political problems, at least in the United States, is racism. Take, for instance, the vile screed written by Mark Williams of Tea Party infamy, which includes this choice bit:

We Colored People have taken a vote and decided that we don't cotton to that whole emancipation thing. Freedom means having to work for real, think for ourselves, and take consequences along with the rewards. That is just far too much to ask of us Colored People and we demand that it stop!

This is the same Mark Williams, mind you, that objects so vehemently to the construction of a mosque near 9/11 Ground Zero, and encourages the bombing of Mecca in response. This kind of abject racism lies at the heart of much of the Tea Party. Just ask Shirley Sherrod.

Since my attempt in this is not to depress you, I'll not go on in this vein. Rather, I will point out that for every one of the examples I've shown, there is someone who cares enough to work against that kind of hate, bigotry or just plain ignorance. Even if we disagree with these caring people on some fronts-- maybe even many fronts-- we must at least recognize that they are there, working for a just cause.

One of the key strengths of the spectrum of thoughts and ideals that includes such seemingly disparate causes as progressivism, rationalism, sex-positivity and feminism is that open-mindedness is (in general) celebrated. We can disagree with each other and still recognize what commonality we have in our goals. We do not strive, as our adversaries do, for perfect uniformity in thought and deed, but only for mutual respect of our fellow human beings and a dedication to truth. In short, we are not alone. That's good, I think, given what we're up against.

I Am Sick: A flimsy excuse to use the phrase "evidence-based."

As the title says, I'm sick. Not deathly sick, but merely the massively inconvenient sinus problems one can get with the changing weather. As a part of trying to treat myself, I went down to the local drug store and bought a 50-dose bottle of pseudoephedrine (totaling 3 g of the active ingredient).

Had this been in the United States, the comically self-righteously named Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act of 2005 would have meant that I was dangerously close to the 3.6 g/day purchase limit. Exceeding CMEA05 limits is criminally punishable, as some people have had the misfortune to find out by accident. Even if one does not exceed the given limits, CMEA05 requires that retailers maintain an archive of purchaser IDs for at least two years, establishing a worrying paper trail about one's OTC purchases.

The ostensible purpose of the law is right there on the tin: to combat what is seen as an "epidemic" of methamphetamine usage and production. The questions for any supporter of evidenced-based public policy, then, are whether this epidemic exists, and whether draconian measures against allergy and cold medication purchases help. I will leave the first question for now, as there are significant arguments to be made about what constitutes an "epidemic" of addictions.

Rather, I would like to focus on the question of whether or not such draconian measures are effective. Were they effective, we would expect that the rates of meth abuse in Canada, with its comparatively more lax laws regarding pseudoephedrine and other means of meth production, would be significantly higher. To truly argue this point, one would need to control for as many other potentially confounding factors as possible (different economic and cultural conditions, availability of other drugs, degree of enforcement of existing laws, population density, etc.), but we can at least take a first look at the data. Thanks to the help of Saver Queen, I was able to find statistics on 2009 meth abuse rates amongst middle- and high-school students in the US and Canada, respectively.

Only the Canadian source comes with error margins, so a formal hypothesis test is impossible, but we see that to the 95% confidence level on the Canadian statistics, between 0.8% and 1.7% of students in grades 7, 9 and 11 reported past-year usage of meth, while data from the estimated US rates lie within the 1.0% to 1.6% range (again, no error bounds on the US data). Since all of the US data linked to from here is consistent with Canadian statistics, we have no basis to even suspect that US rates are in fact lower than Canadian rates, in lieu of hypothesizing significant confounding factors.

My point with this is not, of course, to do a full analysis of the comparative rates of meth abuse, as that would require significantly more research than my stuffed-up head can handle right now. Rather, I simply wanted to give an example of how an evidence-based conversation about public policy might look. In particular, it has to start by deferring to reality and not simply to rhetoric.

A case study of the less pleasant side of the Internet, examined.

Update: I forgot to credit @ebertchicago and @stevensantos on Twitter for pointing me to this article. Thanks!

The Internet is filled with wonderful people sharing their thoughts. You can find lots of deep insights on all manners of topics, serious arguments and debates from just about any position imaginable, and you can find intelligence analysis of complicated social issues.
On the other hand, you can also find things like this. Just the title gives away how seriously the author, Rich Deem, takes his arguments. When your article is titled "Why Sex With Robots is Always Wrong: The Impending Demise of the Human Species," (emphasis mine) you are sending a clear message that you are more interested in getting attention than in making reasoned arguments. It is absurdly hyperbolic to say that there is a threat to the survival of humanity itself posed by the specter of cyberdildonics.

Don't get me wrong, however. It is fully and entirely possible to have a mature, adult discussion of the moral, ethical and social issues raised by sexbots. It is even possible to do so via the use of fiction and parable. In TV and movies alone, we see examples like Chobits, Battlestar Galactica and Ghost in the Shell taking sexuality with robots seriously. Even series like Buffy and Star Trek deal with these issues to some degree. What doesn't do this, however, is the parable-like story penned by Deem.

Rather, we get breathless statements like:

This page is going to seem rather far out and unrealistic, given today's moral standards. However, the standards are rapidly changing, and within a few years the human race will be in a position in which sexual immorality could exist on a widespread scale.

Setting aside for a moment the tiresome and troublesome phrase "sexual immorality," it is hardly the case that we are on the cusp of some global sexual crisis. Humanity is on quite a few cusps, but "increasing sexual perversion and increasingly pervasive virtual sex happening through the expanding acceptance of online pornography" is not one of them. Pornography has been an integral part of human sexuality for no short length of time, and though it is easier to access and disseminate via the Internet, that is by no stretch of imagination any more of a threat to human survival than the widespread availability of pictures of cats doing silly things.

Certainly, there are changes that we must be aware of and that we must learn to deal with, but Deem's use of the word "perversion" indicates right away that he has no interest in real social issues. Rather, he is content to stick to the fiction that there is a limited set of morally acceptable ways to enjoy consensual sex-- that somehow, there is a universal standard for the Right Way to Get It On that was set in stone billions of years before sex itself was produced by evolution. In some sense, this must be a comforting fiction, as it would seem to release one from the duty to challenge and improve their ethics and to actually confront real problems rather than producing absurd and comical windmills for tilting at.

I'm getting ahead of myself, though. Surely there is comedy to be found in how Deem communicates fevered nightmares to us? We're in luck:

Instead of magnesium frames covered with thick plastic, the robots were eventually designed using lightweight carbon-fiber composite designed to mimic the structure of human bones moved by pulley systems to generate the full range of human motion. The hard plastic was soon replaced with fabrics that felt like real skin. Thus, the transformation from machine to android was nearly complete. [emphasis mine]

This is the sort of statement I should expect from a creationist screed ("Why are there still machines if androids have been invented?"), and so I shouldn't be surprised to find that Deem takes pride in being a creationist. Rather than positing the existence of a wide range of robotic systems for various purposes, Deem's story has robotics doggedly pursuing some ultimate goal, which happens to be the same goal as his creation myth: humanity. The "transformation" described is but one more comical example of the bizarre and devout anthrocentrism to which creationists and such seem to hold. Indeed, in his hypothetical world, why is it a linear progression from ASIMO to android? Is there no room in this imagined future for a market that sells intentionally un-lifelike sexbots, or limited-functionality sexbots that appeal to the working class stiffs? No, of course there isn't. In Deem's world, the pornography and cyberdildonics industries don't at all resemble those in our world:

The first of these sex robots were crude, non-animated versions introduced in the early 2010's [sic]. However, soon top programmers and engineers were hired away from the automakers and computer companies with offers of up to ten times their average salaries, similar to what had been done with their movie businesses in the late 2010's [sic], when they had hired away Hollywood's best CG programmers to turn out realistic-looking virtual pornography movies. [emphasis mine]

In the real world, adult entertainment makes a lot of money, to be sure, but not so much as to be able to poach off talent en masse from three of the largest industries that our society has ever seen. In general, while pornographers have often been early adopters of technologies, they do not have the resources nor the social standing to revolutionize entire branches of science, such as Deem hypothesizes his future pornographers to have done with robotics:

Money from the adult entertainment industry, in their push for realistic motion and conversation, had accelerated the technology in what would have taken decades to only a few years.

Of course, Deem is not content to run roughshod over facts concerning economics. Indeed, we see that he is perfectly willing to perpetuate some of the most trite and easily debunked of gender-based stereotypes:

Although the newly designed FACA [ed: female anatomically correct android-- read, sexbot] looked good, they were still somewhat clumsy and had trouble with all but the most common colloquialisms. For the average male college student, this was not a major problem, since conversation was not his major intent. However, when companies tried to market MACA, the male counterpart, to the female college crowd, the acceptance was less than stellar... [emphasis mine]

Never mind that in the real world, people have complex and varied approaches to their own sexual lives. In Deem's world, it's simple: men like to have sex and women like to talk. Not that the stereotypes end there, mind you:

Acceptance among the male population evolved rapidly as men realized they could get an ideal "woman" whose only goal was to serve him. Entertainment companies became more bold as FACA were advertised as being "better than sex." In addition, FACA were adept at gourmet cooking, cleaning, and household chores, so that one could always use utility as an excuse to get one. [emphasis mine]

As a male, I am deeply offended by Deem's sick insinuation that my ideal of a companion, spouse, sexual partner or anything else is a being that wants only to serve me. This flippant remark, I suspect, betrays some of Deem's own attitudes towards his fellow humans. Certainly, I don't think that a healthy mind could project such a warped view of gender and of humanity itself onto the whole of his fictional society. Moreover, the implication that since his sexbots are replacing women as sex partners, they must also replace women at housework betrays some very regressive and oppressive notions of gender roles that are better left in our past than our future. Deem's future seems to be one in which women are no better than appliances with genitals, and in which as soon as appliances are endowed with artificial genitalia, women are left with no place at all in society. Not my idea of a positive future, or even of a realistic dystopia.

Doubling down on his commitment to narrow and harmful gender roles, Deem continues on to inform us that in his future:

Sperm banks sprang up all over as women who wanted to have children were forced to pay exorbitant prices, since very few men were interested in donating [...].

Men in this funhouse mirror view of sexuality have no interest in reproduction or family-building, so that all it takes is an overgrown sex toy to demolish his one, true Nuclear Family. So consumed with libido are his future's men that as long as they have a warm body (never mind that it's one devoid of a mind) to have sex with, they have no other desires or motives that may at all involve flesh and blood women. As much as this is patently misogynistic, condemning women to a status just slightly elevated from that of a washing machine, it is also a patently misandric view. Just as much as women should find Deem's futuresex revolting for what of himself he projects onto it, men should be outraged at his reduction of the complex whole of humanity to some cartoonish interplay between sex-crazed men and meek women. The climax in Deem's twisted fantasy seems to be when he declares that:

Men who owned a FACA disdained the company of real women, with all their incessant demands and mood swings. The sexual revolution was complete and we were all the victims.

In spite of all this, I must give Deem credit for the sheer multitude of ways that he manages to prove himself foolish. For instance, consider the near glee with which he sets up strawman versions of those with whom he disagrees:

Population control groups and environmentalists were thrilled that the human birth rate was now rapidly declining well below replacement levels. Several women's groups formed an alliance in an attempt to outlaw the sale of FACA. Virtually all attempts to legislate against FACA were either blocked by male legislators or in the courts as restricting freedom of speech.

All in the space of three sentences, Deem presents his reader with conveniently packaged and easy-to-hate caricatures of population control, environmentalism in general, feminism and the freedom of speech. He doesn't even try to understand or explore the reasons why environmentalists may want to keep the human population at sustainable reasons, but instead describes that they are thrilled to see the decline of humanity itself. Feminist groups he brushes aside as relatively powerless and reactionary groups easily defeated by "male legislators." Freedom of speech is seen in Deem's bizzaro world as some thin shield for "sexual immorality," whatever in the hell that is. He even sees fit to revisit his disdain for the protection of speech later, declaring that:

The Supreme Court has ruled that nearly all forms of pornography are first amendment "protected speech." There is no reason to believe that a machine would not fall into that category.

What we see from this serial strawmanning is that, just as rich and nuanced explorations of human sexuality have no place in Deem's reckoning, nor do subtle and qualified arguments. In fact, look at what Deem holds up as an example of courtroom drama:

In the middle of the examination, the defense attorney suddenly grabbed the FACA and slammed it to the ground, scattering pieces of the machine all over the floor. Suddenly, the facade of humanity was gone, as the lawyer asked if anyone was going to charge him with a crime. The last challenge against the widespread use of FACA had been crushed.

Though I think that the attorney in question is supposed to be a villain of Deem's narrative, it is still amazing that Deem leaves no room for his villain to actually argue. Rather, he must make his point through sheer brute force, eschewing any subtlety and any finesse that may help the readers identify what exactly the attorney believes in that is so reprehensible to Deem.

Having declared us all victims of the sexual revolution, Deem ends his story and progresses into a realm where he is even less able to hold his own: facts. I am not the best person to debunk and deconstruct his claims, such as that the viewing of pornography leads to a "trivialization of rape as a criminal offense." Luckily, however, there are those bold and wonderful few, such as sex educator Violet Blue, that tirelessly fight against the anti-porn movement by debunking lies, exposing poor studies, presenting studies that contradict anti-porn narratives and by educating people about sexuality in general. For more, I direct interested readers to her site dedicated to the pro-feminism sex-positive and pro-porn movements, Our Porn, Ourselves.

As for myself, I shall be content to leave this story here, and to instead concern myself with those parts of the Internet in which intelligent and mature discussion is to be found.

For the childrenz

Disclaimer: I am not a parent, and have no plans of becoming one. Take all this with a grain of salt. I do, however, have first-hand experience at being a child.

For the sake of the children, we do quite a lot. Never mind exactly what it even means for something to be for the sake of the children, such as whose children and who gets to decide what's best, we are as a society willing to do a lot for our children. Frankly, that is a wonderful thing in many ways, but when that otherwise noble drive crosses the line into hysteria, then unsavory people will seek to exploit it for their own nefarious ends.

This seems to be the case with child pornography: a real problem is exaggerated to the point that those who at some level control us can exploit the problem, tagging whatever their political enemy might be with the emotional baggage of "kiddie porn." Someone doesn't like Usenet, so it's kiddie porn. It is such a common pattern that many Slashdot users have adopted the use of the "thinkofthechildren" tag to mark stories about such excesses, along with tragic stories of incidental victims.

Of course, the real irony to my mind is how little we are actually willing to do for children. We provide basic healthcare only after a mockery of a national debate. We fail to provide decent education, and even pass acts to further the problem. We subject our children to dangerous diseases over a long-debunked anti-vaccine hysteria (yes, I know that many of those link to the same blog-- it's a good blog, but far from the only one to deal with anti-vaccine hysteria). We leave our children a world plauged by global warming. Most of all, we do our children a great disservice by tarring their names with all of our petty battles whilst ignoring their most pressing needs.

On bias and hypocrisy: Conservapedia as a case study.

Bias as a human element.

There is a reason why our language is littered with trite phrases such as "only human" and "the human element." At some level, as a society, we recognize that the human condition is marked by an extreme level of imperfection. We cannot but introduce elements of ourselves in what we do, and we cannot perfectly abstract ourselves away from a task. In particular, in any non-trivial writing, then, we make obvious to the world our thoughts as we introduce bias into that which we pen. Of course, I am no exception. What I write here is quite obviously biased, and I wouldn't expect anyone to think otherwise.

Bias as a conservative anti-virtue.

This discussion, though, presumes an understanding of what "bias" even is. We most often hear the word in association with "the media," or other elements of mass communication, when neoconservatives accuse decidedly conservative reporting outlets of being liberal in bias. This modern use of the word is very misleading in several ways, the majority of which are outside of the scope of this essay. What I do want to deal with, however, is the idea that unbiasedness is a virtue that trumps accuracy, fairness, completeness or relevance.

That particular idea of bias, along with the modern usage of the word "balance," leads us to farces like that of including an oil industry representative to "balance" a scientist's reporting on global warming. Some statements are, within the scope of our current knowledge, "true," and this by their very nature gives them a special status apart from any other statements. For instance, if I say that all the research conducted to date confirms that global warming is true, then this is not "biased" in a liberal-versus-conservative sort of fashion. Rather, it is biased towards verifiability and accuracy.

What does one do, then, when their political positions are based largely on statements that are in contrast with what we know about reality? Construct a system of thought where evolution must be "balanced" by creationism under the guise of intelligent design, where global warming must be "balanced" by climate "skepticism," and where an introspective examination of history must be "balanced" by blatant and unjustified religiosity in the guise of historical interpretation.

This is precisely the sense of the words "bias" and "balance" which those like Fox News use in order to justify spewing what any sane and rational person would call biased trash. As per the discussion of bias before, I don't mind the biased part. I listen to Democracy Now, read Crooks and Liars, and watch Olbermann. No, I mind the implication that everyone else's bias is bad, but that one group (always the conservatives or neocons) can be biased with impunity.

A recent case study.

Seldom has this effect been more stunningly obvious than in the recent launching of the Wikipedia-inspired Conservapedia. With the lofty mission of eliminating bias, this "virtuous" project demonstrates the incredible extent to which they avoid bias by putting their political leanings in their name. How could any project with the name "Conservapedia" ever be accused of being liberal in nature?

Of course Conservapedia is biased. It exists. That pretty well guarantees its bias. The problem comes, however, in how it is biased. Whereas Wikipedia is biased towards things that we understand to be true (global warming, evolution, the existence of religions other than Christianity), Conservapedia is biased towards things which support the neoconservative and Christian fundamentalist platforms. While this may be useful to them, it most certainly cannot provide the same utility as a repository for information generally regarded as being accurate. Moreover, the inherent effect of this kind of a "resource" is to be display marked hypocrisy, as one cannot simultaneously demonize "bias" and publish articles based only on a book about "Creation" published by "Apologia Press."

Thus, I denounce Conservapedia not as being horribly biased, but rather as being vapid and hypocritical. In the same way that I don't decry the fact that the Cato Institute is biased towards the classic-conservative position, I do decry the horrible dishonesty with which the authors of Conservapedia handle the issue of bias.

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