The Gertrude Bell Jar

Scientism Is The New Spaghetti Monster

Harold Henderson had an interesting blog entry last month discussing some critical reactions to Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion, particularly Thomas Nagel’s (available in full, and well worth reading, here):

The key question is whence came design in nature. Dawkins says God's no explanation, because then you have to explain God. But on this field Nagel is a pro and Dawkins is an amateur: "All explanations come to an end somewhere," explains Nagel, since Dawkins evidently didn't do the reading. "On either view [Dawkins's secularism or the God hypothesis], the ultimate explanation is not itself explained.

The God hypothesis does not explain the existence of God, and naturalistic physicalism does not explain the laws of physics." Having laid out the rules of the match, Nagel finds that the God hypothesis loses round one, since "the theory of evolution through heritable variation and natural selection" explains how intricate designs such as the eye can come about naturally, and hence these designs no longer provide evidence for the God hypothesis.

But round two is still being fought out, because the evolutionary process is undergirded by DNA. And since DNA itself can't have evolved, where did it come from? "At this point the origin of life remains, in light of what is known about the huge size, the extreme specificity, and the exquisite functional precision of the genetic material, a mystery -- an event that could not have occurred by chance and to which no significant probability can be assigned on the basis of what we know of the laws of physics and chemistry."

Of course that could change, and likely will if we can keep the theocrats at bay and dispassionate biological research going. (BTW, Nagel isn't buying Dawkins's idea that everything can be reduced to physics in any case. No matter what anyone says, your own experience of being aware isn't the same thing as neurons firing in the brain. Some things are just . . . different.)[Emphasis Henderson’s]

I don’t question evolution, but I do think claiming that it proves the non-existence of God is pure hubris, and a little obtuse besides. Whether or not one must read Genesis literally to validate the entire text and meaning of the Bible is a theological question, not a scientific one. (Of course, attempting to have the teaching of “Intelligent Design” replace the teaching of evolution in high school science classes is obtuse in the equal and opposite way.)

It’s been borne in on me lately, though, that Dawkins et al are talking about a lot more than defending the quality of science education in our nation’s public schools. This entry at GetReligion discusses a recent report of a conference of scientists on the subject of science and religion, and points to a number of scientists making rather exorbitant claims about what the replacement of religion itself with science can do for you and me. According to the New York Times:

Somewhere along the way, a forum this month at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif., which might have been one more polite dialogue between science and religion, began to resemble the founding convention for a political party built on a single plank: in a world dangerously charged with ideology, science needs to take on an evangelical role, vying with religion as teller of the greatest story ever told.

Apparently this is not an exaggeration of the kinds of claims made for the awesome power of science at the conference:

By shying away from questioning people’s deeply felt beliefs, even the skeptics, Mr. Harris said, are providing safe harbor for ideas that are at best mistaken and at worst dangerous. “I don’t know how many more engineers and architects need to fly planes into our buildings before we realize that this is not merely a matter of lack of education or economic despair,” he said.

Dr. Weinberg, who famously wrote toward the end of his 1977 book on cosmology, “The First Three Minutes,” that “the more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless,” went a step further: “Anything that we scientists can do to weaken the hold of religion should be done and may in the end be our greatest contribution to civilization.”

Although there was some pushback from more skeptical types too:

By the third day, the arguments had become so heated that Dr. Konner was reminded of “a den of vipers.”

“With a few notable exceptions,” he said, “the viewpoints have run the gamut from A to B. Should we bash religion with a crowbar or only with a baseball bat?”

His response to Mr. Harris and Dr. Dawkins was scathing. “I think that you and Richard are remarkably apt mirror images of the extremists on the other side,” he said, “and that you generate more fear and hatred of science.”

The interesting thing is, they really are pretty much mirror images, and not just because they are “extremists.” What strikes me the most about the scientists’ comments here (apart from the breathtaking historical ignorance, about Western intellectual history in general and the bloody 20th Century in particular), is how much they seem to attribute some kind of power or force to religion itself, independent of human agency. Whereas, as a long-time atheist*, I had thought we all understood that religion is merely a human project, invented by and for humans, to fulfill human ends. This means that it may not say anything very true about the world per se, but by definition it says a very great deal about us. It strikes me as fundamentally superstitious to think that religion is doing things to us (as opposed to us doing things with religion); and it’s remarkable that the anti-religious scientists quoted above not only seem to want to attribute agency to religion itself, but to identify it as the source of human evil as well.

Now that is superstition! Because if there IS no devil, then religion can’t BE the devil. We’re just stuck with ourselves all over again, and blaming religion is just more special pleading on behalf of a benighted if self-regarding species.

The application of science to the human (the part that's "just different" from physics) has what you might charitably call a checkered past. I'm thinking of Marxism, Freudianism, social Darwinism, etc. Whenever I read anything about Richard Dawkins lately I think about the work of Pascal Boyer, a psychologist who has been exploring the possible cognitive causes of religious modes of thought in humans, and this Wired article about a specific type of cognitive malfunction that seems to be common in math and science types. I think it might be that “scientifically” designed societies and social policies tend to be relentlessly anti-human in practice because actively suppressing the religious impulse, or whatever aspect of the human gives rise to and supports it, slips some crucial gears, gears we’re always supposed to be hitting. Our cognitive capacities evolved the way they did for some reason or other, no? So again I think a little humility is called for, perhaps especially by people who don’t understand or share the religious impulse that most people seem to have.

*Admittedly going a bit wobbly of late, but leave that aside for now.

Edited to add: Some friends of mine have gently pointed out that scientists actually do have a pretty workable theory of how DNA came to be, which makes me feel a bit silly for reposting the Nagel link that uncritically. However, I don't think it affects his underlying point. Nagel was positing DNA (implausibly, it turns out) as the point at which we are forced to acknowledge that God might have intervened, but it needn't be. There is still the flummoxing question of why the natural world exists at all in the first place.

Suicide Geeks Redux

Further to my earlier posts on the strange relationship between geekiness and suicide terrorism (1, 2, 3), I just came across a couple more theories on the subject, in Khaled Abou El Fadl’s The Great Theft (El Fadl prefers the term "puritans" for Islamists):

… puritans reject inquiries into philosophy, political theory, morality, and beauty, as too subjective -- and, even worse, as Western inventions that lead to nothing but sophistry. With the majority of the puritan leadership comprised of people who studied the physical sciences, such as medicine, engineering, and computer science, they avowedly anchor themselves in the objectivity and certitude that comes from empiricism. According to puritans, public interests, such as the interest in protecting society from the sexual lures of women, can be empirically verified. However, in contrast, they say, moral or ethical values and aesthetic judgments about what is necessary or compelling cannot be empirically quantified, and therefore must be ignored. So values like human dignity, love, mercy, and compassion are not subject to quantification, and therefore cannot be integrated into Islamic legal judgments. (p. 99)

And:

Puritans are not opposed to modernism, but, somewhat inconsistently, they believe that modernity is a culturally biased concept. For puritans, the culture of modernity, with its concepts of human rights, women’s rights, minority rights, religious freedom, civil society, pluralism, and democracy, is largely Western, and therefore both alien and alienating. However, puritans strongly distinguish between the culture of modernity and modernization. Often this amounts to differentiating between modernization and Westernization -- the former is acceptable, but the latter is not. To become truly modernized, according to the puritans, means to regress back in time and recreate the golden age of Islam. This, however, does not mean that they want to abolish technology and scientific advancements. Rather, their program is deceptively simple -- Muslims should learn the technology and science invented by the West, but in order to resist Western culture, Muslims should not seek to study the social sciences or humanities. This is the reason that a large number of puritans come to the West to study, but invariably focus their studies on the physical sciences, including computer science, and entirely ignore the social sciences and humanities. Armed with modern science and technology, puritans believe that they will be better positioned to recreate the golden age of Islam by creating a society modeled after the Prophet’s city-state in Medina and Mecca. (p. 170-171)

On The Grift, Lebanon-Style

I guess they don’t have grifters in Portland. Maybe a city has to be certain size before you get many of them around, I certainly hadn’t encountered any before I moved to Chicago, and I did not come from a small town. Nonetheless I was surprised to see Michael Totten describe the very typical grifting behavior he’s encountered in Beirut as a Lebanon-specific thing. For example:

I argued with one guy downtown for an hour about whether or not I was going to give him 10,000 Lebanese lira. (That’s six dollars plus change.) I told him I didn’t have any cash on me, that all I had was a credit card, which was true. “No problem,” he said. “I will go with you to the bank.” No doubt if I said yes he would have bumped it up to 20,000 by the time we got there.

It’s always fatal to try to fob them off with the excuse that you don’t have cash right this minute. You have some usual way of rectifying that problem, don’t you? So why not right now? A friend of mine made the mistake of mentioning that he so happened to be on his way to an ATM machine that very minute to bolster his claim of empty pockets, to a man who had stopped him and showed him ID (to prove what, that he really existed or something?) and given him a long sob story about how he needed $50 dollars, one night when a group of us were making our way home from some excursion or other to downtown Chicago. So naturally the man said, I’ll go with you, there’s an ATM just down the block, and meekly off we went together, and the man waited and my friend took his money out and gave him the $50 from it. Every single one of us knew that the man was lying and our friend had just been conned, and so did our friend if I was reading his body language correctly, but not a word was said about it among us afterwards, not to this very day.

Why? It’s all just too embarrassing. Grifting above all is about gaming implicit social contracts. Ordinarily we have considerable social distance from criminals and feel comfortable excluding them on some level from the common run of humanity. But this turns out to be very hard to do to someone who is actually standing in front of you and speaking to you. “Excuse me miss” or “Can I ask you a question” is always a gateway to hearing someone’s sob story and then not being quite able to bring yourself to indicate that you suspect this person you’ve engaged in eye contact for whole seconds and possibly minutes at a time already is totally lying, via refusing to help them with their very compelling dilemma, whatever it may be. The implicit social contract that makes it very hard to treat a person you’re engaging with on some level as dishonest or criminal is much more powerful than empathy per se, one finds if one examines one’s own feelings after such an encounter. The best con artists, the kind that can still catch me and other long-time big-city dwellers out, can make maximum use of this fact under the right circumstances by implying that there may be some kind of actual social relationship between the two of you beyond just this conversation. Just a few years ago a really good grifter got 10 bucks off me—for an emergency cab ride, IIRC—by standing on my doorstep and posing as one of the new neighbors I hadn’t met yet. I didn’t really 100% believe him, but the risk of mistakenly treating one of my actual neighbors like a con man was too horrible to contemplate. My friend M. when told this story said he’d been caught in a very similar one once, in which the grifter posed as someone who worked in another part of the institution where my friend was employed. What if M. ended up running into him again at the office holiday party? M. didn’t really believe it either, but who wants to risk it if it’s only a few dollars at stake?

But most grifters aren’t able to work an angle like that most of the time; instead, they present a problem so compelling that you would never consider refusing assistance to a person really in that circumstance, like needing money for baby food and diapers when all the public assistance offices are closed, or having just gotten released from the hospital with no way to get home (impossible, btw, hospitals require someone to be there to take you home before they will discharge you, but not everyone knows that, so it goes in the script), or being stranded and just needing a few dollars to put some gas in the tank, or something of that nature. I can’t remember what ATM man had told us his problem was, but his very act of showing us his ID was designed to embarrass us. Oh no, of course you don’t have to prove anything, you’re a worthwhile human being and I’m decent enough to recognize that without proof. Heh heh heh.

The only way to win is never to hear the story, which is why everybody learns not to stop for “Excuse me miss/sir” or “Can I ask you a question?” As Totten notes, “if someone doesn’t instantly tell you exactly, precisely, what they want, get away from them immediately.”

What’s interesting about Totten’s encounter with the woman who wanted to marry one of his single American friends and get a green card that way is that there almost certainly must have been a Part 2 involved, I think. It’s not the sort of thing that can be transacted from beginning to end in a single sitting in a cafe, is it? She perhaps expected to catch him off guard admitting to be single, in which case she would expect him to eventually try to fob her off with probably a false name or address, either supposedly his, or perhaps that of his fictional single friends if he were married already or at least quick enough to pretend to be so. She’s counting on the fact that he can’t possibly tell her to her face that she’s too unappealing to tempt him or any of his friends.

So what’s the next step, once a fictional social relationship in which Totten would be participating as a liar himself were established? Maybe she has a confederate who will follow him home, so that accidentally on purpose she can run into him again, or maybe she’s already scoped this out herself, or has seen him in this cafe before and expects she will find him here again, etc. She could maybe say, forget about your friend, I met somebody else who has a friend who wants to marry me. Then maybe he’s supposed to feel guilty for having doubted either her truthfulness or mentally insulted her attractiveness. Or maybe since she’s letting him off the hook, he would believe that she really has found someone, or at least find it socially impossibly to visibly doubt it in any way. But wait! She has no money for passport fees or photos! What about airfare? She doesn’t want to look greedy, he won’t marry her then, so she can’t ask her fiance, etc. What’s the excuse for not helping now, with her one chance in life slipping away? Would he be relieved enough at the prospect of finally getting her off his back to go ahead and just give her something, whether he really believed her or not? Is it even relevant whether he really believes it, if he feels too embarrassed to openly doubt her by not giving her the money he obviously must have as an American tourist?

Well, that’s how I’d play it anyway, if I were her. I guess we’ll never know what she was really up to.

It strikes me that grifters must make out like gangbusters with the unwary in Arab countries, the implicit social compact with strangers is so much more elaborate and obligatory in that culture than it is in the U.S. Maybe that’s why there are apparently so many more grifters in Beirut than in Chicago. Totten reports encountering one every other week or so; here on the South Side of Chicago it’s more like once a month or so, or even less often than that sometimes. (On the other hand, a presumably wealthy American might just be a particularly attractive target, who knows.) I’m not surprised that Totten’s friend is actually aggressively rude about brushing them off (whereas in Chicago a murmured “sorry, no” while keeping moving is good enough); it must be very important to completely deny all human connection with such people at the very outset. How difficult to be even that impolite!

The level of politeness and hospitality ordinarily shown to strangers in Arab countries seems always to astonish travellers. In journalist John Hockenberry’s memoir Moving Violations, he describes learning very quickly never to pause his wheelchair anywhere near a staircase in Palestinian areas, or passersby would suddenly haul him bodily up or down them on the assumption that he must need to go up or down, but was simply too proud to ask. His protestations would always be ignored, because of course it is also polite to refuse any offer of help multiple times. From what I’ve gathered in reading about Arab cultures, personal dignity is assigned a very high value, and the wounding of it is an unpardonable social sin. Thus, leaving someone in the humiliating position of both needing that kind of help and also having to ask for it is unthinkable and unbearable, the situation must be rectified, unasked, immediately.

Hockenberry found this so extraordinary that he took one Palestinian’s question about whether his disability had been caused by an Israeli bomb as an explanation for the deference shown him, but I think he’s probably wrong about that. First because there are plenty of maimed-by-the-Enemy Israelis to go around too, yet no parallel culture of extreme kindness to disabled people has arisen in that country so far as Hockenberry was able to find. Secondly because another incident confirms the compelling-respect-for-the-dignity-of-others theory. When Hockenberry goes to rent a car in Israel, he needs to get an attachment that will allow him to operate the gas and brake pedals with his hands, and there is a bureaucratic kerfuffle about permits and paperwork and whatnot involving this piece of equipment that delays his rental for days. When he goes over to Palestinian territory, the dealer simply rents him a normal, unconverted car, no questions asked. Hockenberry is so surprised by this that he asks the dealer if he’s not concerned about whether he can drive the car as is. The dealer slightly misinterprets the question, and is so appalled at the thought the he or anybody who works for him might have implied in any way that the gentleman can’t drive an ordinary car that he insists on Hockenberry accepting a very lovely dinner with him in his own home by way of apology. I think the truth of the matter is, on an ordinary day Arabs are about that polite to everybody, it just turns out to be a somewhat arduous task to satisfy the Arab notion of politeness and respect towards a disabled person.

To get caught in a conversation with a good grifter while operating with a cultural background like that must be like being in the grips of some kind of unholy, merciless machine that you can’t possibly stop or control, I would imagine. Aggressive avoidance is probably not only advisable, but required.

Geeking the Rules

Regarding my earlier posts on Islamism and geekiness, H. sent along some interesting links, saying:

There's a goody-goody aspect to Islamism, those horrid young men often lecture their families about how they aren't devout enough, blah, blah, blah, blah, until the families kick them out. Here's an example from Egypt:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/07/international/africa/07sharm.html

Goody-goody, and with a sense of superiority like this British dude:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/08/international/asia/08jihad.html

And just plain cruel in an ultra-legalistic way, like the Taliban punishing all men for not having beards, even the Hazara with their inherited inability to grow a proper beard. Women with disabled husbands couldn't work to support their families. The RULES are more important than anything else.

My summary: bossy, sense of superiority, goody-goody, angry, and extremely cruel. I think I remember the type from childhood.

The NYT stories reminded me of a moment in a movie (made-for-tv, I think) about the 9/11 terrorists supposedly based on available documents and interviews with family members. The movie focuses on the marital relationship between one of the bombers (I forget his name) and his spouse, and at one point shows him chastising his wife (a Turkish Muslim) for not wearing hijab inside their apartment while she is alone with him, and she is shocked; the demand seems bizarre to her.

That particular example goes to illustrate, I think, the highly mechanical way in which Islamists understand the "rules" of Islam. There is a great deal of debate, of course, as to whether the Qur’an really requires a particular mode of dress or even just head covering for women at all, or whether the Qur’an merely demands modest dress, and various iterations of the veil have simply been the historical costume of modesty for women living in Muslim lands; Muslims who interpret the Verse of the Hijab the latter way believe loosely-fitting and non-revealing Western dress and uncovered heads are perfectly modest in the Western context and hence are appropriate for Muslim women living in the West. But even among those for whom the veil is considered straightforwardly an Islamic requirement for women, there’s no belief that a woman should wear one while alone with her own husband. The requirement is contextual, not absolute. It’s not that a woman should be veiled all the time, it’s that she should be veiled when within sight of non-related men. The idea that a woman should just wear hijab all the time, period, appears to be an invention of 20th Century Islamists, and you will find some fundamentalist texts advising women that they may, for example, take off their gloves but not their headscarves in front of their husbands, sons, and uncles. This is distinct from normal and traditional Muslim practice, in which the veil is removed as soon as a woman is inside her own house with her own relatives.

Subsequent thought: And the hectoring about indoor hijab seems only to arise in proselytizing Islamist texts. Even within the Islamic Republic of Iran, nobody seems to believe that one should wear hijab indoors. I remember reading about an Iranian filmmaker grappling with the problem of presenting scenes of private life in films to be shown to the public. Islamic covering had to be maintained, yet it would seem totally unnatural to an Iranian public to show a woman wearing hijab inside her own house. The solution turned out to be things like, making it so the woman had just come out of the shower, wearing a robe and her hair done up in a towel, and so forth.

It could be that part of the purpose of encouraging a strict, mechanical rules orientation for prospective recruits is precisely to alienate them from their families and former friends, the better to allow an alternate consensus reality as created by recruiters to take hold in their minds. Separating recruits from non-believers seems to be a common tactic for "cults" of all stripes.

Update: Mr. Bell Jar came across "a kindred thought."

Book One Page One: You Won't Have To Give Up Your Gameboy

Further to yesterday’s post about the geek factor in Islamist terrorism, here’s another data point I didn’t have time to put up but is part of why I’ve tended to focus like a laser on articles that deal with this subject. From the introductory chapter of Milestones by Sayyid Qutb, a foundational Islamist text that continues to be widely distributed as a recruitment tool:

It is essential for mankind to have new leadership!

The leadership of mankind by Western man is now on the decline, not because Western culture has become poor materially or because its economic and military power has become weak. The period of the Western system has come to an end primarily because it is deprived of those life-giving values which enabled it to be the leader of mankind.

It is necessary for the new leadership to preserve and develop the material fruits of the creative genius of Europe, and also to provide mankind with such high ideals and values as have so far remained undiscovered by mankind, and which will also acquaint humanity with a way of life which is harmonious with human nature, which is positive and constructive, and which is practicable.

Islam is the only System which possesses these values and this way of life.
The period of the resurgence of science has also come to an end. This period, which began with the Renaissance in the sixteenth century after Christ and reached its zenith in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, does not possess a reviving spirit.

All nationalistic and chauvinistic ideologies which have appeared in modern times, and all the movements and theories derived from them, have also lost their vitality. In short, all man-made individual or collective theories have proved to be failures.

At this crucial and bewildering juncture, the turn of Islam and the Muslim community has arrived--the turn of Islam, which does not prohibit material inventions. Indeed, it counts it as an obligation on man from the very beginning of time, when God deputed him as His representative on earth, and regards it under certain conditions as worship of God and one of the purposes of man's creation.

"And when Your Sustainer said to the angels, I am going to make My representative on earth.," (Qur'an 2:30)

"And I have not created jinns and men except that they worship Me." (2:143)

Thus the turn of the Muslim community has come to fulfill the task for mankind which God has enjoined upon it.

"You are the best community raised for the good of mankind. You enjoin what is good and forbid what is wrong, and you believe in God." (3:110)

"Thus We have made you a middle community, so that you be witnesses for mankind as the Messenger is a witness for you." (2:143)

Islam cannot fulfill its role except by taking concrete form in a society, rather, in a nation; for man does not listen, especially in this age, to an abstract theory which is not seen materialized in a living society. From this point of view, we can say that the Muslim community has been extinct for a few centuries, for this Muslim community does not denote the name of a land in which Islam resides, nor is it a people whose forefathers lived under the Islamic system at some earlier time. It is the name of a group of people whose manners, ideas and concepts, rules and regulations, values and criteria, are all derived from the Islamic source. The Muslim community with these characteristics vanished at the moment the laws of God became suspended on earth.

If Islam is again to play the role of the leader of mankind, then it is necessary that the Muslim community be restored to its original form.

It is necessary to revive that Muslim community which is buried under the debris of the man-made traditions of several generations, and which is crushed under the weight of those false laws and customs which are not even remotely related to the Islamic teachings, and which, in spite of all this, calls itself the 'world of Islam.'

I am aware that between the attempt at 'revival' and the attainment of 'leadership' there is a great distance, as the Muslim community has long ago vanished from existence and from observation, and the leadership of mankind has long since passed to other ideologies and other nations, other concepts and other systems. This was the era during which Europe's genius created its marvelous works in science, culture, law and material production, due to which mankind has progressed to great heights of creativity and material comfort. It is not easy to find fault with the inventors of such marvelous things, especially since what we call the 'world of Islam' is completely devoid of all this beauty.

But in spite of all this, it is necessary to revive Islam. The distance between the revival of Islam and the attainment of world leadership may be vast, and there may be great difficulties on the way; but the first step must be taken for the revival of Islam.

If we are to perform our task with insight and wisdom, we must first know clearly the nature of those qualities on the basis of which the Muslim community can fulfill its obligation as the leader of the world. This is essential so that we may not commit any blunders at the very first stage of its reconstruction and revival.

The Muslim community today is neither capable of nor required to present before mankind great genius in material inventions, which will make the world bow its head before its supremacy and thus re-establish once more its world leadership. Europe's creative mind is far ahead in this area, and at least for a few centuries to come we cannot expect to compete with Europe and attain supremacy over it in these fields.

Hence we must have some other quality, that quality which modern civilization does not possess.

But this does not mean that we should neglect material progress. We should also give our full attention and effort in this direction, not because at this stage it is an essential requirement for attaining the leadership of mankind, but because it is an essential condition for our very existence; and Islam itself, which elevates man to the position of representative of God on earth, and which, under certain conditions, considers the responsibilities of this representative as the worship of God and the purpose of man's creation, makes material progress obligatory for us.

You may read the entire chapter (though this is the bulk of it) here (no hard link, Qutb is in the author scroll on the side there). I don’t want to make to much out of this; it’s possible that the technological superiority of the West was (and perhaps still is) so widely taken as a sign of civilizational efficacy that Qutb thought of it as the very first dragon he needed to slay in recruiting others to the Islamist cause. But the same might have been said about Western military power as well, which instead is referenced only in passing. In any case it’s interesting that an argument about how the West will soon experience a decline in technological progress and only a new Islamic leadership will be able to take it up again is in the introduction to a book like this, perhaps explaining why math and science geeks haven’t shied away from a movement frequently characterized (incorrectly) as “medieval.”

Suicide Terrorism: The Geek Factor

Here’s an interesting article about brain differences that contribute to empathic versus systematizing skills, how those skills seem to be distributed slightly unequally between men and women, and how heritability of those properties might contribute to autism and autism spectrum disorders like Asperger’s. Here’s another discussing the relationship between autism spectrum disorders and skills in math and sciences, and describing how “geek colonies” created by workplaces like those in Silicon Valley seem to both confirm the genetic hypothesis and the link between autism and math/science-oriented careers.

Here’s an article presenting one self-identified geek’s opinion about why other geeks seem to find reductive and rigidly-structured ideologies like Objectivism so appealling. Here’s another explaining that most volunteers for Kamikaze units in the Japanese air force were 20-something university students, usually in the sciences. Here’s another discussing how Islamist suicide bombers share that profile.

Most Islamic scholars characterize Islamist theology and interpretation as an obscene cartoon of the real thing; hence many analysts have argued that highly secularized, science-oriented individuals figure largely in the ranks of Islamist terrorists because they are more susceptible to indoctrination in Islamist ideology due to their pre-existing ignorance of Islamic tradition. It’s easier to fill up an empty vessel than to get someone to look at an old belief system in a dramatically different way, goes the thinking. But it may be instead that the same non-empathic, systematized way of thinking that leads a person to math and science pursuits also tends to lead a person to a rigid and totalizing simple-rules-oriented ideology like Islamism to pick an example at random.

What difference does any of this make? Oh, probably none. But it’s kind of interesting.

Disclaimer: Most geeks are totally harmless, some of my best friends are geeks, I'm a geek, but not of the sciency kind so I can "pass." Etc. etc.

The Tylenol Problem

It’s crossed my mind every now and then that we’re probably going to have the Tylenol problem with terrorism no matter what we do, 9/11 having been the biggest and most dramatic media event most people now alive have ever experienced, at least in the U.S. (The Tylenol problem is: A dramatic new kind of crime is suddenly invented and looks pretty doable; headcases need only decide that they’re just the type of person who would do something like that, and bob’s your uncle. I think the serial killer phenomenon of the 20th Century has probably multiplied in pretty much a similar fashion). Confirmation comes from an unexpected quarter. A psych evaluation of the Columbine killers:

The killers, in fact, laughed at petty school shooters. They bragged about dwarfing the carnage of the Oklahoma City bombing and originally scheduled their bloody performance for its anniversary. Klebold boasted on video about inflicting "the most deaths in U.S. history." Columbine was intended not primarily as a shooting at all, but as a bombing on a massive scale. If they hadn't been so bad at wiring the timers, the propane bombs they set in the cafeteria would have wiped out 600 people. After those bombs went off, they planned to gun down fleeing survivors. An explosive third act would follow, when their cars, packed with still more bombs, would rip through still more crowds, presumably of survivors, rescue workers, and reporters. The climax would be captured on live television. It wasn't just "fame" they were after—Agent Fuselier bristles at that trivializing term—they were gunning for devastating infamy on the historical scale of an Attila the Hun. Their vision was to create a nightmare so devastating and apocalyptic that the entire world would shudder at their power.

L. said: I thought it was a fascinating article, though I'm a little uneasy about some of the evidence the author uses to demonstrate that Harris was a psychopath. For instance, he gives some quotes from Harris's website:

"YOU KNOW WHAT I HATE!!!? Cuuuuuuuuhntryyyyyyyyyy music!!! . . .
"YOU KNOW WHAT I HATE!!!? People who say that wrestling is real!! . . .
"YOU KNOW WHAT I HATE!!!? People who use the same word over and over again! . . . Read a f---in book or two, increase your vo-cab-u-lary f*ck*ng idiots."
"YOU KNOW WHAT I HATE!!!? STUPID PEOPLE!!! Why must so many people be so stupid!!? . . . YOU KNOW WHAT I HATE!!!? When people mispronounce words! and they dont even know it to, like acrosT, or eXspreso, pacific (specific), or 2 pAck. learn to speak correctly you morons.
YOU KNOW WHAT I HATE!!!? STAR WARS FANS!!! GET A FaaaaaaRIGIN LIFE YOU BORING GEEEEEKS!

Then the experts explain that Harris was really expressing contempt for other people in addition to hate. (Cullen seems to think that this is a giant revelation, for some reason.)

These are the rantings of someone with a messianic-grade superiority complex, out to punish the entire human race for its appalling inferiority. It may look like hate, but "It's more about demeaning other people," says Hare.

Now, I'm definitely not an expert, but "messianic-grade superiority complex" seems like a fairly extreme description of the quoted material to me. I'm not especially fond of "other people are so stupid" rants, but they're all over the place, and most of the people making them aren't psychopaths. Obviously, there's other material supporting the diagnosis in this case, but I do wonder if they would have been able to pick Harris's rants out of a lineup

I replied:

Then the experts explain that Harris was really expressing contempt for other people in addition to hate. (Cullen seems to think that this is a giant revelation, for some reason.)

It is, if you follow their logic. The part of the quote you cut was "It may look like hate, but 'It's more about demeaning other people.'" Hate is a reactive emotion, demeaning others is an act designed to create some sort of emotional satisfaction in the actor. Absolutely anyone can engage in the latter--violent criminals are not space aliens after all, so their emotional patterns are always recognizeably human. But what is striking about violent criminals across the board (okay, violent criminals that I happen to have read about obssessively, which is not the same thing as knowing jack about psychiatry I grant you) is just how large a part of their emotional lives revolve around obtaining and expressing power over others, even if this necessarily takes place in the realm of fantasy most of the time, and how much other common methods of getting satisfaction out of everyday life are missing from their experience or emotional knowledge. I would guess that the relentlessness of those types of expressions in the Harris journals and the absence of any others is probably as significant as the line-by-line content.

The Very Big Picture

For those who, like me, found Chirac’s motion in the UN to deny the U.S. & U.K. the power to administer post-war Iraq somewhat surreal, and his subsequent announcement of a move to create a new security arrangement consisting of France, Germany and Belgium suicidal (the idea of withdrawing U.S. troops from Germany and the U.S. from NATO and the UN as a punishment of "old" Europe has been floating around the blogosphere for a while now), here is a rational explanation of Chirac’s policy goals.

Also, here is an interpretation of what the big security picture for the US without the UN might look like, and why. The same author elaborates on his term “fantasy ideology” here; I recognized enough of the far left activists I used to hang with in college, and, indeed, of my former self to find this a rather persuasive portrait of Al Qaeda psychology. As for his main thesis, I just don’t know. This is in some respects the opposite of what I had thought the grand strategy was; i.e., Mr. de Villepin’s dark suspicion that the U.S. had “dreams of remaking the Middle East in its own image of democracy,” to quote the New York Times. Various Arab nations appear to be bargaining already with anticipated U.S. hegemony in the region upon the very assumption that it will create pressure for democracy, but we could all be misreading the tea leaves together. There is yet another possibility that the administration is merely feeling its way with these security issues and has no grand strategy to speak of; certainly the dissension among Bush advisors on this and many other points has been widely reported. I’m feeling very agnostic at the moment.

M. said: I think the fantasy ideology thing is certainly an element of something like the LSD shutdown. But when I was discussing it with L. the day it happened, I opined that another one is a straightforward assertion of power. Actions like that aren't intended to win converts to the cause, they're intended to exhibit the size and power of the movement, to reassure allies that they're not alone and powerless and to intimidate the opposition. Compare Critical Mass, where a bunch of bike riders ride en masse and block motorized traffic-- the name itself points to the idea that their numbers, while small on an absolute scale, are sufficient to force the public to pay attention to them and make policy changes, or else suffer the consequences. (My impression is that it hasn't worked terribly well, but that's partly because people who use bikes as a serious form of transportation really are a tiny minority. If they were a double-digit percentage of the population, that might probably be a different matter.)

I don't think much of those sorts of tactics, since the entire thrust is to hold people of all viewpoints hostage to a comparatively small group of activists. But I'd guess that they can work to some extent, if there's enough overall support for the goal. As much as they may alienate potential supporters, they also create an immediate issue that needs to be addressed, and "give them X if it'll make them go away" isn't an unheard of reaction. (Neither, of course, is "hit them with the tear gas and arrest the ones you catch", though how that's handled can give one side or the other a publicity victory.)

I doubt that it's likely to be productive in this particular case, since it's unlikely that Congress or the administration cares about local traffic problems. (I'd certainly hope that we're not going to start making foreign policy on the basis of traffic jams.) I do think that people are likely to magnify their overall support and the level of impact they're likely to have. But I don't think that it's purely fantasy that drives these sorts of activities-- they can be used to practical effect in some situations, for better or worse.

I replied: FWIW, from what I've managed to gather about radical Islam so far, the 9/11 bombing also may have had a practical purpose, that of making new recruits. A movement that can pull off something like that against the West must have something going for it, right? And if the U.S. really had begun adjusting its foreign policy goals to suit Al-Qaeda as some people urged, for example by immediately pulling our troups out of Saudi Arabia, or simply abandoning Israel, then so much the better for them. However, when you follow the circle around to the agenda that Al-Qaeda is actually recruiting for, it's back to fantasy-land; embedded in the recruiting power of 9/11, if it had any, is the idea that killing the infidel is a good in and of itself.

M. said: Meanwhile, Steven Den Beste suggests another motivation for unpopular protest tactics: they may serve to bind the people involved to one another more tightly by giving them a shared unpleasant experience and alienating them somewhat from the rest of society. He draws parallels to fraternity hazings, military traditions, and distinctive clothing worn by religious minorities:

"[I]f a given group always goes around in public wearing strange robes and with most of their hair shaved and a strange braided pigtail, they tend to get strange looks from others, and quite often are avoided or treated with disdain. In some members this will eventually cause them to give up and leave, but it's more common for them to bond more closely to the group because of this. And disdain is given for disdain received; they hate us because they know we're better than they are ... [E]ven if these demonstrations have had little political effect at all, or outright negative effect, on the public as a whole, it also has the effect of making those in the movement itself particularly dedicated to the cause. There's little practical difference between wearing weird robes and dancing and chanting on a street corner, and having a vomit-in at City Hall."

I replied: I think he's on to something there. On one of the news reports I saw of demonstrations in Daley Plaza last week, an organizer was explaining to Dubya: "You have created a movement that is not going away any time soon!!"