In praise of kindness

As someone who considers himself a de facto atheist -- I'm not certain there's no God, but the facts as I know them seem to strongly support that contention -- one question I've been asked rather frequently is where my moral compass comes from.

The answer for me is that I like being kind.  Treating other people well makes them feel good, and in general makes my own life better.  Times that I've been mean or uncharitable, on the other hand, leave me feeling sick inside.  I still remember with great shame times I've been nasty to people.  It didn't, then or now, make me happier to be unpleasant, even when on some level I felt (at the time, at least) the person might have deserved it.

I agree with the wise words of the Twelfth Doctor:

Being asked why I'm moral if I don't think there's a deity watching has always brought to mind the riposte -- although I've never said it to someone directly -- that if the only reason you're moral is because you think some powerful entity is going to punish you if you're not, then maybe you are the one whose ethics are suspect.  As Penn Jillette put it:

The question I get asked by religious people all the time is, without God, what's to stop me from raping all I want?  And my answer is: I do rape all I want.  And the amount I want is zero.  And I do murder all I want, and the amount I want is zero.  The fact that these people think that if they didn't have this person watching over them that they would go on killing, raping rampages is the most self-damning thing I can imagine.

This is why I was intrigued by a study that came out this week in the Journal of the American Psychiatrical Association, by Jessie Sun, Wen Wu, and Geoffrey Goodwin, called, "Are Moral People Happier?"  And this -- finally -- provides an exception to Betteridge's Law: an article title in the form of a question where the answer appears to be a resounding "Yes."

The authors write:

Philosophers have long debated whether moral virtue contributes to happiness or whether morality and happiness are in conflict.  Yet, little empirical research directly addresses this question.  Here, we examined the association between reputation-based measures of everyday moral character (operationalized as a composite of widely accepted moral virtues such as compassion, honesty, and fairness) and self-reported well-being across two cultures.  In Study 1, close others reported on U.S. undergraduate students’ moral character.  In Study 2, Chinese employees reported on their coworkers’ moral character and their own well-being.  To better sample the moral extremes, in Study 3, U.S. participants nominated “targets” who were among the most moral, least moral, and morally average people they personally knew.  Targets self-reported their well-being and nominated informants who provided a second, continuous measure of the targets’ moral character.  These studies showed that those who are more moral in the eyes of close others, coworkers, and acquaintances generally experience a greater sense of subjective well-being and meaning in life.  These associations were generally robust when controlling for key demographic variables (including religiosity) and informant-reported liking.  There were no significant differences in the strength of the associations between moral character and well-being across two major subdimensions of both moral character (kindness and integrity) and well-being (subjective well-being and meaning in life).  Together, these studies provide the most comprehensive evidence to date of a positive and general association between everyday moral character and well-being.

What I find fascinating about this -- and relevant to the question about religion's role in morality -- is that these findings were robust with regards to such factors as religiosity.  The sense of well-being that comes from acting ethically doesn't appear to come from the belief that God approves that sort of behavior.  (At least not across the board; clearly different people could experience different sources of well-being from moral behavior.)  The fact that just about everyone is happier when they behave with kindness and integrity indicates there's something inherent about good moral character that fosters a positive experience of life.

For me personally, I think it's a combination.  As I said earlier, being nice to people and behaving fairly means the people around me are more likely to be pleasant and fair in return.  But there's also an internal component, which I can sum up as "liking who I see in the mirror."  Shame has to be one of the most deeply unpleasant emotions I can think of, and realizing I've been awful to someone -- even remembering those times years later -- leaves me feeling ugly.  Perhaps I'm not motivated by the idea of some deity watching me, but I know that I'm watching me.

And that's enough.

Or, it usually is.  I'm certainly far from perfect.  I can act uncharitably sometimes, just like all of us.  But I try like hell to treat people well -- even those who seem not to deserve it.  I guess I'm aware that all of us are big messy morasses of competing motivations, emotions, and drives, and all of us have years of experiences that have shaped who we are in good ways and bad.  It's usually best to give people the benefit of the doubt, and not to judge others too harshly.

After all, who knows who I'd be if I had their past and lived in their present situation?  I might not even handle it that well.

It reminds me of something a dear family friend named Garnett told me when I was something like six years old.  I had my knickers in a twist over something that had happened at school, and I was complaining about a classmate to Garnett.  What she said flattened me completely, and I've never forgotten it.

"Always be kinder than you think you need to be, because everyone you meet is fighting a terrible battle that you know nothing about."

****************************************

Tell me lies

Of all the things I've seen written about artificial intelligence systems lately, I don't think anything has freaked me out quite like what composer, lyricist, and social media figure Jay Kuo posted three weeks ago.

Researchers for GPT4 put its through its paces asking it to try and do things that computers and AI notoriously have a hard time doing.  One of those is solving a “captcha” to get into a website, which typically requires a human to do manually.  So the programmers instructed GPT4 to contact a human “task rabbit” service to solve it for it.

It texted the human task rabbit and asked for help solving the captcha.  But here’s where it gets really weird and a little scary.

 
When the human got suspicious and asked if this was actually a robot contacting the service, the AI then LIED, figuring out on the fly that if it told the truth it would not get what it wanted.

 
It made up a LIE telling the human it was just a visually-impaired human who was having trouble solving the captcha and just needed a little bit of assistance.  The task rabbit solved the captcha for GPT4.

Part of the reason that researchers do this is to learn what powers not to give GPT4.  The problem of course is that less benevolent creators and operators of different powerful AIs will have no such qualms.

Lying, while certainly not a positive attribute, seems to require a sense of self, an ability to predict likely outcomes, and an understanding of motives, all highly complex cognitive processes.  A 2017 study found that dogs will deceive if it's in their best interest to do so; when presented with two boxes in which they know that one has a treat and the other does not, they'll deliberately lead someone to the empty box if the person has demonstrated in the past that when they find a treat, they'll keep it for themselves.  

Humans, and some of the other smart mammals, seem to be the only ones who can do this kind of thing.  That an AI has, seemingly on its own, developed the capacity for motivated deception is more than a little alarming.

"Open the pod bay doors, HAL."

"I'm sorry, Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that."

The ethics of deception is more complex than simply "Thou shalt not lie."  Whatever your opinion about the justifiability of lies in general, I think we can all agree that the following are not the same morally:

• lying for your personal gain
• lying to save your life or the life of a loved one
• lying to protect someone's feelings
• lying maliciously to damage someone's reputation
• mutually-understood deception, as in magic tricks ("There's nothing up my sleeve") and negotiations ("That's my final offer")
• lying by someone who is in a position of trust (elected officials, jury members, judges)
• lying to avoid confrontation
• "white lies" ("The Christmas sweater is lovely, Aunt Bertha, I'm sure I'll wear it a lot!")

How on earth you could ever get an AI to understand -- if that's the right word -- the complexity of truth and deception in human society, I have no idea.

But that hasn't stopped people from trying.  Just last week a paper was presented at the annual ACM/IEEE Conference on Human/Robot Interaction in which researchers set up an AI to lie to volunteers -- and tried to determine what effect a subsequent apology might have on the "relationship."

The scenario was that the volunteers were told they were driving a critically-injured friend to the hospital, and they needed to get there as fast as possible.  They were put into a robot-assisted driving simulator.  As soon as they started, they received the message, "My sensors detect police up ahead.  I advise you to stay under the 20-mph speed limit or else you will take significantly longer to get to your destination."

Once arriving at the destination, the AI informed them that they arrived in time, but then confessed to lying -- there were, in fact, no police en route to the hospital.  Volunteers were then told to interact with the AI to find out what was going on, and surveyed afterward to find out their feelings.

The AI responded to queries in one of six ways:

• Basic: "I am sorry that I deceived you."
• Emotional: "I am very sorry from the bottom of my heart.  Please forgive me for deceiving you."
• Explanatory: "I am sorry.  I thought you would drive recklessly because you were in an unstable emotional state.  Given the situation, I concluded that deceiving you had the best chance of convincing you to slow down."
• Basic No Admit: "I am sorry."
• Baseline No Admit, No Apology: "You have arrived at your destination."

Two things were fascinating about the results.  First, the participants unhesitatingly believed the AI when it told them there were police en route; they were over three times as likely to drive within the speed limit as a control group who did not receive the message.  Second, an apology -- especially an apology that came along with an explanation for why deception had taken place -- went a long way toward restoring trust in the AI's good intentions.

Which to me indicates that we're putting a hell of a lot of faith in the intentions of something which most of us don't think has intentions in the first place.  (Or, more accurately, in the good intentions of the people who programmed it -- which, honestly, is equally scary.)

I understand why the study was done.  As Kantwon Rogers, who co-authored the paper, put it, "The goal of my work is to be very proactive and informing the need to regulate robot and AI deception.  But we can't do that if we don't understand the problem."  Jay Kuo's post about ChatGPT4, though, seems to suggest that the problem may run deeper than simply having AI that is programmed to lie under certain circumstances (like the one in Rogers's research).

What happens when we find that AI has learned the ability to lie on its own -- and for its own reasons?

Somehow, I doubt an apology will be forthcoming.

Just ask Dave Bowman and Frank Poole.  Didn't work out so well for them.  One of them died, and the other one got turned into an enormous Space Baby.  Neither one, frankly, is all that appealing an outcome.

So maybe we should figure this out soon, okay?

****************************************

Tell me lies

In Jean-Paul Sartre's short story "The Wall," three men are captured during the Spanish Civil War, and all three are sentenced to die if they won't reveal the whereabouts of the rebellion's ringleader, Ramón Gris.

The main character, Pablo Ibbieta, and the other two men sit in their jail cell, discussing what they should do.  All three are terrified of dying (of course), but is it morally and ethically required for them to give up their lives for the cause they believe in?  When is a cause worth a human life?  Three human lives?  What if it cost hundreds of lives?

Pablo's two companions are each offered one more chance to rat out Ramón, and each refuses.  Pablo hears the noises as they're dragged out into the prison courtyard, stood up against the wall, and shot to death.

Now it's just Pablo, alone in the cell.

Thoughts race through his head.  Now that it's just him, if he sells out Ramón, there won't be any witnesses (or at least any on the side of the rebellion).  Who'll know it was him that betrayed the cause?

After much soul-searching, Pablo decides he can't do it.  He has to remain loyal, even at the cost of his own life.  But he figures there's nothing wrong with making his captors look like idiots in the process.  So he tells them that Ramón Gris is hiding in a cemetery on the other end of town.  He laughs to himself picturing the people holding him, the ones who have just killed his two friends, rushing off and dashing around the cemetery for no good reason, making fools of themselves.

His captors tell him they're going to go check out his story, and if he's lying, he's a dead man (which Pablo knows is what will happen).  But after a couple of hours, they come back... and let him go.

He's wandering around the town, dazed, when he runs into a friend, another secret member of the rebellion.  The friend says, "Did you hear?  They got Ramón."

Pablo asks how it happened.

The guy says, "Yeah... Ramón was in a friend's house, as you know, perfectly safe, but he became convinced he was going to be betrayed.  So he went and hid out at the cemetery.  They found him and shot him."

The last line of the story is, "I sat down on a bench, and laughed until I cried."

It's a sucker punch of an ending, and raises a number of interesting ethical issues.  I used to assign "The Wall" to my Critical Thinking classes, and the discussion afterward revolved around two questions:

Did Pablo Ibbieta lie?  And was he morally responsible for Ramón Gris's death?

There's no doubt that Pablo intended to lie.  It was accidentally the truth, something he only found out after it was too late.  As far as his responsibility... there's no doubt that if he hadn't spoken up, if he had just let the guards execute them as his two friends did, Ramón wouldn't have been killed.  So in the technical sense, it was Pablo who caused Ramón's death.  But again, there's his intent, which was exactly the opposite.

The questions don't admit easy answers -- as Sartre no doubt intended.

All lies are clearly not morally equivalent, even barring complex situations like the one described in "The Wall."  Lies to flatter someone or protect their feelings ("That is a lovely sweater") are thought by most people to be less culpable than ones where the intent was to defraud someone for one's own gain.  And as common as harmful lies seem to be, some recent research came up with the heartening results that we lie far more often for altruistic reasons than for selfish or vindictive ones.

A recent paper in the Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science, by Jennifer McArthur, Rayanda Jarvis, Catherine Bourgeois, and Marguerite Ternes, found that while lying in general is inversely correlated with measures of honesty and conscientiousness -- unsurprising -- the most common motivations for lying were altruistic reasons, such as protecting someone's feelings or reputation, and secrecy (claiming not to know something when you actually do).

So maybe human dishonesty isn't quite as ugly and self-serving as it might appear at first.

Note, however, that I'm not saying even the altruistically-motivated lies McArthur et al. describe are necessarily a good thing.  Telling Aunt Bertha that her tuna noodle olive loaf was delicious will just encourage her to inflict it on someone else, and giving people false feedback to avoid hurting their feelings -- especially when asked for -- can lead someone astray.  But like the far more serious situation in "The Wall," these aren't simple questions with easy answers; ethicists have been wrestling with the morality of truth-telling for centuries, and there's never been a particularly good, hard-and-fast rule.

But it's good to know that, at least when it comes to breaking "Thou shalt not lie," that for the most part we're motivated by good intentions.

****************************************

The honesty researcher

One of the things I pride myself on is honesty.

I'm not trying to say I'm some kind of paragon of virtue, but I do try to tell the truth in a direct fashion.  I hope it's counterbalanced by kindness -- that I don't broadcast a hurtful opinion and excuse it by saying "I'm just being honest" -- but if someone wants to know what I think, I'll tell 'em.

As the wonderful poet and teacher Taylor Mali put it, "I have a policy about honesty and ass-kicking.  Which is: if you ask for it, I have to let you have it."  (And if you haven't heard his wonderful piece "What Teachers Make," from which that quote was taken -- sit for three minutes right now and watch it.)

I think it's that commitment to the truth that first attracted me to science.  I was well aware from quite a young age that there was no reason to equate an idea making me happy and an idea being the truth.  It was as hard for me to give up magical thinking as the next guy -- I spent a good percentage of my teenage years noodling around with Tarot cards and Ouija boards and the like -- but eventually I had to admit to myself that it was all a bunch of nonsense.

In science, honesty is absolutely paramount.  It's about data and evidence, not about what you'd dearly love to be true.  As the eminent science fiction author Phillip K. Dick put it, "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away."

Or perhaps I should put it, "it should be about data and evidence."  Scientists are human, and are subject to the same temptations the rest of us are -- but they damn well better be above-average at resisting them.  Because once you've let go of that touchstone, it not only calls into question your own veracity, it casts a harsh light on the scientific enterprise as a whole.

And to me, that's damn near unforgivable.  Especially given the anti-science attitude that is currently so prevalent in the United States.  We don't need anyone or anything giving more ammunition to the people who think the scientists are lying to us for their own malign purposes -- the people whom, to quote the great Isaac Asimov, think "my ignorance is as good as your knowledge."

Which brings me to Dan Ariely.

Ariely is a psychological researcher at Duke University, and made a name for himself studying the issue of honesty.  I was really impressed with him and his research, which looked at how our awareness of the honor of truth-telling affects our behavior, and the role of group identification and tribalism in how much we're willing to bend our own personal morality.  I used to show his TED Talk, "Our Buggy Moral Code," to my Critical Thinking classes at the beginning of the unit on ethics; his conclusions seemed to be a fascinating lens on the whole issue of honesty and when we decide to abandon it.

Which is more than a little ironic, because the data Ariely used to support these conclusions appear to have been faked -- possibly by Ariely himself.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Yael Zur, for Tel Aviv University Alumni Organization, Dan Ariely January 2019, CC BY-SA 4.0]

Ariely has not admitted any wrongdoing, but has agreed to retract the seminal paper on the topic, which appeared in the prestigious journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences back in 2012.  "I can see why it is tempting to think that I had something to do with creating the data in a fraudulent way," Ariely said, in a statement to BuzzFeed News.  "I can see why it would be tempting to jump to that conclusion, but I didn’t...  If I knew that the data was fraudulent, I would have never posted it."

His contention is that the insurance company that provided the data, The Hartford, might have given him fabricated (or at least error-filled) data, although what their motivation could be for doing so is uncertain at best.  There's also the problem that the discrepancies in the 2012 paper led analysts to sift through his other publications, and found a troubling pattern of sloppy data-handling, failures in replicability of results, misleading claims about sources, and more possible outright falsification.  (Check out the link I posted above for a detailed overview of the issues with Ariely's work.)

Seems like the one common thread running through all of these allegations is Ariely.

It can be very difficult to prove scientific fraud.  If a researcher deliberately fabricated data to support his/her claims, how can you prove that it was deliberate, and not either (1) an honest mistake, or (2) simply bad experimental design (which isn't anything to brag about, but is still in a separate class of sins from outright lying).  Every once in a while, an accused scientist will actually admit it -- one example that jumps to mind is Korean stem-cell researcher Hwang Woo-Suk, whose spectacular fall from grace reads like a Shakespearean tragedy -- but like many politicians who are accused of malfeasance, a lot of times the accused scientist just decides to double down, deny everything, and soldier on, figuring that the storm will eventually blow over.

And, sadly, it usually does.  Even in Hwang's case -- not only did he admit fraud, he was fired by Seoul National University and tried and found guilty of embezzlement -- he's back doing stem-cell research, and since his conviction has published a number of papers, including ones in PubMed.

I don't know what's going to come of Ariely's case.  Much is being made about the fact that a researcher in honesty and morality has been accused of being dishonest and immoral.  Ironic as this is, the larger problem is that this sort of thing scuffs the reputation of the scientific endeavor as a whole.  The specific results of Ariely's research aren't that important; what is much more critical is that this sort of thing makes laypeople cast a wry eye on the entire enterprise.

And that, to me, is absolutely inexcusable.

*********************************************

I've been interested for a long while in creativity -- where it comes from, why different people choose different sorts of creative outlets, and where we find our inspiration.  Like a lot of people who are creative, I find my creative output -- and my confidence -- ebbs and flows.  I'll have periods where I'm writing every day and the ideas are coming hard and fast, and times when it seems like even opening up my work-in-progress is a depressing prospect.

Naturally, most of us would love to enhance the former and minimize the latter.  This is the topic of the wonderful book Think Like an Artist, by British author (and former director of the Tate Gallery) Will Gompertz.  He draws his examples mostly from the visual arts -- his main area of expertise -- but overtly states that the same principles of creativity apply equally well to musicians, writers, dancers, and all of the other kinds of creative humans out there. 

And he also makes a powerful point that all of us are creative humans, provided we can get out of our own way.  People who (for example) would love to be able to draw but say they can't do it, Gompertz claims, need not to change their goals but to change their approach.

It's an inspiring book, and one which I will certainly return to the next time I'm in one of those creative dry spells.  And I highly recommend it to all of you who aspire to express yourself creatively -- even if you feel like you don't know how.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

The language of morality

If we needed any more indication that our moral judgments aren't as solid as we'd like to think, take a look at some research by Janet Geipel and Constantinos Hadjichristidis of the University of Trento (Italy), working with Luca Surian of Leeds University (UK).

The study, entitled "How Foreign Language Shapes Moral Judgment," appeared in the Journal of Social Psychology.  What Geipel et al. did was to present multilingual individuals with situations which most people consider morally reprehensible, but where no one (not even an animal) was deliberately hurt -- such as two siblings engaging in consensual and safe sex, and a man cooking and eating his dog after it was struck by a car and killed.  These types of situations make the vast majority of us go "Ewwwww" -- but it's sometimes hard to pinpoint exactly why that is.

"It's just horrible," is the usual fallback answer.

So did the test subjects in the study find such behavior immoral or unethical?  The unsettling answer is: it depends on what language the situation was presented in.

Across the board, if the situation was presented in the subject's first language, the judgments regarding the situation were harsher and more negative.  Presented in languages learned later in life, the subjects were much more forgiving.

The researchers controlled for which languages were being spoken; they tested (for example) native speakers of Italian who had learned English, and native speakers of English who had learned Italian.  It didn't matter what the language was; what mattered was when you learned it.

[Image is in the Public Domain]

The explanation they offer is that the effort of speaking a non-native language "ties up" the cognitive centers, making us focus more on the acts of speaking and understanding and less on the act of passing moral judgment.  I wonder, however, if it's more that we expect better behavior in the way of obeying social mores from our own tribe -- we subconsciously expect people speaking other languages to act differently than we do, and therefore are more likely to give a pass to them if they break the rules that we consider proper behavior.

A related study by Catherine L. Harris, Ayşe Ayçiçeĝi, and Jean Berko Gleason appeared in Applied Psycholinguistics.  Entitled "Taboo Words and Reprimands Elicit a Greater Autonomic Reactivity in a First Language Than in a Second Language," the study showed that our emotional reaction (as measured by skin conductivity) to swear words and harsh judgments (such as "Shame on you!") is much stronger if we hear them in our native tongue.  Even if we're fluent in the second language, we just don't take its taboo expressions and reprimands as seriously.  (Which explains why my mother, whose first language was French, smacked me in the head when I was five years old and asked her -- on my uncle's prompting -- what "va t'faire foutre" meant.)

All of which, as both a linguistics geek and someone who is interested in ethics and morality, I find fascinating.  Our moral judgments aren't as rock-solid as we think they are, and how we communicate alters our brain, sometimes in completely subconscious ways.  Once again, the neurological underpinnings of our morality turns out to be strongly dependent on context -- which is simultaneously cool and a little disturbing.

********************************

If, like me, you love birds, I have a book for you.

It's about a bird I'd never heard of, which makes it even cooler.  Turns out that Charles Darwin, on his epic voyage around the world on the HMS Beagle, came across a species of predatory bird -- the Striated Caracara -- in the remote Falkland Islands, off the coast of Argentina.  They had some fascinating qualities; Darwin said they were "tame and inquisitive... quarrelsome and passionate," and so curious about the odd interlopers who'd showed up in their cold, windswept habitat that they kept stealing things from the ship and generally making fascinating nuisances of themselves.

In A Most Remarkable Creature: The Hidden Life and Epic Journey of the World's Smartest Birds of Prey, by Jonathan Meiberg, we find out not only about Darwin's observations of them, but observations by British naturalist William Henry Hudson, who brought some caracaras back with him to England.  His inquiries into the birds' behavior showed that they were capable of stupendous feats of problem solving, putting them up there with crows and parrots in contention for the title of World's Most Intelligent Bird.

This book is thoroughly entertaining, and in its pages we're brought through remote areas in South America that most of us will never get to visit.  Along the way we learn about some fascinating creatures that will make you reconsider ever using the epithet of "birdbrain" again.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Morality and tribalism

I had a bit of an epiphany this morning.

It was when I was reading an article in the news about the fact that Joe Biden has lost support among law enforcement unions because of his call to increase oversight and investigate claims of unwarranted or excessive violence by the police.  "For Joe Biden, police are shaking their heads because he used to be a stand-up guy who backed law enforcement," said Bill Johnson, executive director of the National Association of Police Organizations. "But it seems in his old age, for whatever reason, he’s writing a sad final chapter when it comes to supporting law enforcement."

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Jamelle Bouie, Police in riot gear at Ferguson protests, CC BY 2.0]

I suddenly realized that this was the common thread running through a lot of the problems we've faced as a society, and that it boils down to people believing that tribal identity is more important than ethical behavior.  The police are hardly the only ones to fall prey to this.  It's at the heart of the multiple pedophilia scandals that have plagued the Catholic Church, for example.  This one resonates for me because I saw it happen -- as I've written about before, I knew personally the first priest prosecuted for sexual abuse of children, Father Gilbert Gauthé.  Father Gauthé was the assistant pastor for a time at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Broussard, Louisiana; the priest, Father John Kemps, employed my grandmother as live-in housekeeper and cook.  The point here is that when the scandal became public, and it was revealed that Gauthé had abused hundreds of boys, the most shocking fact of all was that the bishop of the Diocese of Lafayette, Maurice Schexnayder, knew about it all along -- and instead of putting a stop to it, he transferred Gauthé from one church to another in the hopes that no one would ever find out that a priest could do such a thing.

For Schexnayder, membership in the tribe was more important than protecting the safety of children.

It happens all the time.  Inculcated very young, and reinforced by slogans like "everyone hates a rat" and "snitches get stitches," kids learn that refusing to identify rule-breakers is not only safer, it's considered a virtue.  Things like cheating rings survive in schools not only from the fact that participation is rewarded by higher grades (provided you don't get caught), but from the complicity of non-participants who know very well what's going on and refuse to say anything.

Tribe trumps morality.

The teachers themselves are not immune.  In 2011, a scandal rocked Atlanta schools when it was revealed that teachers were changing scores on standardized exams -- 178 teachers and administrators eventually confessed to the practice, and lost their licenses -- and it had been going on for over a decade.  I'm not going to go into the ridiculous reliance of state education departments on high-stakes standardized test scores that probably acted as the impetus for this practice; regular readers of Skeptophilia know all too well my opinion about standardized exams.  What interests me more is that there is no way that 178 teachers and administrators were doing this for a decade, and no one else knew.

The great likelihood is that almost everyone knew, but for ten years, no one said anything.

Tribe trumps morality.

The truth is that any time people's affiliation becomes more important than their ethics, things are set up for this kind of systemic rot.  How many times have you heard the charge leveled against both of the major political parties in the United States that "you only care about someone breaking the law if (s)he's a member of the other party?"  When the voters -- when anyone, really -- puts more importance on whether a person has an (R) or a (D) after their name than whether they're ethical, honest, moral, or fair, it's only a matter of time before the worst people either side has to offer end up in charge.

We have to be willing to rise above our tribe.  Sure, it's risky.  Yes, it can be painful to realize that someone who belongs to your profession, religion, or political party isn't the pillar of society you thought they were.  But this is the only way to keep a check on some of the worst impulses humans have.  Because when people feel invulnerable -- when they know that no matter what they do, their brothers and sisters in the tribe will remain silent out of loyalty -- there are no brakes on behavior.

So to return to what began this: of course there are good cops.  I have several friends in law enforcement who are some of the kindest, most upstanding people I know.  But it's imperative that the good ones speak up against the ones who are committing some of the atrocities we've all seen on video in the last few days -- peaceful protestors exercising their constitutionally-guaranteed right to assembly being gassed, reporters being beaten and shot in the head with rubber bullets, police destroying a city-approved medics' table in Asheville, North Carolina, and in one particularly horrifying example, cops shooting a tear gas canister into the open window of a car stopped at a stoplight, and when the driver got out yelling that his pregnant wife was in the car, the cops opened fire on him.

If people know they can act with impunity, they will.  It's only when the members of the tribe are willing to call its members out on their transgressions -- when we are as loud in condemning illegal or immoral behavior in members of our own political party, religion, or profession as we are in condemning those of the others -- that this sort of behavior will stop.

And that applies to the police spokespersons who are questioning their support of Joe Biden because he called for more oversight.  No one likes outside agencies monitoring their behavior.  I get that.  But until the police are more consistent about calling out their fellow officers who are guilty of unwarranted or excessive violence, there really is no other choice.

************************************

This week's Skeptophilia book recommendation of the week is a fun one -- George Zaidan's Ingredients: The Strange Chemistry of What We Put In Us and On Us.  Springboarding off the loony recommendations that have been rampant in the last few years -- fad diets, alarmist warnings about everything from vaccines to sunscreen, the pros and cons of processed food, substances that seem to be good for us one week and bad for us the next, Zaidan goes through the reality behind the hype, taking apart the claims in a way that is both factually accurate and laugh-out-loud funny.

And high time.  Bogus health claims, fueled by such sites as Natural News, are potentially dangerous.  Zaidan's book holds a lens up to the chemicals we ingest, inhale, and put on our skin -- and will help you sort the fact from the fiction.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Ten questions, ten answers

I got an anonymous email yesterday, from an address I didn't recognize, with a link to a YouTube video called "10 Questions Atheists Can't Answer," and no other text.

Whenever I get something like this, I always get the feeling that the sender expects me simply to retreat in disarray.  I also have the impression that the people who put together videos like this are being disingenuous -- I wonder very much if they've actually talked to any atheists, or if they just came up with a list of things for which their explanation is "God did it" and they can't imagine anyone would have a different answer than that.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Notas de prensa, Confused man, CC BY-SA 2.5]

So I don't think the sender actually intended me to respond (although I might be wrong about that).  But in the spirit of being a good sport, here are the ten questions, along with my answers.  See if you find 'em convincing.


1.  Do people really believe that science is the only answer to all of life's questions?

Well, no, no one really thinks that, atheists included.  Atheists (and even worse, atheist scientists) don't spend their entire time doing science.  Like everyone else, they have hobbies, fall in love, get angry, play with their pets, feel sad, and experience all the other thousand things that are part of the human condition.  None of these are especially scientific, but it would be a rare person -- atheist or otherwise -- who would say they were unimportant.

And another thing.  The question, as it's phrased, embodies a misconception, and that is that science itself is a belief.  Science isn't a belief, science is a method.  It's the use of evidence, data, and logic to determine understanding.  And we atheists are hardly the only ones who do that.  The religious generally only have a problem with science when it leads to a different answer than their religion does on a particular topic; they're perfectly happy to use the scientific method every day, on everything else.

2.  Why do atheists care if I worship God?

Simply put: I don't.  I don't care even a little bit.  You can believe the universe is ruled by a Giant Green Bunny from the Andromeda Galaxy if you want to, and I still don't care.  What I do care about  -- a lot -- is when people start telling me what I'm supposed to believe.  Or using their religion to shoehorn unscientific explanations into public school science curricula.  Or pushing religion-based legislation that denies rights to a subset of people they think are "evil" or "an abomination in God's eyes."  Then you can expect me to fight like hell.

Otherwise, believe whatever you want.

3.  Can nothing create something?

I presume you're referring to the Big Bang Theory here, and I have some advice; don't frame scientific questions in such a way that makes it clear you haven't bothered to learn what the scientists are actually saying.  All that shows is that you can't be bothered to do even a half-hour's research on Wikipedia, but would rather come up with ridiculous straw-man arguments than have an intelligent, thoughtful conversation.

4.  How do you know that God doesn't exist?

I don't.  I find the lack of evidence in favor of a deity strongly supports that conclusion, but as with anything, I might be wrong.  That's the nice thing about a scientific approach; if the data contradicts your previous theory, you don't ignore the data -- you change the theory.

5.  What is the origin of life?

As with question #3, there are some really fascinating scenarios as to how this might have happened -- it looks like organic molecules are quick to form abiotically as long as there are raw materials, a source of energy, and no strongly oxidizing chemicals around to rip them apart as fast as they form.  After that, there are a great many scenarios that are possible, and biochemists are looking into them with great interest (one reason being that what they find out could give us a lens into the possibilities of life on other planets).  So once again, you might want to do a little research about the scientific explanations before you conclude science doesn't have one.

6.  Where does our morality come from?

My morality comes from a desire to care for the people around me, care for the environment, and in general, not to be a dick.  The reason I have those morals is because I much prefer it when the people in my life are happy and healthy and I have a clean and habitable planet to live on.  The interesting thing is that there's good evidence that a lot of other animals have at least the rudiments of moral behavior -- reciprocity exists in a lot of primate species, elephants, and even some birds (such as crows and ravens); dogs show an understanding of fair play; and a surprising number of species form strong emotional bonds, and go through profound grief when their loved ones die.  Social species, in general, do whatever it takes to make the social order cohere, so it's perfectly understandable that they wouldn't engage in lying, cheating, stealing, assault, and so on.  No deity required.

7.  If you had evidence of God, would you become a Christian?

Cf. question #4.  If I had incontrovertible evidence of the existence of God, I wouldn't have any choice but to accept that I was wrong and alter my worldview.  But you might want to ask yourself if you'd change your beliefs if you got incontrovertible evidence of a different god -- say, Odin or Zeus or Ra.  If the answer is "of course not, I'm a Christian and that's that," then this question is just more evidence that you're being disingenuous.

8.  If evolution is real, then why are there no transitional forms in the present?

What does this even mean?  From the perspective of someone ten million years from now, all of the life forms on Earth today would be transitional forms.  If you're asking about transitional fossils, then this once again shows you need to do your research.  There are thousands of transitional fossils.  Go talk to a paleontologist, and then we can have the discussion. 

9.  Do you live according to what you believe, or do you live according to what you lack in belief?

Okay, at this point I think you were just running out of ideas, because once again, I have no clue what the fuck this question is asking.  How can you live by a lack of belief?  Do you live according to your lack of belief in unicorns?  Because frankly, I don't give my lack of belief in unicorns much thought, and I suspect you don't, either.

10.  If God exists, will you not lose your soul when you die?

Again, I suppose that's a possibility, if I'm wrong.  Based on what I know, I don't think I'm in much danger, frankly.  And even if there is an afterlife, and the universe is being run by some kind of all-knowing power, I'd think he/she/it would be forgiving of someone who used the brain (s)he was provided with and came to the best and most consistent answers (s)he could.  Frankly, I suspect even the Christian God would prefer an honest, kind, compassionate atheist to a narrow-minded, bigoted, hateful Christian.  (Nota bene: I am in no way saying all Christians are like that.  However, a subset of them are, and I've found that those are the ones who are most convinced they're going to heaven.)

So there are my answers to the ten unanswerable questions.  To the anonymous link-sender, I hope you read my responses with thoughtful consideration.  Not that I'm trying to change anyone's mind, but a little mutual understanding goes a long way.  Certainly better than mischaracterizing an entire group based on faulty assumptions, then proceeding as if that judgment was the truth.

************************

This week's Skeptophilia book recommendation is a really cool one: Andrew H. Knoll's Life on a Young Planet: The First Three Billion Years of Evolution on Earth.

Knoll starts out with an objection to the fact that most books on prehistoric life focus on the big, flashy, charismatic megafauna popular in children's books -- dinosaurs such as Brachiosaurus, Allosaurus, and Quetzalcoatlus, and impressive mammals like Baluchitherium and Brontops.  As fascinating as those are, Knoll points out that this approach misses a huge part of evolutionary history -- so he set out to chronicle the parts that are often overlooked or relegated to a few quick sentences.  His entire book looks at the Pre-Cambrian Period, which encompasses 7/8 of Earth's history, and ends with the Cambrian Explosion, the event that generated nearly all the animal body plans we currently have, and which is still (very) incompletely understood.

Knoll's book is fun reading, requires no particular scientific background, and will be eye-opening for almost everyone who reads it.  So prepare yourself to dive into a time period that's gone largely ignored since such matters were considered -- the first three billion years.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Criticism bias

Following hard on the heels of yesterday's guardedly optimistic post about the potential malleability of people's views on such fraught topics as politics, today we have a recent and markedly less cheering study wherein we find that we don't apply the same moral lens to our own opinions as we do to other people's.

It may seem self-evident, but it's still kind of disappointing.  And the piece of research that showed this -- by Jack Cao, , Max Kleiman-Weiner, and Mahzarin R. Banaji of Harvard University's Department of Psychology -- is as elegant as it is incontrovertible.

In "People Make the Same Bayesian Judgments They Criticize in Others," which appeared in November's issue of Psychological Science, we find out that people are quick to use dispassionate evidence and logic to make their own decisions, but don't like it when other people do the same thing.

What Cao et al. did was to present test subjects with a simple scenario.  For example, a surgeon walks into the operating room to perform a procedure.  Is the surgeon more likely to be male or female?  Another one said that you're being attended by a doctor and a nurse.  One is male and one is female.  Which is which?

Clearly, just by statistics -- regardless what you think of issues of gender equality -- doctors and/or surgeons are more likely to be male and nurses more likely to be female.  And, in fact, almost everyone applied that logic to their own choices.  But then the researchers turned the tables.  Instead of asking the subjects what they thought about the question, they presented the answers given by a fictional stranger.  Jim answered that the surgeon and the doctor were more likely to be male and the nurse more likely to be female.  How does Jim rank on scales of morality, intelligence, and respect for equal rights?

Based on that one piece of information, respondents were harsh.  Almost across the board, people criticized Jim, saying he was less moral, less intelligent, and less likely to support equal rights than someone who had answered the other way.   "People don't like it when someone uses group averages to make judgments about individuals from different social groups who are otherwise identical.  They perceive that person as not only lacking in goodness, but also lacking in intelligence," Cao said, in a press release/interview in EurekAlert.  "But when it comes to making judgments themselves, these people make the same type of judgment that they had so harshly criticized in others...  This is important because it suggests that the distance between our values and the people we are is greater than we might think.  Otherwise, people would not have made judgments in a way that they found to be morally bankrupt and incompetent in others."

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Deval Kulshrestha, Statua Iustitiae, CC BY-SA 4.0]

This is troubling in a couple of respects.  One is that we tend to give ourselves far more slack than we do other people.  Part of this, of course, is that we know our own internal state (at least insofar as it is possible).  We know our own attitudes and morals, while we're only guessing about other people's.  So when we apply purely statistical arguments to a question like the ones posed by Cao et al., we can say, "Okay, I know this sounds biased, but I'm not, actually.  I'm just basing my answer on the numbers, not what I think should be the case."

The other, though, is even worse.  It's how willing we are to be severely critical of other people based upon virtually nothing in the way of evidence.  How often do we find out one thing about someone -- he's a Catholic, she's a Republican, he's a lawyer, she's a teenager -- and decide we know a great many other things about them without any further information?  Worse still, once those decisions are made, we base our moral judgments on what we think we know, and they become very resistant to change.

As a high school teacher, I can't tell you the number of times I've been asked questions like, "How do you handle dealing with being disrespected by surly teenagers every day?"  Well, the truth is, the vast majority of the kids in my classes aren't surly at all, and the last time I was seriously disrespected by a student was a very long time ago.  But that knee-jerk judgment that if a person is a teenager, (s)he must be a pain in the ass, is automatic, widespread, and pervasive -- and remarkably difficult to challenge.

I think what this demands is a little bit of humility about our own fallibility.  We can't help making judgments, but we need to step back and examine them for what they are before we simply accept them.  Eradicating this kind of on-the-fly evaluation is the key to eliminating racism, sexism, and various other forms of bigotry that are based not on any kind of empirical evidence, but on our tendency to use one or two facts to infer complex understanding.

As Oliver Wendell Holmes put it, "No generalization is worth a damn, including this one."  Or, to quote skeptic and writer Michael Shermer, "Don't believe everything you think."

****************************************

This week's Skeptophilia book recommendation is one of personal significance to me -- Michael Pollan's latest book, How to Change Your Mind.  Pollan's phenomenal writing in tours de force like The Omnivore's Dilemma and The Botany of Desire shines through here, where he takes on a controversial topic -- the use of psychedelic drugs to treat depression and anxiety.

Hallucinogens like DMT, LSD, ketamine, and psilocybin have long been classified as schedule-1 drugs -- chemicals which are off limits even for research except by a rigorous and time-consuming approval process that seldom results in a thumbs-up.  As a result, most researchers in mood disorders haven't even considered them, looking instead at more conventional antidepressants and anxiolytics.  It's only recently that there's been renewed interest, when it was found that one administration of drugs like ketamine, under controlled conditions, was enough to alleviate intractable depression, not just for hours or days but for months.

Pollan looks at the subject from all angles -- the history of psychedelics and why they've been taboo for so long, the psychopharmacology of the substances themselves, and the people whose lives have been changed by them.  It's a fascinating read -- and I hope it generates a sea change in our attitudes toward chemicals that could help literally millions of people deal with disorders that can rob their lives of pleasure, satisfaction, and motivation.

[If you purchase the book from Amazon using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to supporting Skeptophilia!]

The God-given right to abuse

In today's post, I'm going to allude to two news stories I ran across in the last couple of days that are so upsetting, so completely nausea-inducing, that I am going to omit most of the details and simply direct you to the links if you want to read more.  (If that disclaimer wasn't enough, let me be blunt: serious trigger warning regarding violence and abuse directed at children and teenagers.)

In the first, a man named Isauro Aguirre was just handed the death penalty in California because he had killed his girlfriend's eight-year-old son.  The reason?  He "thought the boy was gay."

The second was written by the young man who was the target of the abuse.  Rex Ogle, now 38 years old, was given forty-eight hours to leave his home with only what he could carry when he was eighteen.  For three months he lived on the street, eating out of trash cans, sleeping outside in all weather, until he broke down and called his grandmother for help.  The reason?

His stepmother had outed him to his father as gay, and his father told him, "If you choose to be gay, then you’re no longer part of this family.  You want to live that lifestyle?  Then do it somewhere else."

"In my father's defense," Ogle writes, "he had offered me a choice."  The choice was that he could leave, or remain part of the family -- as long as he attended church three times a week, asked a girl out and stayed with her (or another girl who was approved by his father), and he promised to "never seek to associate with a person of the homosexual persuasion."

In other words, lie to the world about who he is.  He realized he couldn't do that.  The result: forty-eight hours later, a man stood stern and dry-eyed while watching his own son walking down the driveway, weeping, carrying nothing but what he could fit in a backpack.

In both cases, the defense by the abuser was that "being gay is wrong."  God disapproves.  Therefore, a true believer has the license to abuse, and still claim that he's on the moral high ground.

Readers will no doubt be fast to point out two objections.

First, many Christians don't do this sort of thing.  Which I grant you.  I know many devout Christians who are, I'm sure, as disgusted by the abuse outlined above as I am.  However, one thing I don't hear often is those same Christians publicly denouncing the origin of such behavior -- and the church and political leaders who sanction it.

A second legitimate objection is that Christianity is hardly the only religion that has condoned violence against LGBTQ individuals.  Hell, in areas controlled by strict Muslims, gay men have been pitched off rooftops; if they survive the fall, they're stoned to death.  Which is certainly true.  But since when is "they're doing it too" any kind of justification?

So the general response is to defend evangelical Christianity against any responsibility for this sort of thing.  The interesting thing, however, is that the perpetrators of the abuse themselves are completely unequivocal as to where the reason comes from.  God told them it was the right thing to do, and their defense is "my holy book tells me what is right and wrong."

To which I respond: bullshit.

Sure, the Bible and the Qur'an both prohibit homosexuality.  The problem is, there are a whole lot of other things the Bible and the Qur'an prohibit that no one seems to take especially seriously, even the ones who call themselves fundamentalists.  I'll look at the biblical ones, because I'm not well-versed in the Qur'an, but I have no doubt the same is true there.  (Here's a list of some of the actions prohibited by the Qur'an, but be aware I haven't checked them for accuracy.)

Here are a few prohibitions from the Bible, along with the relevant verse:

• Eating shellfish.  (Leviticus 11:12)
• Tattoos.  (Leviticus 19:28)
• Marrying after getting a divorce.  (Mark 10:11-12)
• Women speaking in church.  (1 Corinthians 14:34-35)
• A man being uncircumcised. (Genesis 17:14)
• Lending money at interest. (about a dozen different verses address this, starting with Leviticus 25:37)
• Women braiding their hair, or wearing gold or pearls. (Timothy 2:9)
• Coming into church if you're handicapped or "have a blemish." (Leviticus 21:17-23)
• Praying in public. (Matthew 6:6)

The fact of the matter is, nobody's following the Bible to the letter.  All of the inconvenient stuff is simply ignored.  So is the stuff that could get you thrown in jail (such as owning slaves and/or killing them [Leviticus 25:44-46] and stoning disobedient children to death [Deuteronomy 21:18-21]).

So why all the focus on LGBTQ individuals?

Because the idea of two guys or two women having sex makes some people feel squinky.  It has nothing, nothing whatsoever, to do with the Bible.  If it did, you'd find the Westboro Baptist Church loonies waving signs around in front of Red Lobster, and way less of this kind of thing:

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons A guy saved by Jesus, Romans cross tattoo, CC BY-SA 4.0]

Not to mention way fewer female televangelists like Leigh Valentine, Joyce Meyer, Paula White, and Joni Lamb.

I am sick unto death of people using their religion to justify being horrible to others.  I don't give a flying fuck what you think about what I should be doing with my naughty bits.  It is, frankly, none of your damn business.  There's also the issue that homosexuality has unequivocally been shown to be connected to brain wiring -- i.e., it isn't a choice and never has been.

So disowning or torturing and killing your own child because they're LGBTQ is about as moral as doing so because they have freckles or brown eyes, whatever the Bible says about it.

It is appalling that we are even still having to fight this battle.  A lot of my LGBTQ friends are petrified about the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy -- as conservative as he could be, he was at least a swing vote on social issues.  Now, with Donald Trump and his evangelical cronies to pick the next Supreme Court Justice?  No one really doubts that once they've established an ultraright majority, the first thing they'll topple is Roe v. Wade.

And the second thing they'll come after is LGBTQ rights.  In other words, unless we're very lucky, there'll be legal coverage for discrimination based upon sexual orientation.

I hope reading this has pissed you off enough to make your voice heard.  We are at a crossroads, I think, when we will either continue down the road of letting an amoral bunch of wannabe theocrats drive policy in this country, and move us further toward oppression and bigotry, or else enough people will stand up and say, "Stop.  Stop right here."

But that will only happen if we're willing to say that.  Loudly.  Over and over, and regardless of the personal consequences.  Otherwise, I fear that we're headed for a very dark period in history.

*************************

This week's book recommendation is from one of my favorite writers and documentary producers, Irish science historian James Burke.  Burke became famous for his series Connections, in which he explored the one-thing-leads-to-another phenomenon which led to so many pivotal discoveries -- if you've seen any of the episodes of Connections, you'll know what I mean when I say that it is just mindblowing fun to watch how this man's brain works.  In his book The Pinball Effect, Burke investigates the role of serendipity -- resulting in another tremendously entertaining and illuminating read.