Bias testing

We're all biased.  It's inevitable.  Even the most clear-headed and rational of us has opinions, judgments, political leanings.  We can't help but jump to conclusions with little evidence, now and again.  I distinctly recall one student who signed up for my intro-to-neuroscience class a while back, whose appearance made me think "Trouble" -- multiple piercings, longish hair, t-shirts for bands whose names alone were barely school-appropriate -- and who turned out to be one of my best, most interested, most intellectually passionate students that year.  (To my credit, I figured out my mistake after one class session with him.)

So we can't escape bias, but the key is to keep the light shining on them.  And I'm going to propose a test that can be applied in just about any situation to determine whether you are coming to a logical, evidence-based conclusion, or whether you're falling for your own unconsidered predilections.

Take, for example, the story that hit the news a couple of days ago about the young Muslim woman who had an unpleasant experience aboard a United Airlines flight.  Tahera Ahmad, director of Interfaith Engagement for Northwestern University, was being served by the flight attendant, and asked for an unopened can of diet soda, and was refused.  She didn't want an opened can, citing reasons of hygiene, but the flight attendant allegedly said, "Sorry, I just can't give you an unopened can, so no Diet Coke for you."

When the man sitting next to her was brought an unopened can of beer later in the flight, Ahmad questioned the flight attendant again regarding why she wasn't allowed to have one.  The flight attendant said, "We are unauthorized to give unopened cans to people because they may use it as a weapon on the plane."

When Ahmad understandably objected to this rather peculiar policy, not to mention its unequal application, a nearby passenger shouted at her, "You Muslim, you need to shut the fuck up -- you know you would use it as a weapon, so shut the fuck up!"

And no one stood up for her.

The experience left Ahmad in tears from humiliation, as most of us would be in her situation.

Tahera Ahmad [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Now, I don't mean to go into the details of what happened; according to United Airlines, they are now "investigating the situation."  And honestly, at the moment, we have only Ahmad's account of the incident.  But what interests me more is the reaction of people who have written about Ahmad's experience -- because a great many of them have questioned its veracity.

"I find it hard to believe," one woman wrote, "that someone could be treated this way in full view and hearing of dozens of passengers and the flight crew, and no one put a stop to it.  This doesn't have the ring of truth.  It seems more like something she'd make up, one of those invented stories of discrimination that allow her to get undeserved sympathy.  I bet when the airlines investigates, they'll find that none of this happened."

As far as the woman's claim that it's unimaginable that someone wouldn't have intervened on Ahmad's behalf, I hardly need to point out that there have been many documented cases of actual physical violence -- assault or rape -- that have occurred in full view of passersby, none of whom chose to get involved.  But if you read the commenter's objections, and thought, "Yeah, she has a point...", I want you to do a little thought experiment for me.

What if we changed things around?  What if, instead of a young Muslim woman in a headscarf being taunted and humiliated by people who are more than likely white American Christians, it had been a young white American Christian woman on Saudia Airlines, who had asked some innocent question and had been ridiculed and jeered at by a bunch of Muslim men?  Would you have questioned her story then?  Is your outrage the same?

Because if not, you are biased.

We know nothing about Tahera Ahmad except for her gender, occupation, and religion.  The leap to the conclusion that she might have made the whole thing up in a ploy for appearing oppressed was made on the basis of nothing but the above, because we have no other evidence to go on.  And I would argue that it's likely that the sole reason for skepticism was her religion.  (For another vitriolic attack on Ahmad based explicitly on her religion, check out this post at The Conservative Treehouse.)  If you questioned Ahmad's story, and would not have questioned the story of our hypothetical young Christian woman, you are making the judgment that a Muslim is more likely to lie than a Christian -- in effect, making a pronouncement about the ethics of 1.57 billion people, or 23% of the world's population.

Now, I'm not saying that I like Islam as an ideology.  I'm no apologist for religion in general, as regular readers of this blog know all too well.  I don't need to point out that there have been horrific things done by Muslims, in the name of Islam.  What I am saying is that to make an assumption that all billion-and-a-half Muslims in the world are equally kind, ethical, and compassionate, or equally dangerous, violent, and threatening, is patently ridiculous -- and worse, it's lazy thinking.

The same standard applies in politics.  Consider the response by Fox News regarding allegations that former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert had sexual contact with a male student while he was a high school teacher.  Knowing nothing more than what's been released about the case, Fox has already cast Hastert as the victim.

Commentator Brit Hume said on Sunday, "There’s, evidently, a blackmailer, extortionist… and all indications seem to be no charges will be brought against the person who was blackmailing the former speaker."  And if that wasn't enough, Geraldo Rivera spoke up with a similar view, when he tweeted, "Sex misconduct from yrs ago was gross but Speaker Hastert is now a victim who should be given pass in exchange for testimony vs blackmailer."

That's it?  Sex with a minor is "gross, but?"

But let's do the little flip-around again.  Suppose that the allegations of homosexual contact with a minor had been levied against a prominent liberal Democrat.  What do you think Fox News's response would have been?

Makes it clearer, doesn't it?

As I said in the beginning, it's not like we all don't jump to unwarranted conclusions sometimes.  But our willingness to stay there, not to consider the reason for our leap, is troubling.  The world is not a simple place, and people seldom do things for one single, unambiguous reason.  Deciding that a woman claiming discriminatory treatment is lying solely because she's a Muslim, and that Dennis Hastert is an innocent victim of blackmail solely because he's a prominent Republican, is not only biased, it's simplistic foolishness.

And to accept those conclusions without examining them is the epitome of intellectual and ethical laziness.

Royal baloney

Sometimes I wish that if people want to espouse crazy worldviews, they'd jump right in and do it, and not claim that there's a logical argument and evidence that supports it.

I mean, just go for it, okay?  No half-assed looniness, here.  If you believe that the universe was created by a Giant Glow-In-The-Dark Bunny from the Andromeda Galaxy, then believe it.  Don't try and convince us by claiming that the DNA fingerprint of rabbits matches the spectral lines of the stars in the Andromeda Galaxy.  Because then you've crossed the line from Interesting Woo-Woo to making yourself look ridiculous.

Which is something that someone should explain to Eric Dubay, a blogger whose "About Me" states that he is a 32-year-old American who lives in Thailand, teaches yoga and wing chun part time, and is a full-time exposer of the New World Order.  Because Dubay, who predictably enough thinks that the United States is being run by a cadre of Illuminati, has put together an argument for his views using genealogy.

Dubay says that every American president has royal blood.  34 descend from Charlemagne, and 19 from King Edward III of England.  This can't be a coincidence:

If America declared its Independence from the European monarchies in 1776, how is it possible that every single president has descended from European monarchs?  If presidents are democratically elected as we are told, what are the odds that we would always choose members of British and French royal bloodlines to lead us?

The whole thing is one big conspiracy to keep the aristocracy in power, Dubay says:

Researchers like David Icke, Michael Tsarion, and Fritz Springmeier, along with foundations like the New England Historical Genealogy Society, Burkes [sic] Peerage, the Roman Piso Homepage, and other reliable genealogical sources have documented these royal presidential bloodlines.  Actually, by branching out far enough on the presidential family tree, the dedicated researcher will find that all 44 presidents share kinship, belonging to the same general ancestry, often called the 13th Illuminati bloodline, the Merovingian line, and/or the Windsor-Bush bloodline.

The fact that he goes to David Icke as a source should put you on notice right there.  And he goes on to say that not only have the elected presidents all been cousins, so are the people they ran against.  So we'd have elected members of The Family even had the other candidate won.  As an example, he says that George W. Bush and his opponent, John Kerry, are...

*cue ominous music*

16th cousins.

That was the point where I started laughing.  Because if you're not conversant with all the once-removed lingo of the genealogists, "16th cousins" means that Bush and Kerry share one set of great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandparents.  At an average generation time of 28 years, this means that this set of great-etc. grandparents lived almost 500 years ago.

Let's throw in a few other inconvenient facts.  If all two presidents share is descent from Charlemagne, that pushes back their common ancestry to about 1,200 years ago.  Meaning that Charlemagne and whichever of his various wives and mistresses were involved were the pair's mutual 40-times-great grandparents.

Besides just being ridiculous, which is problematic enough, there's another major flaw in Dubay's argument -- and that is that just about everyone with ancestry in Western Europe is likely to be descended from Charlemagne.  Charlemagne, when he wasn't ruling the Holy Roman Empire, seems to have spent a lot of his time doing one other thing, if you get my drift.  So if you're of western European descent, congratulations -- you have royal blood.

The difficulty is that you're also descended from most of the rest of Europe at the time, including the peasants.  The total population of Europe in the 8th century was about 30 million, give or take; but consider that from a purely mathematical standpoint, if you trace your family tree back that far, doubling at each generation, you would have 2 raised to the 40th power ancestors -- or about 1.1 trillion people.

This means that at that point, you (1) are descended from lots of people multiple times, (2) are probably descended from every single individual who left descendants, and (3) are related to every single person currently alive who has European ancestry.

Including Charlemagne.

Let me put this in a personal way.  I'm a descendant of Charlemagne at least twice, through my descent on my dad's side from the Lyell family (landed Scottish gentry, although they certainly didn't have much money to speak of by the time they got to the United States) and on my mom's side from the de la Tour family (petty French nobility, whose scion kind of blew his reputation by going to Nova Scotia and marrying a Native American).  So is my wife, who not only descends from Charlemagne, but from the aforementioned King Edward III of England (through her descent from the Hylton family, including the "Mad Baron Hylton," about whom I should tell you some time).

So yes... my wife and I are distant cousins.  Maybe one of us should run for president.

I see a resemblance, don't you?  [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

So sorry, Mr. Dubay, but there's no conspiracy going on here, unless you count the fact that every president thus far has had at least some western European ancestry.  Until we elect a president who is of 100% Chinese descent, we're pretty much stuck with Charlemagne's progeny.

And of course, it still doesn't matter, because anyone of Chinese descent almost certainly has Genghis Khan as an ancestor, because old Genghis proved pretty conclusively that you can make love and war more or less simultaneously.

So that's that.  And now I'm going to go get some breakfast, and figure out how many people my wife would have to bump off in the line of succession before she could become Queen of England.  I wouldn't mind spending the rest of my life as Prince Consort.  Seems like a good gig.

Opening the floodgates

I was discussing with a friend a couple of days ago the devastating floods that have hit Texas, caused by an aberrant weather pattern that is showing no signs of going away any time soon.

"Given that there are so many climate change deniers in Texas," my friend asked, "what do you think they'll blame it on?"

"Oh, I dunno," I responded.  "Probably gay people and President Obama, I'd guess."

You know, there are times I'd rather not be right.

Flooding in Houston [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Just yesterday, a woman who called into Bryan Fischer's American Family Association-sponsored radio talk show Focal Point had the following to say:

If God is judging Texas, it’s because of the witchcraft and sodomy that we’ve allowed to run rampant...  [T]he places that are underwater [are] are overrun with witchcraft and sodomy.  If you go into those areas, you can just see it...  Houston has a whole area that is like Sodom and Gomorrah.  It even has a sodomite mayor.

What I'm wondering is how god could design a flood that would only hit witches and gay people.  I mean, it's not like there's any way to stop flood waters from wiping out pretty much anyone in their path, so unless god in his Infinite Wisdom and Mysterious Ways induced all of the sodomites and witchcraft practitioners to build their houses on low ground, he's pretty much smiting everyone at the moment.

It brings up the rather amusing mental image of god at a a giant computer that has a map with flashing red lights every time someone has the wrong kind of sex, and a pull-down menu for different kinds of natural disasters that can be unleashed.  "What?  Fellatio in Tulsa, Oklahoma?  THIS CALLS FOR A TORNADO."

But you'll be relieved to know that there's not just sex and witchcraft behind the floods, there's also the looming, sinister, evil, all-powerful figure of...

... Barack Obama.

Why would President Obama send floods to Texas, you might ask?  Is it just because Texas is conservative?  Because if that's it, he should be flooding most of the southeastern United States.  There has to be more to it, right?

Of course, right.  Obama is flooding Texas because they caught on to what he was doing regarding Jade Helm 15.

For those of you who have not been keeping up with the latest conspiracy theories, Jade Helm 15 is a set of military maneuvers taking place in Texas that were a front for a government takeover of the state that was so top-secret that the Army announced what they were intending to do three months early.  That's how sneaky these guys are.  "I have an idea!  Let's confuse and confound them by telling them all our plans!  They'll be so baffled by this ploy that when we follow through with them, they'll be caught completely unawares!"

So apparently Obama got mad that the Texans were on to his cunning plot, and weren't just cooperating and letting him and his thugs declare martial law and herd everyone into FEMA Death Camps conveniently disguised as WalMarts.  He got so mad, in fact, that he used his super-powerful weather weapons to teach Texas a lesson.  Says writer Susan Duclos:

As I'm looking through breakingnews [sic] headlines, and seeing the continuous references to the extreme weather so concentrated over TX, and coupled with the continuous chemtrailing that happens throughout the US, I can't help but think that what is going on right now as part of the Jade Helm "exercize" [sic], could not actually be the domestic roll out of weather warfare on an agressive [sic] scale. We know they can control the weather to at least some degree. We know that the chemtrailing over CA and in the Pacific moddifies [sic] the jet stream to both keep CA dry and to force that precipitation east towards TX and other southern states.  We know that Jade Helm is "pretending" that TX is a hostile enemy that must be engaged.  The millitary is already rolling out across the state as part of this "drill".  Why then, is it not reasonable to assume that as part of this "mock civil war drill" that they would not practice using the tools that they have in their arsenal?

Let me just recommend, Ms. Duclos, that you not only use your computer's function called "spell check," that you consult a dictionary and look up the definition of the word "reasonable."

So there you have it: this isn't a weather event, it's either a punishment by god for gay sex and witchcraft, or it's the result of a weather weapon wielded by Barack "Professor Evil" Obama.  Myself, I just hope that the rains stop, because there's been enough devastation and death already.  And also so that these loons will shut up and go back to their previous hobby, which is probably pulling on the straps of their straitjackets with their teeth.

On a mission

There's something inherently odd about missionaries.

Now, I've met some nice ones.  There were a couple of Mormons who dropped by last fall to chat with me about religion, and when I told them (amiably) that I was an atheist and really didn't think they'd convince me otherwise, they offered to help me stack firewood.  I told them no, but I was kind of touched that they thought that since they couldn't help me in one way, they'd give a shot at helping with another.

Then, there were the Jehovah's Witnesses, both female, who rang my doorbell on a blisteringly hot day a couple of summers ago.  I was in the front yard weeding the garden, and heard them talking -- and I came out from around the corner of the house, shirtless, dripping with sweat, and disgustingly grimy.  They looked a little shocked, but it was too late to retreat gracefully.  That was one conversion attempt that I think they were perfectly glad to terminate unsuccessfully.

So it takes a good degree of bravery to go on a mission, even in the relatively safe territory of the rural United States.  You never know what you're going to run into -- and it could, of course, be much worse than half-naked gardeners.  Add to that the additional risk of missionary work in other countries, where you could be putting your safety or even your life at risk, and you have to have some grudging admiration for these folks.

But even so, there's something a little... condescending about the concept of missionaries.  "Hey, you're probably wrong about everything you believe," they seem to be saying.  "And since I'm right, let me tell you all about it!"  Where they've been successful, missionaries have done a pretty fine job of eradicating not only preexisting religions, but local culture, artifacts, traditions, and sometimes language as well.

Which is why the proposal by Pope Francis I to canonize Father Junipero Serra, the founder of 21 missions in 18th century California, has met with some pretty stiff opposition.

Serra has been hailed by Catholic leaders as the man who brought Catholicism to California, and who was responsible for educating the Native Americans who lived there -- the latter claim being pretty patronizing in and of itself, given that people who had lived successfully in a place for millennia can hardly be regarded as "uneducated" just because they couldn't read and write Spanish.  As far as Serra's treatment of the Natives -- while he and his followers didn't rush in and kill them all, like their countrymen the Conquistadors did in Central and South America, he certainly didn't treat them like equals.  Serra wrote:

The view that spiritual fathers should punish their sons, the Indians, with blows appears to be as old as the conquest of the Americas; so general in fact that the saints do not seem to be any exception to the rule.

Whatever you think of his intentions and his methods, the outcome is certain; the Natives were forced to abandon their languages, customs, and kinship ties in favor of Serra's imposed Spanish culture and religion.  Miranda Ramirez, whose Native ancestry can be traced back to people who were part of the Carmel Mission, said, "We lost everything (because of Serra)...  We were not allowed to be with our people. We lost contact with cousins, we lost the family ties.  Our language was gone."

Steven Hackel, who has written a biography of Serra, was equally critical.  "One can point to certain moments in the historical record when Serra does protect Indians," Hackel said in an interview with Al Jazeera America.  "But the larger story I think is one in which his policies and his plans led to tremendous pain and suffering, most of it unintended on his part, among Native peoples.  If one looks at the legacy of Serra's missions and what he was trying to do in California, there's no question that his goal was to radically alter Native culture, to have Indians not speak their Native languages, to practice Spanish culture, to transform Native belief patterns in ways that would make them much less Native.  He really did want to eliminate many aspects of Native culture."

Not only did Serra's actions eradicate the cultures that were already there, his insistence that the Natives abandon their villages and land has led to a further injustice -- the United States government only recognizes Native American tribes who have had uninterrupted cultural identity as meriting legally recognized membership.  Since the tribes that Serra converted back in the 18th century lost everything, even their languages, today they can't get federal recognition of their status as Natives.  Writes Karen Klein, in her piece for the Los Angeles Times entitled "What California Indians Lost Under Junipero Serra":

Because the missions mixed different Native American groups together and forced all of them to give up much of their cultural identity, many of these groups cannot meet the requirements of continuous cultural and geographical identity required to be federally recognized tribes, with the many benefits such recognition bestows. It’s one of the most painful ironies in California history — robbed of their culture by white missions the first time, and then, because of that first theft, robbed by the U.S. government a second time. 

The pope cited Serra’s role as the “evangelizer of the West” in announcing his canonization. But many see his role more as one of forced conversion rather than persuasive evangelism. I’m sure the pope realizes this; the church has recognized in the past, at least, that there were some serious problems with California’s early mission history. Perhaps that seems like a regrettable but small part of the story from the viewpoint of the Vatican, but here in California, the irreparable harm done to Native Americans is not easily minimized.

I know the argument in Serra's favor -- that he was a man of his time, that he honestly thought he was helping the Natives because he believed that without his intervention, they'd burn in hell for all eternity.  Nonetheless, there's the troubling fact that his efforts pretty much singlehandedly destroyed an entire culture.

So what do you do with someone who is acting out of what, for them, are pure motives, but who nonetheless (1) uses questionable means to attain those ends, and (2) is probably wrong in any case?  The Muslim leaders in the Middle East who advocate publicly flogging and/or decapitating heretics are, after all, operating from much the same worldview.  Better to punish one person severely for errors of faith rather than have everyone face the wrath of Allah.

My own view, of course, is pretty unequivocal; the whole shebang is really just a bunch of antiquated superstition, and no one has a right to push anyone else into belief.  Or disbelief, for that matter.  We all are capable of using our brains, and if given the freedom, to evaluate the evidence we have and decide how we think the universe works.

No missionaries necessary.

And to put it bluntly, that the Roman Catholic religion produced people like Serra should be more a cause for shame than celebration.

Whole lot o' shakin' going on

To all of my readers in California:  I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings, but you're all gonna die.

I know, I know, I should have told you about this sooner, so you could do something about it, but I didn't even know about it myself until yesterday, and by then it was too late.  I mean, just think if everyone had tried to leave the state yesterday evening.  The traffic would have been worse even than usual, and where would they all have gone?  I mean, it's not like Oregon wants 'em.

If you're wondering what all this is about, I'm referring, of course, to the fact that California is going to be destroyed by an earthquake today.  9.8 on the Richter scale, no less, and caused by the alignment of Mercury and Venus, or something.  Scary shit.

How do I know this?  Well, there's this article in IN5D Esoteric Metaphysical Spiritual Database, which as authoritative sources go, is pretty much unimpeachable.  In it, we learn that Nostradamus predicted this, and since Nostradamus's predictions have proven as accurate as you'd expect given that they're the ravings of an apparently insane man who did most of his writing after a bad acid trip, we should all sit up and pay attention.  Here, according to IN5D, is the quatrain in question:

Le tremblement si fort au mois de may,
Saturne, Caper, Jupiter, Mercure au boeuf:
Vénus aussi, Cancer, Mars, en Nonnay,
Tombera gresle lors plus grosse qu’un oeuf. 

English translation: 

The trembling so hard in the month of may,
Saturn, Capricorn, Jupiter, Mercury in Taurus:
Venus also, Cancer, Mars, in Virgo,
Hail will fall larger than an egg.

The site goes on to clarify:

On May 28, 2015 towards the end of the day UTC time, and continuing on May 29, there will be a series of very critical planetary alignments whereby Venus and Mercury are really being charged up on the North-Amerca [sic] / Pacific side.

Wow.  Pretty scientific.  Bad things happen when Venus and Mercury get "really charged up."  Time to get outta Dodge, apparently, not to mention Los Angeles.

Okay, astronomer Phil Plait says we should all calm down.  In his wonderful column Bad Astronomy in the magazine Slate, he says:

First, there is simply no way an alignment of planets can cause an earthquake on Earth. It’s literally impossible. I’ve done the math on this before; the maximum combined gravity of all the planets under ideal conditions is still far less than the gravitational influence of the Moon on the Earth, and the Moon at very best has an extremely weak influence on earthquakes. 

To put a number on it, because the Moon is so close to us its gravitational pull is 50 times stronger than all the planets in the solar system combined. Remember too that the Moon orbits the Earth on an ellipse, so it gets closer and farther from us every two weeks. The change in its gravity over that time is still more than all the planets combined, yet we don’t see catastrophic earthquakes twice a month, let alone aligning with the Moon’s phases or physical location in its orbit.

He goes on to say that Mercury and Venus aren't aligning anyhow, at least not the way the prediction claims (I mean, they're always aligned with something; two objects always fall on a straight line, as hath been revealed unto us in the prophecies of Euclid, and said line includes an infinite number of other points).  So the whole thing is pretty much a non-starter.

This hasn't stopped it from being shared around on social media, of course.  It'd be nice if articles like Phil Plait's would get shared around as often as the idiotic one in IN5D, but that, apparently, is not how things work.  People still gravitate toward predictions of doom and destruction, even though said predictions have had an exactly zero success rate.

So my guess is that if you live in California, you have nothing to worry about above and beyond the usual concerns over wildfires, mudslides, droughts, earthquakes, and Kylie Jenner spotting 75 chemtrails in the sky and posting a hysterical claim that they're killing honeybees.

The usual stuff, in other words.

Leaving the echo chamber

It is natural, I suppose, to surround oneself with people whose political, religious, and philosophical beliefs we share.  We tend to get along best with people whose values are aligned with our own, and having the same opinions makes conflict less likely.  So what I'm going to suggest runs completely counter to this tribal tendency that all humans have.

Anyone who aspires to a skeptical view of the world should seek out interactions with people of opposing stances.

I won't say this isn't frustrating at times.  Hearing our most cherished viewpoints criticized, sometimes stridently, brings up some pretty strong emotions.  But there are two outstanding reasons to strive for diversity in our social circles, and I think that both of these make a cogent argument for overcoming our knee-jerk reactions to having our baseline assumptions called into question.

First, being exposed to a wide range of opinions keeps us honest.  It is an all-too-human failing not to question things when everyone around us is in agreement.  This can lead not only to our making mistakes, but not realizing them -- sometimes for a long time -- because we've surrounded ourselves with a Greek chorus of supporters, and no one who is willing to say, "Wait a minute... are you sure that's right?"

Second, it becomes less easy to demonize those who disagree with us when they have faces.  You can slide quickly into "those awful conservatives" or "those evil atheists" -- until you meet one, and spend some time chatting, and find out that the people you've derided turn out to be friendly and smart and... human.  Just like you.

How to build an echo chamber [adapted from Jasny, Fisher, et al.]

The danger of living in an echo chamber was illustrated vividly by a new peer-reviewed study led by Dana Fisher, professor of sociology at the University of Maryland.  Fisher et al. looked at how attitudes about climate change in particular are affected by being surrounded by others who agree with you.  They found that networks of people who are already in agreement, sharing information that supports what they already believed, create a context of certainty so powerful that even overwhelming scientific evidence can't overcome it.

"Our research shows how the echo chamber can block progress toward a political resolution on climate change," Fisher said in an interview.  "Individuals who get their information from the same sources with the same perspective may be under the impression that theirs is the dominant perspective, regardless of what the science says...  Information has become a partisan choice, and those choices bias toward sources that reinforce beliefs rather than challenge them, regardless of the source’s legitimacy."

Lorien Jasny, a lead author of the paper, emphasized how important it was to venture outside of the echo chamber.  "Our research underscores how important it is for people on both sides of the climate debate to be careful about where they get their information.  If their sources are limited to those that repeat and amplify a single perspective, they can’t be certain about the reliability or objectivity of their information."

While the study by Fisher et al. was specifically about attitudes regarding climate change, I would argue that their conclusions could be applied in a much wider context.  We need to hear opposing viewpoints about everything, because otherwise we fall prey to the worst part of tribalism -- the attitude that only the members of the tribe are worth listening to.  It's why liberals should occasionally tune in to Fox News and conservatives to MSNBC.  It's why the religious shouldn't unfriend their atheist Facebook friends -- and vice versa.  It's why my friend and coworker who tends to vote for the opposite political party than I do is someone whose views I make myself listen to and consider carefully.

Now, don't mistake me.  This doesn't mean you should put up with assholes.  The social conventions still apply, and disagreeing philosophically doesn't mean you call the people on the other side idiots.  I have chosen to disconnect from people who were rude and disagreeable -- but I hope I'd do that even if they shared my political views.

Put simply, we need to be pushed sometimes to overcome our natural bent toward surrounding ourselves with the like-minded.  When we do, we become less likely to fall prey to our own biases, and less likely to pass unfair judgment on those who disagree with us.  The work by Fisher et al. shows us how powerful the echo chamber effect can be -- and why it's critical that we get ourselves out of it on occasion, however comforting the illusion of certainty can be at times.

Death sounds and Mexican demons

Allow me to reiterate a plea I've made more than once in Skeptophilia; would everyone just stop and learn a little bit of science and a few critical thinking skills before forwarding every damn thing you see on Facebook and Twitter?

I say this because of two stories I ran into in the last couple of days.  The first was sent to me by a friend and loyal reader of this blog -- not because he believed it himself, allow me to point out, but because he was in awe that anyone did.  It involves a claim that there's a "death sound" that is so amazingly intense that it can kill you instantly if you hear it.  Here's the direct quote:

There's a sound that is 36 octaves below middle C, that is so low that it kills you.  The sound waves literally kill you.  And this sound is only found in dark matter (for what we know).  This is so cool.

I love science!

Well, the originator of this claim may "love science," but I'd settle for less love and more understanding.  Because the number of ways in which these five short sentences don't make sense are so many and varied that it may set a record for bullshit-to-verbiage ratio.

Let's start with there being a sound that's 36 octaves below middle C.  Middle C has a frequency of 262 hertz (give or take), and for those of you who aren't physics-adept, one hertz = one vibration per second.  For each octave the pitch drops, the frequency goes down by a factor of a half.  (So one octave below middle C would be 131 hertz, two octaves below would be 65.5 hertz, and so on.)

This means that a sound 36 octaves below middle C would have a frequency equal to 262 divided by 2 raised to the 36th power hertz.  This is what is known to mathematicians as "a really freakin' small number."  Put simply, a sound wave at that frequency would correspond to one pulse of the sound passing your ear every 3,040 days.

So what we have here is the equivalent of someone shouting "WAAAH" in your ear, waiting 8.3 years, and then shouting "WAAAH" in your ear again.  The sound itself isn't going to kill you, but you might well die of boredom from waiting around for it.

Then there's the problem that it isn't the frequency of a sound that's dangerous to your hearing (or other bodily functions), it's the amplitude.  Amplitude corresponds to loudness and/or energy transfer capacity, so it's easy to see why high amplitude sounds can be dangerous.

Last, the "dark matter" part of this is just bizarre.  I tried to find out what this could possibly be about, and I did find an article about a discovery in astrophysics in which certain black holes have been discovered to create compression waves in the gas clouds surrounding them (i.e., sound waves) of extremely low frequency.  One, a black hole in the Perseus cluster, generates compression waves with a frequency 57 octaves below middle C.  (For you music geeks, apparently this means that the black hole is singing a B flat.)  No one is claiming that this sound can kill you, although being near a black hole certainly could -- and for the record, black holes have nothing whatsoever to do with dark matter.

Moving on to our other story, we have a new goofy psychic phenomenon that is buzzing on Twitter and other social media platforms.  It goes by the alliterative name of the "Charlie Charlie Challenge," and apparently has gotten so much hype that the hashtag #charliecharliechallenge is now trending.

So the idea is that there's this Mexican demon named Charlie, and you can summon him as follows.  Draw a cross on a piece of paper, thus dividing the paper into four rectangles.  Write "No" on the upper left and lower right, and "Yes" on the upper right and lower left.  Then place a pencil along one of the lines of the cross, and balance a second pencil at right angles to the first, as shown below:

Then you say, "Charlie, Charlie, are you here?"  The balanced pencil is supposed to rotate to give you the answer.

Once again, there are a variety of problems here.  First, if the pencil rotates to "No," then who's moving the pencil?  Even if this works, it's not very interesting, given that apparently all Charlie has to say is whether or not he's there.

Second, do you really think it's that easy to summon a demon up?  I'd think that demons would have much more important jobs to do, such as giving career advice to Ann Coulter.

Third, of course, we have a much simpler explanation for all of this, which is that a precariously-balanced pencil is going to be easy for stray draughts to move, as well as any other minor jostling.  So if you do this, the balanced pencil is eventually going to rotate one direction or the other whether there are demons present or not.

Fourth, a Mexican demon named "Charlie?"  "Charlie" is neither convincingly Mexican nor particularly demonic sounding.  You'd think he'd at least be called Mefistófeles or something.  Although I have to admit that saying "Mefistófeles, Mefistófeles, are you here?" is a bit of a mouthful.

So what we have here is basically a kids' game along the lines of "Bloody Mary," with the difference that we now have online social media to assure that such bullshit gets lots of traction.  

Anyhow, there you are.  Death sounds and Mexican pencil-rotating demons named "Charlie."  Further indication that the most powerful information-processing system ever built is now primarily used as a conduit for nonsensical claims and humorous pictures of cats.