conspiracy or science

Some people foreswear the genuine wonder of scientific discovery and evidence-based knowledge in favour of fantasies, rumours and conspiracy theories conjured up by charlatans who from time immemorial have always preferred the tall story to the telling fact.Those who believe one conspiracy theory are more likely to believe others. The conspiratorial world-view is not helpful in promoting an understanding of modern society and is itself, in large part, a product of the times we live in. Are people wrong to distrust the scientific community, and therefore believe every maverick or eccentric with a theory that same community has loudly disowned? Generally yes, but when it is well known that science chases the money whereas the money never chases the science it doesn’t like, it is not hard to see how these conspiracy theories get started.

Major events cannot, in the popular mind, have trivial causes, because our world-view cannot allow it. Believing ourselves to be rational creatures in a supposedly ordered and rational universe, we shy away from the hideous tyranny of randomness, that force of Nature which defies our control and thus denies us our sense of meaning and ‘place’. Thus, JFK, who ninety percent of Americans believe could not possibly have been offed by one lone nut with a rifle and some personal issues but rather good eyesight. Princess Diana didn’t die because a driver got drunk, it was all a vast conspiracy involving the top echelons of power. Ditto John Lennon that the blame is again placed upon the "lone nutter" who had been receiving treatment for paranoid schizophrenia for his entire life since childhood but rather Chapman was being used as a "Manchuran Candidate" by Richard Nixon. Ditto 9/11, which clearly couldn’t have been simply the work of a few terrorists who got very, very lucky (but this is not to deny the possibility that Bush may have indeed connived at the attacks by refusing to act on intelligence warnings. But we await the evidence)

However, people don’t fall for conspiracy theories because of some sense of proportionality, but because they know , like the proverbial mushrooms, we are kept in the dark and fed on shit. Put any sentient, self-aware animal in an environment where they can’t trust their senses, and pretty soon they’ll stop functioning ‘rationally’. We do indeed live in strange times. Mass starvation when the world produces abundance. Wars constantly rage across the globe yet everyone says they want peace.

It is no wonder that people look for irrational explanations for seemingly irrational problems. Conspiracy theorists take the view that such a complex organism as modern world society must be controlled from the top – someone, somewhere must be pulling the strings. What is particularly unfortunate about conspiracy theories is not that they foster a view of the world as hopelessly in thrall to some shadowy elite with god-like power, because this is largely true and they are called the capitalist class. What it incorrectly encourages is the much more damaging idea that this elite is actually much cleverer than the rest of us. The central mistake of conspiracy theorists is the notion that anyone is really in control of anything. At the heart of Marxian economics is the concept the capitalist “anarchy of production” where commercial enterprises produce things with just only their own profit in mind oblivious to the needs of other firms or the limits for their particular market – all without an overall external controlling force. Competition is built-in to capitalism. Marx produced the evidence the economy being essentially beyond the control of politicians, bankers and economists. Yet we are presented ith myths of the inter-connectedness of some sections of the capitalists class (the Rothschilds and Rockefellers, perhaps) or the “mystical” power of the banks being able to create money out of thin air, that every event (even contradictory ones) is under political control to the last detail. Most conspiracy theories are really believed not by those who come into closest contact with the assumed conspirators but by those who are typically furthest away from them – the disenfranchised and dispossessed such as the US militiamen polishing their guns in the hills of Montana.

The feeling of helplessness in the face of uncontrollable forces sow the seeds for conspiracy theories to flourish. A socialist understands that we are in the grip of uncontrollable impersonal economic forces, the market, and knows that this grip can be broken only by establishing socialism but non-socialists seek an explanation in the mysterious hand of God, the Stars, Fate or Luck. Some non-socialists cannot accept the view that our lives are controlled by the impersonal forces of the market and find it easier to think that these forces are personal; in other words, they personalise the capitalism and you have some shadowy group – the financiers, the Jews or the Illuminati – controlling the world and manipulating events.

It is easier to grasp: that some group of people are deliberately causing these events rather than their being the result of impersonal forces acting as if they were forces of nature. In religion is called “anthropomorphism”, the attribution of human form to a natural force or thing – as, for instance, in the gods of Ancient Greece and Rome. On reflection, however, attributing economic and historical events to a conspiracy doesn't seem so simple or so reasonable. The conspiracy theory needs to explain how the conspiratorial group bring about these events and how they can keep their existence secret. To control the whole world – plot economic crises, wars and revolutions, let alone spreading AIDS and causing global warming – would require hundreds of thousands of operatives and some of these must be expected to spill the beans at some point. The fact that none ever have – and that therefore there is no verifiable or even unverifiable evidence that the conspiracy exists – is a powerful refutation of it.

David Aaronovitch argues that belief in conspiracy theories is harmful since it “distorts our view of history and therefore of the present” and can lead to disastrous decisions. He detects a pattern in which conspiracy theories are “formulated by the politically defeated and taken up by the socially defeated”. Conspiracies become an excuse to explain away a movement’s own inherent weaknesses or unpopularity by attributing blame to a ruthless enemy.

To be a truly effective liar, it is essential that you come to believe your own bullshit. Capitalism's continued existence does not require a conspiracy or a conspiracy theory. All it requires is the support, or more likely acquiescence, of the overwhelming majority in their own exploitation. Conspiracy theorists can’t offer an adequate explanation of what’s going on it the world. If we are going to change the world successfully we are going to need to understand it properly. And the only way we can do this is on the basis of verified evidence and logical thinking. This is what socialists try to do. Using this method, we can see no evidence of world events being organised by a conspiracy. In fact, we can see that the world is not organised at all. We can see everywhere the "anarchy" of capitalism. It is an impersonal mechanism not a conspiracy. And it is the cause of wars, revolutions and other conflicts in that these are by-products of capitalist competition, not the machinations of some secret conspiratorial group.

"Don't believe everything you read" but really, how was one to tell? Even supposing we read every word properly, how would we know whether it was right or not? Who are we to criticise? We need to be a scientist to criticise. Carl Sagan described it well: "Science is generated by and devoted to free enquiry: the idea that any hypothesis, no matter how strange, deserves to be considered on its merits. The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion and politics, but it is not the path to knowledge." The "scientific" nature of the case for socialism is rooted in the real world of hard facts and reliable evidence, and so must people be if the world is to see any real progress.

The Ten Common Sense Rules
1. First of all, don't believe a complicated explanation if a simpler one will do.
2. Never believe anyone who will profit by lying.
3. Exceptions don't prove rules, despite the saying, they break them.( "prove" in this expression is related to the Italian "provare" which means "test" or "try out", which explains how this sensible maxim has acquired a modern, nonsensical meaning)
4. Even if the structure is logical, the basic assumptions may not be.
5. Beware of the sleight-of-hand known as special pleading, which is essentially a sales tactic
6. Don't be bamboozled or "blinded by science"
7. An idea is not a valid theory unless a way exists of disproving it (falsification).
8. A test result is not valid until and unless it can be recreated.
9. A theory which cannot predict anything is worthless.
10. The most obvious rule is that if the facts don't fit the theory, change the theory.

For a theory to be valid it should accord well with the facts, and offer one a way to disprove it. Thus religion and creationism are not valid scientific theories, whereas evolution and gravity are. If you think you can disprove all, or part, or a bit of the WSM case, go right ahead. We'll listen. If you find a flaw we'll have to change our ideas, and if, by the same token, we find a flaw in your thinking, you'll have to change yours. That is how the scientific method works. The world is as full of superstition and silly ideas as it was in the Middle Ages, but it is also now far richer in real knowledge. Whether the scientific method prevails in the future is open to question, for it has failed in the past to rescue societies from decline, and the ideology of capitalism is reinforced constantly by a battery of propaganda and mystification that are a perpetual obstacle to clear thinking. Socialists have every sympathy with scientists who find themselves under attack from unscientific prejudice and blatant opportunism, since this is not very dissimilar from our own experience.

God's Candidates

Presidential hopeful Rick Perry stirred up a hornets nest with his desription of evolution as "just a theory". Another presidential hopeful Michell Bachmann jested that God delivered a hurricane and the earthquake to Washington DC as a divine message of disapproval to the Democrat administration. Another candidate for president in Mitt Romney, a Mormon believer, as is Jon Huntsman (albeit an evolutionist Mormon)

90 percent of Americans report that they believe in God. 64 percent believe that God is a person with whom one can have a relationship. 69 percent Americans believe that the Bible is the word of God. 33 percent believe that the Bible should also be taken literally, word for word. 57 percent Americans say religion is very important or the most important thing in their lives. 51 percent of Americans report attending religious services at least a few times per month. 56 percent of Americans say it is very or somewhat important for a presidential candidate to have strong religious beliefs (regardless of whether those beliefs are the same as their own.) 61 percent Americans agree that it is important that members of Congress have strong religious beliefs.

Perry's "just a theory" comment resulted in a couple of fine rebuttals:

"In the real world, facts are stubborn beasts. They are supremely unmoved by whether we like them or not. And it is the same with evolution. Evolution is a simple fact. We can choose to remain ignorant of it, we can stick our fingers in our ears and refuse to think about it, we can even rail against it and shout and scream that it is not allowed to be true. But facts are facts, and will not go away just because we don't like them.

The primary role of the school is pretty straightforward: it is to educate. It is to give young people the opportunity to learn as much as possible about the world, on the basis of the very best knowledge we have. Education is about overcoming ignorance - so the idea of allowing ignorance to set the school curriculum and to perpetuate itself by continuing to teach generation after generation information that for the last 150 years we have known to be false, is a shameful betrayal: a betrayal of young people, who put their trust in us and who deserve better; and a betrayal of the very concept of education itself.

Remember that 'ignorance' is not an insult, but merely a term for 'lack of knowledge'. Many of the people who protest so vociferously against the teaching of evolution do not understand how overwhelmingly strong the evidence for it is; and many of those who proclaim “But it's only a theory” do not understand that the scientific and everyday usages of the word 'theory' are very different. In everyday English, 'theory' can mean something vague, a hunch, a guess. In scientific English, it is almost as far from that meaning as it's possible to get: in science, a theory is the best explanation for a set of facts. It carries real weight: in science, nothing can be called a 'theory' until it is very well established indeed. Science has its own term for what, in a non-scientific context, the rest of us might call a 'theory': the scientific term for a suggestion, a best guess, something that seems plausible but has not yet been shown to be reliably true, is 'hypothesis'. You will never, ever hear a scientist talk about 'the hypothesis of evolution', for the simple reason that evolution is long past that stage. Evolution is a theory in the scientific sense of the word - tested, researched, explored and supported by masses and masses of evidence. There may still be specific details that are not entirely agreed upon; but the fact of evolution itself is not disputed by any reputable scientist.

To suggest that creationism is in any way a rival 'theory' is to confuse reality with myth. Creationism is to evolution what Santa Claus is to frazzled parents frantically buying and wrapping presents for their children at Christmas. There comes a point in our childhood when we must let go of the fantasy of Santa Claus; and there comes a point in our civilization when we must let go of the fantasy of creationism too.

Evolution is science, and should be taught in science classes. Creationism -- let us be very clear about this --is a purely religious doctrine, with no scientific underpinning whatsoever. Indeed, all the evidence points very strongly to its being false. It therefore has no place in a science lesson. Science proceeds on the basis of evidence, religion on the basis of faith, and any teacher who tries to teach faith-based dogma in a science class is clearly demonstrating her unsuitability for the role.

But of course evolution poses a problem for Christianity. That's not to say it poses a problem for all Christians, since many Christians happily accept evolution: they see Genesis 1 as merely a metaphor, and declare that if God chose to create us using evolution, that's fine by them. I used to be this kind of Christian myself; but I must confess that my blitheness was only possible because I had only the vaguest possible idea of how evolution works and certainly didn't know enough about it to realize that unguided-ness is central to it. While I welcome anyone who recognizes that the evidence for evolution is such that it cannot sensibly be denied, to attempt to co-opt evolution as part of a divine plan simply does not work, and suggests a highly superficial understanding of the subject. Not only does evolution not need to be guided in any way, but any conscious, sentient guide would have to be a monster of the most sadistic type: for evolution is not pretty, is not gentle, is not kind, is not compassionate, is not loving. Evolution is blind, and brutal, and callous. It is not an aspiration or a blueprint to live up to (we have to create those for ourselves): it is simply what happens, the blind, inexorable forces of nature at work. An omnipotent deity who chose evolution by natural selection as the means by which to bring about the array of living creatures that populate the Earth today would be many things - but loving would not be one of them. Nor perfect. Nor compassionate. Nor merciful. Evolution produces some wondrously beautiful results; but it happens at the cost of unimaginable suffering on the part of countless billions of individuals and, indeed, whole species, 99 percent of which have so far become extinct. It is irreconcilable with a god of love.

Evolution poses a further threat to Christianity, though, a threat that goes to the very heart of Christian teaching. Evolution means that the creation accounts in the first two chapters of Genesis are wrong. That's not how humans came into being, nor the cattle, nor the creeping things, nor the beasts of the earth, nor the fowl of the air. Evolution could not have produced a single mother and father of all future humans, so there was no Adam and no Eve. No Adam and Eve: no fall. No fall: no need for redemption. No need for redemption: no need for a redeemer. No need for a redeemer: no need for the crucifixion or the resurrection, and no need to believe in that redeemer in order to gain eternal life. And not the slightest reason to believe in eternal life in the first place."

Paula Kirby in the Washington Post

We then have, to be expected of course, Richard Dawkins, putting his boot into Perry.

"A politician’s attitude to evolution is perhaps not directly important in itself. It can have unfortunate consequences on education and science policy but, compared to Perry’s and the Tea Party’s pronouncements on other topics such as economics, taxation, history and sexual politics, their ignorance of evolutionary science might be overlooked. Except that a politician’s attitude to evolution, however peripheral it might seem, is a surprisingly apposite litmus test of more general inadequacy. This is because unlike, say, string theory where scientific opinion is genuinely divided, there is about the fact of evolution no doubt at all. Evolution is a fact, as securely established as any in science, and he who denies it betrays woeful ignorance and lack of education, which likely extends to other fields as well. Evolution is not some recondite backwater of science, ignorance of which would be pardonable. It is the stunningly simple but elegant explanation of our very existence and the existence of every living creature on the planet. Thanks to Darwin, we now understand why we are here and why we are the way we are. You cannot be ignorant of evolution and be a cultivated and adequate citizen of today.

What any theory of life needs to explain is functional complexity. Complexity can be measured as statistical improbability, and living things are statistically improbable in a very particular direction: the direction of functional efficiency. The body of a bird is not just a prodigiously complicated machine, with its trillions of cells - each one in itself a marvel of miniaturized complexity - all conspiring together to make muscle or bone, kidney or brain. Its interlocking parts also conspire to make it good for something - in the case of most birds, good for flying. An aero-engineer is struck dumb with admiration for the bird as flying machine: its feathered flight-surfaces and ailerons sensitively adjusted in real time by the on-board computer which is the brain; the breast muscles, which are the engines, the ligaments, tendons and lightweight bony struts all exactly suited to the task. And the whole machine is immensely improbable in the sense that, if you randomly shook up the parts over and over again, never in a million years would they fall into the right shape to fly like a swallow, soar like a vulture, or ride the oceanic up-draughts like a wandering albatross. Any theory of life has to explain how the laws of physics can give rise to a complex flying machine like a bird or a bat or a pterosaur, a complex swimming machine like a tarpon or a dolphin, a complex burrowing machine like a mole, a complex climbing machine like a monkey, or a complex thinking machine like a person.

Darwin explained all of this with one brilliantly simple idea - natural selection, driving gradual evolution over immensities of geological time. His is a good theory because of the huge ratio of what it explains (all the complexity of life) divided by what it needs to assume (simply the nonrandom survival of hereditary information through many generations). The rival theory to explain the functional complexity of life - creationism - is about as bad a theory as has ever been proposed. What it postulates (an intelligent designer) is even more complex, even more statistically improbable than what it explains. In fact it is such a bad theory it doesn’t deserve to be called a theory at all, and it certainly doesn’t deserve to be taught alongside evolution in science classes.

There are many reasons to vote against Rick Perry. His fatuous stance on the teaching of evolution in schools is perhaps not the first reason that springs to mind. But maybe it is the most telling litmus test of the other reasons, and it seems to apply not just to him but, lamentably, to all the likely contenders for the Republican nomination" [and for Obama, Mailstrom adds]

Richard Dawkins

Psychological torture

What type of ethics do some psychologists possess .

We have the War Against Terror using mind control techniques on its captives .

Forensic psychiatrist Dr. Angela Hegarty talking about the interrogation methods used on Jose Padilla .

"What happened at the brig was essentially the destruction of a human being's mind," said Dr. Hegarty. "Padilla's personality was deconstructed and reformed."

We have the refusal of the American Psychological Association to bar its members from participating in interrogations at military and CIA prisons.Unlike the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association allows its members to participate in detainee interrogations.

"...the APA has not said one single word of concern about the role of psychologists, the role of psychology in abusive interrogations, in torture..." said Dr. Stephen Soldz , professor at the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis.

They now follow a long tradition where we had , in the name of science and research and progress , kids being mentally tortured by so called members of the caring professions.

A secret study was conducted during the 30s where orphans in state care were tormented for six months and subjected to prolonged harassment to try and induce stuttering by Iowa University researchers.

The purpose - to test the theory that children develop speech impediments because of psychological pressure. None of the children became stutterers but some became self-conscious and reluctant to speak . The experiment had left them with psychological and emotional scars.

Easy for some so-called psychologists to treat the human mind as something to manipulate without care for the consequences . We are , after all , just disembodied specimens .