Herd Immunity and Fighting Back

Lawdog posted some Meditations on Sunday. I would like to build on that posting by tying in the concept of "herd immunity".

First, what is herd immunity?

Germs succeed when they infect lots of people. People succeed when they don't get infected. Germs spread from one person to another. Vaccination stops germs from infecting individuals, benefiting each vaccinated individual. But if enough people get vaccinated, the benefit extends beyond the individual. That's because vaccinated people don't get infected and thus can't spread germs to other people. If an individual is completely surrounded by vaccinated people who don't spread germs, then that individual probably won't get infected either--even without the vaccination.

Herd immunity kicks in when a certain percentage of the population is vaccinated. Below that percentage, enough unvaccinated people come in contact with each other for germs to spread. Above that percentage, germs mostly encounter vaccinated people so they can't spread. The germs are effectively stopped from spreading.

That magic percentage (the "herd immunity threshold") depends on how many so-called "secondary infections" an infected person can cause. Mumps usually spreads from an infected person to between 4 and 7 others, and the herd immunity threshold is between 75% and 86%. Measles usually spreads to somewhere between 12 and 17 others, so the herd immunity threshold also goes up to between 83% and 94%.

How does that tie in with self defense -- fighting back against bad guys?

Well, Lawdog points out that even bad guys operate on a risk/reward basis:

All creatures on this little green dirtball operate on a Reward/Risk system: is the potential reward of this action worth the risk of this action? If so, you do the thing -- if not, you do something else.

But most of them (the "critters") only understand immediate consequences, not delayed consequences:

The possibility of getting caught by the police next week, or next month, has very little influence on the average critters Risk/Reward calculations.

Getting caught, injured or killed during the crime? Yes. Getting caught, injured or killed after committing the crime? Not so much.

Just like germs, the critters succeed when they encounter a victim who doesn't fight back. And just like germs, the victims succeed when they do fight back.

[S]uppose Joe Critter is in a place where self-defence is expected and encouraged. He figures the reward of wallet money is worth the risk of Rehabilitation Through Reincarnation, or Bodily Injury and attempts a mugging. The victim defends him or her self, and let us postulate that Joe scrambles away with powder burns and a bloody furrow along the ribs.
[....]
This time -- self-defence being expected and encouraged by this society -- Joe crawls to the nearest trauma centre with a .38-calibre lead slug in his belly. Pretty sodding quickly, the Risk (Death or Serious Bodily Injury) is going to outweigh the Reward (wallet funds), and Joe is going to turn to an activity with a lower Risk variable.

But just as with vaccination, the benefits extend beyond the individual victim. Just as a germ can't tell whether a potential infectee is vaccinated or not, it's hard for a critter to predict whether a potential victim will fight back. If enough potential victims tend to fight back, the potential critters won't bother even trying. So even the potential victims who wouldn't actually fight back don't get attacked.

What is the "herd immunity threshold" for fighting back? This time the math works backwards in favor of the good guys. Instead of infectees spreading germs, the fighters spread protection. Would you attack someone if you estimated a 50% chance of instant death? How about 20%? 10%? 5%? Critters do the same math. Their threshold may be higher, but most of them still don't want to die.

That's why it's so important to fight back. Not only do you stop your own victimization, you protect other people from attacks who wouldn't otherwise fight back.

You can even do it "for the children"!

Why settle....

Hat tip: Kevin Baker. And Sean's comment is priceless:

I like Cthulhu's foreign policy of killing everyone and consuming everything, but I don't agree with his domestic policy of killing everyone and consuming everything. Still better than Hillary.

Heh.

Sunny Lucas for President!

As you can tell from my profile picture, I'm a dog person. So I was quite interested to read Sunny Lucas' announcement for President.

Her platform is particularly good. Some highlights:

• TERRORISM: “Kill them all.”
• ABORTION: “Mandatory sterilization, just like at the pound.”
• EDUCATION: “You only get a treat if you do the trick properly.”

Go read the whole thing. This is just the right software for a President to be running!

Sunrise over Columbia

Camera: CANON POWERSHOT A410
Taken on 2006:08:28 06:18:53
Exposure: 0.006s (1/160)
Focal Length: 5.40mm
F/Stop: f/2.800

46º 14' 26.78" N 119º 19' 21.04" W

Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin... and Cornelius Fudge?

So I finally finished Jonah Goldberg's book. As quoted before, fascism "is a religion of the state. It assumes the organic unity of the body politic and longs for a national leader attuned to the will of the people." Examples cited include Woodrow Wilson, Benito Mussolini, and Adolph Hitler. Stalin wasn't a national socialist, but he and Mao definitely built cults of personality.

Netflix delivered the latest Harry Potter movie, Order of the Phoenix. This view, early in the movie, is what Harry Potter sees when he enters the Ministry of Magic:


Wow -- a four-story high poster of Cornelius Fudge, the Minister of Magic. Like all photographs in the Wizarding World, Fudge moves just enough to tell he's alive.

A few minutes later, Harry is dragged before the highest Wizarding court. Here again we see Minister Fudge as the personification of authority:


Unfortunately, Fudge is in denial. He would rather destroy Harry (and his mentor Dumbledore) publicly than acknowledge that Lord Voldemort has returned. Fudge wants to think that Harry and Dumbledore are the big threats to his authority and position, because Voldemort is far too scary to even contemplate. Better to believe Voldemort's return is a fiction, created by Dumbledore as part of a plot to overthrow Fudge's rule, than to face the truth.

Inevitably there's a big showdown. In the middle of a duel, Voldemort shatters all the Ministry windows and shreds Fudge's banner:


And then, just as the fighting ends, Fudge himself shows up and comes face to face with his biggest fear:


Harry and Dumbledore were right.

What a delightful subtextual commentary on government! J. K. Rowling certainly has no illusions about the state being the source of morals, right and wrong, good and evil. More often than not, the people who ascend to the heights of power are compromised in the process. They forget about their responsibility to the people, focusing only on perceived threats to their authority.

Good on ya, J.K. Thanks!

nonick.org

The other day I told a friend about the wonderful video posted earlier. He asked me to tell him the name of this blog again, because it has such a long name. Then he suggested I make it something simple, like blog.nonick.org.

Back in 1992 I moved to Illinois. You can buy vanity license plates for $14, so long as they have a number at the end. The maximum number of letters in such a license plate is seven. My last name has eight characters, so that didn't work. Instead, I chose to use NONICK.

Later, when Internet domain names became popular, I grabbed nonick.org. For a long time my web presence at http://www.nonick.org has been quite minimalist, if not faintly hostile.

A few years later, my wife and I got high-speed Internet service at home. The ISP provided free e-mail accounts, so we signed up. But then the inevitable corporate changes occurred. Over a period of about six months we were forced to change our e-mail addresses three times. Since we had to change our e-mail addresses anyway, LovelyWife and I changed started using nonick.org domain. We've been paying about $100/year for e-mail and minimal web hosting from pair.com, but it's been well worth the cost. It was sure nice to have a constant e-mail address during the move from Illinois out here to Eastern Washington.

That's the story of nonick.org. Thanks again to my friend for suggesting I rename this blog to blog.nonick.org; hopefully it will be easier to remember and tell people about!

Fasces

Jonah Goldberg's new book Liberal Fascism is missing a crucial definition. His thesis (as discussed earlier) is that fascism is fundamentally a statist, non-individualist political philosophy. But as he discusses fascism, he doesn't describe what fasces are.

According to Wikipedia:

The traditional Roman fasces consisted of a bundle of birch rods, tied together with a red ribbon into a cylinder, and including an axe amongst the rods.

Symbolically, the bundle of rods represents unity. More to the point, a single birch rod is easy to break, but are very strong when bound together.

The axe represents government power, particularly the power to punish through the taking of life.

Taken to an extreme, the fasces represent a symbolic argument against Individualism. The fasces literally come apart if the cords binding the rods are loosened.

53 Seconds

11 years old. Way cool!

(Hat Tip: Tamara K.)

I Have A Dream

Today, 21 January 2008, we celebrate what would have been Martin Luther King, Jr.'s 79th birthday. Let's focus a little on his most famous speech, delivered on 28 August 1963. Dr. King argued that it was time for the United States to live up to its best nature, its founding ideals.

He called on our better natures, and indeed on the very foundations of legitimacy for the American Experiment. "[U]naliable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Twice he used the phrase "all of God's children," a gender-neutral paraphrase of the Declaration's statement that "all men are created equal" and that their rights are "endowed by their Creator."

He said:

In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men - yes, black men as well as white men - would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check that has come back marked "insufficient funds."

This was not a man who believed in the innate superiority of any race or color. Instead, he understood that it's the content of someone's character and heart--their beliefs, creeds, and ways of acting. He asked not to be judged on the basis of birth, but on his and his family's behavior:

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

Character. That's another way of describing the base operating system that each person runs. Their ideas of truth, fairness, right and wrong.

It's the software, not the hardware.

Cornered Cat

It's a cold, blustery, gray, snowy day outside. A perfect day for staying inside with a cat:

She's cuddly, she's cozy, she likes to curl up next to a crackling fire on a cold winter's day. She's great company.

That being said, don't get between a cornered cat and an open door:

Some folks say the most dangerous place in the world is between a Mama Bear and her cubs. It may be so. I've never met a Mama Bear, myself.

The most dangerous place I ever stood was between a cornered cat and an open door.

When a cat feels threatened, she gets away from the danger as quickly as she can. She doesn't care what damage she inflicts on her way to safety, but she's not interested in fighting for fighting's sake. She does only as much as she needs to do in order to escape. She doesn't deal in revenge. If she feels threatened, she simply leaves. Efficiently.

I'm a dog person myself (see my profile to the left). But we can still learn a lot from cats. In particular, we can learn that it's OK for women to arm themselves and fight efficiently when necessary. That's why I'm adding The Cornered Cat to my blogroll today:

This site is about women and guns, not about cats. But in a way, it's about the cornered cat in all of us. It's about the determination to get away from an attacker if you need to. It's about making the decision to say, "Not me. Not mine. Not today." And it's about the tools to make that decision stick.

Go. Read. Learn.

West Richland Sunset

Camera: CANON POWERSHOT A410
Taken on 2006:07:02 20:46:05
Exposure: 0.017s (1/60)
Focal Length: 17.30mm
F/Stop: f/5.100

46º 15' 32.50" N 119º 21' 12.19" W

Whence Hoplophobia?

Why do people fear guns? Particularly, why do people seem to fear guns held in private hands?

Jeff Cooper coined the term hoplophobia to describe "people who are apparently haunted by a fixed and morbid aversion to our guns." He suggests those people suffer an organic psychiatric problem rather than an aversion based on ideology or experience. But if that were true, why are so many apparent hoplophobes completely unconcerned about guns in the hands of government? Why do handguns tend to draw the most concern, rather than hunting rifles or shotguns?

Let me suggest an alternative explanation: guns, particularly handguns, are very empowering to the individual. A small hunk of Smith & Wesson-forged steel gives a 110 pound woman a fighting chance against an enraged 250 pound muscular man--or even a representative of the State. Guns in private hands empower the individual at the expense of the collective will.

In an earlier post I referred to Jonah Goldberg's working definition of fascism as expressed in American Progressivism. Mr. Goldberg says that fascists/Progressives believe "[a]ny rival identity [beyond the State collective] is part of the 'problem' and therefore defined as the enemy." A 110 pound woman rejects the unitary will of the collective by arming herself. This empowered individual becomes a "rival entity" and thus an enemy of the collective, even if she never uses the weapon.

Jonah also writes that this worldview "assumes the organic unity of the body politic and longs for a national leader attuned to the will of the people." Recall the history of the Gun Control Act of 1968: Robert F. Kennedy, the charismatic brother of slain President John F. Kennedy, was himself assassinated on June 5th of that year by a man using a handgun. Immediately the political class and country reacted:

With the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy on June 5, 1968, the groundswell of support for tough gun control laws reached unprecedented levels. [...] President Johnson, who had proposed gun control measures every year since becoming president, appeared on national television imploring Congress to pass a new and tougher gun control law that banned mail-order and out-of-state sales of long guns and ammunition. Reading a letter he sent to Congress, Johnson pleaded to Congress "in the name of sanity... in the name of safety and in the name of an aroused nation to give America the gun-control law it needs." --Answers.com: Gun Control Act of 1968

Many American Progressives believed that Robert F. Kennedy was the perfect "national leader attuned to the will of the people." Sirhan Sirhan, an individual armed with a handgun, deprived the "people" of their "leader". In response, the Progressives targeted the instrument that the individual used--because it was unthinkable that a mere individual could alone subvert the collective will.

Bottom line: hoplophobia is indeed irrational. Guns empower individuals, and empowered individuals are an unacceptable threat to the primacy of the collective will. Belief in the collective is taken on faith, and nothing is so threatening to a person than that which threatens his faith.

On the other hand, guns held by representatives of the State do not threaten faith in the collective--because the representative is part of the collective rather than a mere individual. Thus, these guns aren't really empowering an individual--instead, they help empower the collective.

Da Mare

For 13 years I lived in Chicago. Well, sort of. A down-state Illinois person will tell you that anyone living north of I-80 lives in Chicago--including Bolingbrook and Lemont.

Chicago Mayor Richard Daley exerts a profound influence on Illinois politics. He is virulently anti-gun (in private hands), which is why Illinois and Wisconsin are the only two states that have no provision in law for private carrying of concealed handguns.

Someone as politically successful as Daley doesn't promote a public policy unless it resonates with his constituents. I've often wondered why his anti-gun stance gets him so many votes. Here are two complementary possibilities:

1. White people remember the 1960s militant Black movements with fear and loathing. The Black Panther party of Huey Newton and Bobby Seale scared a lot of white people at the time, with their ostentations display of weaponry in public. Violence between the Chicago Police Department and the Black Panthers came to a head in 1969 when Panthers Mark Clark and Fred Hampton were both killed in a police raid (In which five of the officers present were African American) by Sergeant James Davis, an African American officer. Daley's strong anti-gun stance is reassuring to whites who lived through that time.
2. Many black people in Chicago live in urban ghettos, where drug gangs battle over sales turf and co-opt children into a life of crime and addiction. These battles routinely leave young black men dead on the street. Daley's strong anti-gun stance is perceived by his black constituents as a way to keep those armed gangs under control.

In both cases, Daley's perceived message is simply "help me (the State) preserve my (its) monopoly on the implements of force and violence, and you will be safer." The underlying assumptions may vary, but the overt theme is the same.

Fascism: A Working Definition

Johah Goldberg's supplies this working definition in his new book Liberal Fascism:

Fascism is a religion of the state. It assumes the organic unity of the body politic and longs for a national leader attuned to the will of the people. It is totalitarian in that it views everything as political and holds that any action by the state is justified to achieve the common good. It takes responsibility for all aspects of life, including our health and well-being, and seeks to impose uniformity of thought and action, whether by force or through regulation and social pressure. Everything, including the economy and religion, must be aligned with its objectives. Any rival identity is part of the "problem" and therefore defined as the enemy.
---Liberal Fascism, p. 23.

This is incompatible with Biblical Christianity. Consider the account of Matthew 22:15-22. The Pharisees were quite annoyed with Jesus, and wanted a "wedge issue" to attack Him with. So they devised a clever trap, based on the politics of the day.

Remember, the Jewish people were living under the imperium of Rome. This meant everyone had to pay taxes to an ungodly emperor at the other end of the Mediterranean Sea. It was pretty easy to rile up the nationalistic Hebrews by appealing to their thirst for liberation, and any public figure supporting the Roman occupation would endure the wrath of the people. But on the other hand, reporting someone to the Romans for openly advocating rebellion put them on a short path to a horrible, quick death.

The Pharisees and Herodians were both under the misunderstanding of Jesus's mission. They all thought His purpose was to bring divine retribution and restore justice on Earth. But Jesus was trying to do something completely different -- he was trying to reconcile people with God. That didn't have anything at all to do with politics.

(v. 18) But Jesus, knowing their evil intent, said, "You hypocrites, why are you trying to trap me? (v. 19) Show me the coin used for paying the tax." They brought him a denarius, (v. 20) and he asked them, "Whose portrait is this? And whose inscription?" (v. 21) "Caesar's," they replied.
Then he said to them, "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's." (v. 22) When they heard this, they were amazed. So they left him and went away.

Government is not the true path to happiness and virtue. Instead, it is merely a means to and end. Legitimate government recognizes natural rights like "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness", and is instituted merely "to secure these rights."

Yellow Tree and Car

Taken 26 October 2007 at 7:28 PM Pacific Time, with a Canon PowerShot A410. Shutter speed 1/8 second, aperture F/3.5. Cropped and filtered with IrfanView. The light pole is at about 46.349477 degrees north latitude, 119.273664 degrees west longitude.

Sometimes having any camera on hand is better than not having an excellent camera with you.

A Visceral Distate for Darwinism

Now comes Lee Harris, asking "[w]hy we are still arguing about Darwin". He disagrees with leading Darwinians like Richard Dawkins that opponents of Darwinism are "ignorant boobs who take the Bible literally." Instead, he writes:

The stumbling block to an acceptance of Darwin, I would like to submit, has little to do with Christian fundamentalism, but a whole lot to do with our intense visceral revulsion at monkeys and apes. This revulsion, while certainly not universal, is widely shared, and it is a psychological phenomenon that is completely independent of our ideas about the literal truth of the Bible.

He goes on to write:

For the basis of this revulsion is none other than "the civilizing process" that has been instilled into us from infancy. The civilizing process has taught us never to throw our feces at other people, not even in jest. It has taught us not to snatch food from other people, not even when they are much weaker than we. It has taught us not to play with our genitals in front of other people, not even when we are very bored. It has taught us not to mount the posterior of other people, not even when they have cute butts.

And in summary:

Our lofty humanitarian ethical standards have been derived not by observing our primate kin, but by imagining that we were made in the image of God. It was only by assuming that we were expected to come up to heavenly standards that we did not lower our standards to those of our biological next of kin. The meme that asserts that we are the children of God, and not merely a bunch of wild monkeys may be an illusion; but it is the illusion upon which all humane civilizations have been constructed. Those who wish to eliminate this illusionary meme from our general meme pool may be acting in the name of science; but it is by no means obvious that they are acting in the name of civilization and humanity.

Why am I uncomfortable with Darwinism, particularly as applied to the question of origins? Simply put, it undermines concepts of good and evil, right and wrong. Instead, a Darwinian looks at reproductive success as the only measure of good or bad. By strict Darwinian standards, a psychopathic seducer or rapist scores highly in terms of so-called "fitness," regardless of the suffering he causes.

A true Darwinist would not accept as "self-evident truth" the proposition that "all men are created equal," nor that they are "endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights" like "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

What do you think? Am I making a legitimate reductio ad absurdum argument or falling prey to an appeal to ridicule fallacy?

2007 Darwin Awards

Yay! The 2007 Darwin Awards have been released.

For those keeping score at home, the Darwin awards are "[n]amed in honor of Charles Darwin, the father of evolution, [to] commemorate those who improve our gene pool by removing themselves from it." Note that improving the gene pool doesn't necessarily involve dying; simply rendering yourself sterile is enough to qualify.

My favorite this year? "The Enema Within":

The [awardee] couldn't imbibe alcohol by mouth due to a painful throat ailment, so he elected to receive his favourite beverage via enema. And tonight, Michael was in for one hell of a party. Two 1.5 litre bottles of sherry, more than 100 fluid ounces, right up the old address!
....
In order to qualify for a Darwin Award, a person must remove himself from the gene pool via an "astounding application of misjudgement." Three litres of sherry up the butt can only be described as astounding.

Be careful out there!

Rawhide Happiness

It's so good to be home!

Airport Security Follies

It will come as no surprise to my friends and family that I don't much care for the New York Times. But just as a stopped clock is right twice a day, sometimes the ivory tower gets it right.

As I sit in the food court of the Seattle/Tacoma International Airport waiting for my flight home, I see that Bruce Schneier referenced an excellent NYT Opinion/Blog piece. Key paragraphs:

To understand what makes [airline security] measures so absurd, we first need to revisit the morning of September 11th, and grasp exactly what it was the 19 hijackers so easily took advantage of. Conventional wisdom says the terrorists exploited a weakness in airport security by smuggling aboard box-cutters. What they actually exploited was a weakness in our mindset — a set of presumptions based on the decades-long track record of hijackings.

In years past, a takeover meant hostage negotiations and standoffs; crews were trained in the concept of “passive resistance.” All of that changed forever the instant American Airlines Flight 11 collided with the north tower. What weapons the 19 men possessed mattered little; the success of their plan relied fundamentally on the element of surprise. And in this respect, their scheme was all but guaranteed not to fail.

For several reasons — particularly the awareness of passengers and crew — just the opposite is true today. Any hijacker would face a planeload of angry and frightened people ready to fight back. Say what you want of terrorists, they cannot afford to waste time and resources on schemes with a high probability of failure. And thus the September 11th template is all but useless to potential hijackers.

(Emphasis mine.)

Frequent travelers know this is true. I got back on an airliner in late September/early October 2001, flying out of Chicago O'Hare airport to Denver. I shared a car to the airport with a perfect stranger. But as we discussed the events of the fateful day a few weeks earlier, she showed me her long fingernails. "These are sharp and I know how to use them," she said.

Bill Whittle captured that spirit wonderfully in his TRIBES essay. He compares the difference in software executed by the people on United 93 and in Manhattan on 9/11 versus the people in New Orleans after Katrina. I love this paragraph:

Much has been said regarding how much more massive an event Katrina is relative to lower Manhattan. But the fact remains that firemen went up the stairs when people were coming down, and one ordinary group of people on an ordinary flight on an ordinary day defeated the very best that the global terror network could put together. Our ladies junior varsity squad whipped the living shit out of their Super Bowl A-team over Pennsylvania that day, and they did it because for one brief shining moment enough passengers on that airplane went Grey.

(Emhpasis mine.)

Maybe the change in administration this year will give someone an opportunity to slip in some long-overdue sanity to the USA airline security regime. Here's to hoping.

Just Ew

This makes me sick.

Despite Zuma's removal as deputy president of South Africa after fraud charges two years ago, and subsequent corruption and rape charges, the [African National Congress] announced this week that the party will support his candidacy for the national presidency.

During his rape trial, Zuma took a "short skirt" excuse, claiming it was his duty as a Zulu warrior to have sex with a woman if she wore a short kanga (an African wrap), and that he could not leave her "unfulfilled."

Zuma told the court that he knew the woman was "clearly aroused" by the fact that her kanga was "quite short" — meaning knee-length.

"In the Zulu culture, you cannot just leave a woman if she is ready," he explained.

According to his defense team, Zulu men have sexual primacy over women. Therefore, he could not be guilty.

"To deny her sex, that would have been tantamount to rape," Zuma claimed.

Good grief. This is a prime example of the horrible software that some people are running.

Yes, the white-run regime of Apartheid was unfair to blacks. Brutal, prejudiced, and whatnot. It was premised on the idea of separation--whites were supposed to do their thing, and blacks were supposed to do theirs.

Nelson Mandela's appeal, like Martin Luther King Jr. in the United States, was to break through first appearances and say to the white people that the black peoples' software was compatible, and please judge them by their software rather than their black-skinned hardware. By doing so, both Mandela and King called into question the racist regimes, eventually forcing the world to see racism as fundamentally immoral.

But now the so-called "liberators" of the black South African people are applying even worse oppression to their own mothers, sisters and daughters. They are squandering the Mandela's legacy. Frankly, I am disgusted by the ANC for letting someone like this represent them. They have lost all moral superiority in my mind, even over the historically white oppressors they supplanted.

Given the software that too many Africans are apparently running, it's hard to argue against Kim du Toit's modest proposal to Let Africa Sink.

Quotes of the Day

Kim du Toit reminds us of the H. L. Mencken truism:

The urge to save humanity is always a false front for the urge to rule it.

And in the comments, a little longer quote from C. S. Lewis:

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of
their own conscience.”

I'm from the government and I'm here to help you.

No Wonder They Want Nukes

As they say:

Heh.

Not Exactly What the Eco-Geeks Wanted

It's hard to be watermelon (red on the inside, green on the outside). Your message starts getting traction. People are feeling guilty about how much trash they're generating. Maybe you are slowing down that horrible capitalist economy after all.

But then, horror of horrors, Wal-Mart and Hewlett-Packard end-run you:

The biggest criticism (and perhaps the most unfair one) of the green campaign of Wal-Mart and others is that they are also savvy business moves: Hewlett-Packard, for example, redesigned its print cartridge packaging earlier this year in a move that not only "greened" its production, but also pared down shipping costs and freed up retailers' shelf space.

Dang. Don't you hate it when the evil capitalist overlords twist your message to sell more stuff?

Personal Chew-Toy

Remember LawDog? The guy on my blogroll who refers to miscreants as 'critters'? Turns out there's a way to get your 'critter' status upgraded:

Visualize your own personal critter with both hands around your throat, squeezing. If you are a woman, and a man is squeezing your throat -- it is deadly force. Even if he "didn't mean to do it", it is far too easy to damage the airway, damage the blood vessels in the neck, crush the larynx or fracture the delicate bones in your neck. Getting you by the throat just elevated this jackass from 'Critter' to 'Personal Chew-Toy'.

Hie thee over there to learn how to deal with this situation.

The Suicide of Reason

Via LGF, now comes Ayaan Hirsi Ali's review of the new Lee Harris book, The Suicide of Reason: Radical Islam’s Threat to the Enlightenment.

I haven't read the book yet myself, but a couple of paragraphs from the review contrast the Western and Islamic programming of young men:

[Harris] argues that fanaticism is the basic principle in Islam. “The Muslims are, from an early age, indoctrinated into a shaming code that demands a fanatical rejection of anything that threatens to subvert the supremacy of Islam,” he writes. During the years that this shaming code is instilled into children, the collective is emphasized above the individual and his freedoms. A good Muslim must forsake all: his property, family, children, even life for the sake of Islam. Boys in particular are taught to be dominating and merciless, which has the effect of creating a society of holy warriors.

By contrast, the West has cultivated an ethos of individualism, reason and tolerance, and an elaborate system in which every actor, from the individual to the nation-state, seeks to resolve conflict through words. The entire system is built on the idea of self-interest. This ethos rejects fanaticism. The alpha male is pacified and groomed to study hard, find a good job and plan prudently for retirement: “While we in America are drugging our alpha boys with Ritalin,” Harris writes, “the Muslims are doing everything in their power to encourage their alpha boys to be tough, aggressive and ruthless.”

(As they say -- read the whole thing.)

Ayaan Hirsi Ali goes on to argue that people born into a culture of fanaticism can (and do) embrace the individualist ethos, so ultimately the attraction of individualism will seduce the fanatics. But that's not the only reason to bet on Western civilization over Islamic fanaticisim.

The West has faced fanatics before. The Shinto-inspired Kamikaze clearly "forsake[d] all: his property, family, children, even life for the sake of [the Emperor]." These suicide bombers were fighting a losing cause, on the defense. The Japanese homeland was being starved, as the United States Navy submarines did to Japan what the German U-boats tried to do to Great Britain. Curtis LeMay was wiping out whole Japanese cities with incendiary bombing; he had to be restrained to leave targets like Hiroshima and Nagasaki available for even more deadly attacks from the sky.

Ultimately, when a society based on collectivism confronts a society based on individualism, the society that resolves internal conflict through words will organize itself to kill the enemy more efficiently and effectively. The Japanese kept sending their front line fighter/bomber pilots back to face the enemy, because that was the "honorable" thing to do. But the United States rotated effective and successful (read: surviving) pilots back home to train whole classes of pilots, because that was the effective thing to do. By the time of the Battle of the Philippine Sea, the US Navy had an excellent cadre of experienced pilots, but the Japanese Navy's pilots were actually less experienced and capable than early in the war.

Put simply, the best Japanese pilots usually died in the war because they kept fighting. The best American pilots usually survived the war because they were rotated into teaching and leadership assignments. As George S. Patton said, "[t]he object of war is not to die for your country, but to make the other bastard to die for his."

Breaking the delusion of fanaticism has often required a culture to suffer a truly humiliating, crushing defeat. That's what it took to discredit militant Shintoism/Bushido. The typical German had to be convinced through bitter experience that National Socialism did not deliver on its promises. Subjects of Communism, if they survived the experience, learned a similar lesson. Eventually, fanatic Islamists will learn that Allah's favor does not protect them from the same downfall as has befallen all fanatics when they rouse Western culture to war.

13th Floor

This week I'm attending FloCon 2008, being held at the Westin Savannah Harbor Golf Resort & Spa. To my great surprise, my guest room is on the 13th floor!

It's amusing how many hotels in the United States simply don't have a 13th floor. Usually the elevator buttons go from 12 to 14 without skipping a space.

Congratulations, Westin, for not perpetuating that silly superstition!

Mind Parasites

On his blog One Cosmos, but particularly in his post Intellectual Doctators, and The Life Divine in a Monkey Body, Gagdad Bob defines "Mind Parasites":

First we need to define "mind parasite." It is a term I use in my book to describe internalized, maladaptive patterns that become relatively hardwired into the brain during infancy and childhood.

....[W]e come into the world completely dependent upon people who may or may not have the capacity to understand us and meet our needs. Because the relationship with parents must be preserved at all costs, traumatic, abusive, and frustrating aspects of the relationship are split off and sequestered in the unconscious (even just a "bad fit" between infant and caretakers becomes a mind parasite--the baby can't conceptualize what is missing, but instead experiences it as a bad present-absence). There, these internalized patterns are held "in escrow" until they are acted out later in life in relationships and cultural institutions. I call them parasites because, just like any other parasite, they take over the machinery of the host--your mind--and begin reproducing themselves in the form of toxic relationships, self-defeating behavior, compulsions, unpredictable moods, etc.

In the computer security world we call the software equivalents "worms", viruses", or "malware". Maybe I'll start calling them "computer parasites" now!

Point of Privilege

Via Insty, now comes John Scalzi discussing a misguided list of social privilege "indicators". Reading through the list, I'm struck by how many of them are human software-driven, rather than resource- or political connection-driven.

Most of them weren't choices made by the individual, but remember that this list is intended for college students. The choices in question were mostly made by the students' parents. But again, these choices don't track with what the parents may have inherited in terms of dollars or land. Some examples:

• If your father went to college before you started

• If your father finished college before you started

• If your mother went to college before you started

• If your mother finished college before you started

• If you had more than 50 books at home when you were growing up

• If you had more than 500 books at home when you were growing up

• If were read children's books by a parent when you were growing up

Some of them are actually counterindicative of future success. One of these class "indicators?" You're higher class [i]f you had a credit card with your name on it before college. Rich people don't borrow money; they buy things with cash, and never spend more than they have.

Somehow I don't think the professor was trying to teach that "ideas matter"; instead, he was trying to make students either feel guilty about their upbringing or jealous of their classmates. A far better lesson to teach? Behaving in certain well-known ways is much more likely to give you and your children a better life.

Dr. Sanity

Pat Santy, a.k.a. Dr. Sanity, is a medical doctor: a psychiatrist working in aerospace medicine. She has been trained to deal with human software, particularly when it causes the human problems.

She's my go-to web resource on psychological defense mechanisms. But she extends the theory of psychological defenses from the individual to society as a whole. Her explanation of Bush Derangement Syndrome resonates strongly with me, a political conservative.

But let's focus on another example. An August 2005 posting describes the difference between shame cultures and guilt cultures. Here's a little taste of her guilt culture description:

In a guilt culture, when an individual believes he is NOT GUILTY, he will defend his innocence aggressively despite the fact that others believe he is guilty. In this case, the individual self is strong and able to maintain an independent judgement even if every other person is convinced of his guilt. The self is able to stand alone and fight for truth, secure in the knowledge that the individual is innocent.

Skipping forward a bit:

In contrast, a typical shame culture (e.g., Japan as discussed by Benedict; or the present focus of this discussion: Arab/Islamic culture) what other people believe has a far more powerful impact on behavior than even what the individual believes. As noted by Gutman in his writings, the desire to preserve honor and avoid shame to the exclusion of all else is one of the primary foundations of the culture. This desire has the side-effect of giving the individual carte blanche to engage in wrong-doing as long as no-one knows about it, or knows he is involved.

This difference in culture is based on ideas and social norms.

Throughout her writing, she focuses a lot on maladaptive human ideas and culture. This focus on human software is why I've added Dr. Sanity to the blogroll.

The Frivolity of Evil

Theodore Dalrymple wrote an article a few years ago that I immediately put in my "Readings" folder. He changed careers, leaving medical practice in Britain.

It would be just as absurd for me to say, on my imminent retirement after 14 years of my hospital and prison work, that I have paid my debt to society. I had the choice to do something more pleasing if I had wished, and I was paid, if not munificently, at least adequately. I chose the disagreeable neighborhood in which I practiced because, medically speaking, the poor are more interesting, at least to me, than the rich: their pathology is more florid, their need for attention greater. Their dilemmas, if cruder, seem to me more compelling, nearer to the fundamentals of human existence. No doubt I also felt my services would be more valuable there: in other words, that I had some kind of duty to perform. Perhaps for that reason, like the prisoner on his release, I feel I have paid my debt to society. Certainly, the work has taken a toll on me, and it is time to do something else. Someone else can do battle with the metastasizing social pathology of Great Britain, while I lead a life aesthetically more pleasing to me.

He goes on to describe some truly pathological behaviors. Just a sample:

My patient already had had three children by three different men, by no means unusual among my patients, or indeed in the country as a whole. The father of her first child had been violent, and she had left him; the second died in an accident while driving a stolen car; the third, with whom she had been living, had demanded that she should leave his apartment because, a week after their child was born, he decided that he no longer wished to live with her. (The discovery of incompatibility a week after the birth of a child is now so common as to be statistically normal.) She had nowhere to go, no one to fall back on, and the hospital was a temporary sanctuary from her woes. She hoped that we would fix her up with some accommodation.

Even more amazingly, the people involved know they're making horrible choices.

My patient was not just a victim of her mother, however: she had knowingly borne children of men of whom no good could be expected. She knew perfectly well the consequences and the meaning of what she was doing, as her reaction to something that I said to her—and say to hundreds of women patients in a similar situation—proved: next time you are thinking of going out with a man, bring him to me for my inspection, and I'll tell you if you can go out with him.

This never fails to make the most wretched, the most "depressed" of women smile broadly or laugh heartily. They know exactly what I mean, and I need not spell it out further. They know that I mean that most of the men they have chosen have their evil written all over them, sometimes quite literally in the form of tattoos, saying "FUCK OFF" or "MAD DOG." And they understand that if I can spot the evil instantly, because they know what I would look for, so can they—and therefore they are in large part responsible for their own downfall at the hands of evil men.

These pathologies aren't a matter of race or economic opportunity. They're the direct result of ideas and choices. Dalrymple goes on:

But if the welfare state is a necessary condition for the spread of evil, it is not sufficient. After all, the British welfare state is neither the most extensive nor the most generous in the world, and yet our rates of social pathology—public drunkenness, drug-taking, teenage pregnancy, venereal disease, hooliganism, criminality—are the highest in the world. Something more was necessary to produce this result.

Here we enter the realm of culture and ideas. For it is necessary not only to believe that it is economically feasible to behave in the irresponsible and egotistical fashion that I have described, but also to believe that it is morally permissible to do so. And this idea has been peddled by the intellectual elite in Britain for many years, more assiduously than anywhere else, to the extent that it is now taken for granted. There has been a long march not only through the institutions but through the minds of the young. When young people want to praise themselves, they describe themselves as "nonjudgmental." For them, the highest form of morality is amorality.

From a Darwinist perspective, the very idea of being "nonjudgemental" is profoundly maladaptive. Over time, people evolved the ability to observe, think, draw conclusions, and make decisions precisely because it gave them an evolutionary advantage. It makes no sense at all to throw those advantages and capabilities away. People who make better choices tend to live longer and reproduce more successfully.

From a creationist perspective, $DEITY gave people these amazing abilities to see, hear, discuss, and even free will to act. $DEITY also gave created beings instructions based on a deep understanding of how these created beings were made and what would make them happiest. Willful disregard of those instructions will inevitably lead to sadness and ruin.

Ideas matter. Behavior matters. Life is not consequence-free. The choices you make are far more important than the color of your skin, your sex or your hair type.

Brothers

I have two twin brothers. (They are twins; I'm about 2.5 years older than the pair.)

All three of us went to church-affiliated boarding high school. When they showed up, they were already 180 pound six foot tall muscular guys. One of the high school seniors approached them and asked if they wanted to go beat up some freshmen. Their reply? "We are freshmen." Heh.

Being in the greater Detroit metro area, there were the inevitable racial tensions among the students. After a verbal altercation, my brother explained that he wasn't "prejudiced against blacks; [he was] prejudiced against jerks."

Very wise, my younger brother. He knew, even as a high school kid, that it's not the hardware--it's the software.

TSA Training Manual Inside

LovelyWife and I flew to Michigan on Christmas day and came back on New Years Day. While we were waiting for our flight at Detroit Metro Airport, I saw a handwritten indicator that a TSA Training Manual was stored in an unlikely location.

In all fairness, the TSA does have a very difficult job. 9/11 showed us that a very real danger to commercial air travel is in the heads of the passengers. The software that Atta and his colleagues ran that day led to thousands of deaths.

Unfortunately, it's not so easy to figure out what software people are running. Intent, willingness to use force, and ultimate goals are not plainly visible. Instead, airport screeners have to rely on other indicators. Someone trying to conceal a weapon in the face of obvious prohibitions is probably a threat. Unfortunately, obvious cues like being a young adult male of southwest Asian conformation is not a solid indicator; see also Richard Colvin Reid.

El-Al's security measures are designed to address this problem. The screeners take time to talk with each passenger. They are trained in techniques like reading involuntary facial movements that can reveal whether the passenger is getting ready to cause trouble.

Unfortunately, El-Al's security is very expensive. But then again, so is what Bruce Schneier calls "security theatre". The USA airline security system costs a lot of money, burns up countless hours of passenger time, and feels faintly ridiculous to the frequent traveler. Eventually, you get subtle reactions like this from the traveling public.

Dreams: Preprogramming Sessions

Via Slashdot, a Psychology Today article describes a new theory of dreams. We dream to think through hazardous or painful situations, so when the situation actually occurs we're ready to act.

Kids dream about monsters because, in the wild, real monsters like lions and tigers and bears (oh my!) really do exist. The dream world is a safe place to practice reacting to monsters.

Wouldn't it be great if we could teach computer software this trick? Just think -- Quicken could imagine various financial scenarios and warn me in advance not to buy that new car. Or even better, Snort could contemplate recent denial-of-service attacks and think up new ways to respond.

LawDog

Ya gotta love the musings and stories of this Texas cop. He grew up overseas and got to see many examples of maladaptive "software" running in people. His Nigeria series is a hilarious masterpiece!

• It ain't the lizard in the fight, it's the fight in the lizard.
• Hey! Get out of there!
• Hey! Part 2...
• Get out of there, part III
• Okay, where were we?
• Last Chapter, Different Viewpoint
• Ratel, the End.

In some of his more contemporary writings, he refers to miscreants as "critters." A critter is someone running very maladaptive software, which has manifested itself in antisocial (criminal) behavior. It has everything to do with beliefs and choices, and nothing to do with race or birthplace.

Thanks LawDog for your writing. You get pride of place on my blogroll.

Manifesto

Ideas matter.

For much of history, it was pretty easy to predict how someone would behave. People who looked alike also acted alike. If your family was Catholic/Buddhist/Animist, you were too. Poor, grubby peasants could be counted on to think simply. News was passed around as rumor in the public square, or via official government/church communications. "Faith of our fathers" wasn't just a cute phrase--it was an obligation.

But since the time of the Enlightenment and printing technology, ideas can move further and faster than people themselves. Since Gutenberg, writers can communicate to many more people than itinerant public speakers. Newspapers gave more people knowledge of the changing world around them. Postal services let people share thoughts across long distances. Sea traders moved thoughts and words, not just slaves, grain and textiles.

Human reproduction still requires proximity, so people tend to look pretty much like everyone else around them. But the variety of philosophies and world-views within a small group of people can vary much more dramatically. Social norms are now in competition with revolutionary philosophies. The writings of authors like Marx influence young people to break from local tradition and try to change the world. Monozygotic twins might look identical, but the twin who reads Lenin will make very different economic and political choices than than her Friedman-reading sister!

Physical traits like skin color no longer predict behavior. Family names don't predict political loyalty. Place and station of birth no longer predict economic potential. Language and accent no longer predict religion.

Ideas, on the other hand, do predict both behavior and success in life. Dave Ramsey is fond of saying that rich people behave like rich people, and poor people behave like poor people. A student of Aikido will deal with interpersonal conflict very differently than a student of Hassan ibn-al-Sabbah.

How can you wisely choose friends, lovers, spouses, colleagues, vendors, charity recipients or bodyguards? 1000 years ago you could look at someone and make a pretty good choice. But today you have to get beyond a person's visible "hardware" and make your choices based on their "software". Figuring out how to make these wise choices on an interpersonal level is hard enough, but it's even harder to reach a rough consensus on how to do so in public settings like airport security checkpoints and welfare offices.