A step forward for skepticism in Canada

Spotted this front-page article in the Toronto Star the other day. Apparently Canada's Supreme Court has placed a complete ban on evidence obtained through hypnosis being used in courts. (Full article here.)

In a 6-3 ruling that will have broad implications, the Supreme Court of Canada said the 30-year practice of using evidence obtained from witnesses who have been hypnotized is unreliable and should not be allowed in criminal trials.

The split decision appears to make Canada the first country with an English criminal-law tradition to place a total ban on post-hypnotic evidence.

Britain, Australia and New Zealand don't rule it out, although they impose procedural safeguards. The rules in the U.S. vary from state to state.

The decision overturns the second-degree murder conviction of Stephen Trochym, a former Canada Post supervisor from Toronto who was found guilty in 1995 of slashing his girlfriend's throat with a breadknife. The decision calls for a new trial.

Key evidence in the case came from a neighbour who said, after being hypnotized, that she remembered seeing Trochym emerge from the victim's apartment the day after the slaying in 1992.

The witness first told police she saw Trochym emerging from Donna Hunter's apartment on a Thursday, but changed her statement to Wednesday after undergoing hypnosis to refresh her memories. That timing corresponded to the police's theory of how the killer may have returned to Hunter's apartment to rearrange her body and make it look like a sexual assault.

Let's look at a few facts here:

1. Hypnosis is highly dependant on the attitude and expectations of the subject. People who believe hypnosis is impossible can never be hypnotized, for instance.

2. Hypnosis puts people into a highly suggestible state, and it's in fact something people do to themselves. They willingly turn off their free will temporarily.

3. There is no evidence that hypnosis helps at all in recovering memories. If you think of the mind like a computer, this should be obvious: Memory that's been deleted and overwritten cannot be re-obtained. It can, however, be rewritten from guesswork and suggestions of the hypnotist.

4. The witness originally claimed she'd seen the man on a Wednesday.

5. After police came up with the theory that he'd returned to the apartment on a Thursday, she went under hypnosis to "refresh" her memory. The goal was to see if she was in fact mistaken and it was a Thursday.

Put it together. No evidence hypnosis helps with memory, but it does make people suggestible. She was being asked questions by people who wanted her to think it was a Thursday, and thus under hypnosis said what they wanted her to say. You can see what the problem is with hypnosis, and thankfully, the Supreme Court did too.

The dissent to this ruling was described as follows:

But in a strong dissenting ruling, Justices Michel Bastarache, Rosalie Abella and Marshall Rothstein took the majority to task. "The sole evidence advanced before this court on the hypnosis issue was a handful of American cases in which the courts have opted for categorical exclusion. This is not a sufficient evidentiary foundation upon which this court should overturn a longstanding Canadian common law rule."

They said Trochym and his lawyers did not challenge hypnosis at the trial level, and there was not a strong enough factual basis to warrant the elimination of such a tool, especially since, as with other kinds of evidence, trial judges and juries can be alerted to its weaknesses.

"These sorts of potential frailties with memory, whether ordinary or hypnotically refreshed, are those that juries are quite capable of weighing."

The dissenting judges noted hypnosis is not exactly "novel science," having been used for 30 years to help memory retrieval. It is rarely admitted in court without a judge first assessing its relevance and reliability, and like other scientific evidence can always be assessed "through a case-by-case evaluation, in light of the changing nature of our scientific knowledge."

Allow me to perform a little magic trick here:

The dissenting judges noted pseudoscience is not exactly "novel science," having been used for 30 years to help obtain evidence. It is rarely admitted in court without a judge first assessing its relevance and reliability, and like other scientific evidence can always be assessed "through a case-by-case evaluation, in light of the changing nature of our scientific knowledge."

See the problem? Pseudoscience of many forms sneaks past judges all too often. They're legal experts, not experts on the philosophy of science (the fancy term for a skeptic). Many do obtain training in distinguishing good science from bad, but it's rarely sufficient. There are also no filters to make sure true-believer judges don't slip through. Juries are even worse off, as they'll likely have no training at all in this area.

The only solution is to simply ban a procedure from the courtrooms if it can't be shown to be scientifically effective. Otherwise, we risk letting false information sneak in under the guise of evidence, and letting the judge and jury buy it. Sometimes the government has to do the thinking for its constituents.

Proceed with your information binge...

Too much information!

Plugging In

I know a lot of the regulars around here are big video game fans, so you'll likely want to go check out Akusai's new blog: Akusai's Video Game Musings. Go check it out!

Proceed with your information binge...

Too much information!

Oops, you're dead!

I'm reading through Terry Pratchett's The Last Continent right now, and I just had to repost a quote from it for your amusement. The rest of the book is also quite good, and it even includes an atheistic god of evolution (his big project: The cockroach). Note that this is in one of his "footnotes," which is why it references the real world, rather than Discworld.

In fact it's the view of more thoughtful historians, particularly those who have spent time in the same bar as the theoretical physicists, that the entirety of human history can be considered as a sort of blooper reel. All those wars, all those famines caused by malign stupidity, all that determined, mindless repetition of the same old errors, are in the great cosmic scheme of things only equivalent to Mr. Spock's ears falling off.

It would be easy to laugh at the idiocy of humanity if we were outside it, but it's harder from the inside. Still, it's worth trying. So, go to the news, find out whatever idiotic thing Bush just did, and regardless of how much it's going to screw things up for people, laugh at the blooper. It's a lot better than going insane.

Proceed with your information binge...

Too much information!

Strange Searches

I figured I'd take a page from a few other bloggers and post some of the strange search strings that have led people to my blog. Sitemeter is only showing the last couple of days, but there are some interesting ones nonetheless.

atheist pedophiles - This is what we call "Example mining." Try a search for "Priest pedophiles" next time and see how much easier it is.

quantum theory for dummies - I seem to get about two of these every day. I really should get around to continuing the series.

electrons - This was a blogs-only search, but I still must have been pretty far down the list. Someone really wanted to know about electrons...

how long till the ice has melted in antarctica - Already started. How long for all of it? Maybe a hundred years at the outside, if nothing's done to stop global warming.

meat puppets - Probably the band; I couldn't have popularized the term that quickly.

First, assume the cow is spherical - Second, assume it has constant density. Third, assume it's in a vacuum. Fourth, do not attempt Cow-Tipping.

Proceed with your information binge...

Too much information!

Skeptic's Circle #54

The latest Skeptic's Circle is now up over at Slicing with Occam's Razor, so go and check it out.

Open thread here. Feel free to ask any question, but beware: You may get any answer.

Proceed with your information binge...

Too much information!

Meat Puppets

Before I started this blog (in fact in the events that directly caused it), my major internet hangout was Wikipedia. My main project for the short time I was there was turning the Telepathy article from a piece of wooish propaganda and something respectably neutral. I've since become a bit disillusioned with Wikipedia's insistence on being neutral over everything, even reality, but that's another story.

Anyways, on Wikipedia as with everything that reaches a certain level of popularity, there were trolls, vandals, and ideologues. Most of them got banned sooner or later, and then most of them created a new account to try to circumvent the ban. Some of them would create multiple accounts in order to give a false appearance that their opinion was more popular. Either of these types of new accounts became known as a Sock Puppet (a term also used in various other places on the net).

But it turned out that not all of the accounts that appeared to be sock puppets actually were, even when they acted just like sock puppets. These accounts turned out to be piloted by people who were recruited by the suspected sock puppeteer for the sole purpose of supporting their view. These accounts became known as "Meat Puppets," as they were essentially people turning themselves into puppets for someone else to act through. Wikipedia eventually came up with a policy regarding meat puppets, which essentially amounts to treating them exactly as sock puppets. They may be piloted by an actual person, but that person isn't bringing their own views to the table; just parroting another's. This way, meat puppets get no votes.

Unfortunately, modern democracy hasn't recognized this problem, and would likely be hesitant to do anything about it even if it did. You can see meat puppetry on the small scale where people recruit friends or family who wouldn't otherwise vote to vote their way. The vote they cast isn't an informed vote, but it's treated as such by the system. Not too long along, I was pressured by one of my friends to do just such a thing and vote for her preferred candidate in a university election. Deciding to avoid looking like a jerk, I evaded the issue, implying that I would do so. It's hard to resist the pressure, but I feel it's important.

Sometimes, though, it gets even worse, and there are full-scale campaigns for meat puppetry. Ever heard of Revenge of the Cradle? It's a political tactic that involves a minority group having significantly higher birthrates than the majority group in order to eventually become the majority. The term was first used by the French Canadians in Quebec as the name for their tactic to gain a majority. You can see the results today, with French-Canadian families commonly having 10-15 children.

The tactic goes back even further than this though. It has been used both by Christian and Islamic groups as a tactic to gain a majority of the population in many areas. They don't come out and say that's what they're doing, but it's the result of their religious commands to "Go forth and procreate" which are reinforced by the religious leaders. (Note that nowadays it's going on much more in the Muslim world. Their birth rates are significantly higher than those of other groups in many mixed areas.) Natural selection acting on societies has led to the societies that produce more children being more survivable and common, so even without intending it in the first place, their procreation has become a political tool.

I'll make no bones about it, this practice is despicable. Imagine a child in a French-Canadian Revenge-of-the-Cradle family. She's young and naive, and she asks her mother about the meaning of life and her purpose in it. What's the mother to say? The child's entire purpose in life, the reason that she was born, was so that when she reached the age of majority, she'd vote French. She's not allowed to think for herself; she's only meant to vote the way her parents intended her to. And they say atheists don't have respect for life.

Proceed with your information binge...

Too much information!

How to debate an IDiot

The following is based on no debate, past or present (though it would be fun to see it in the future), and is simply the product of my fevered imagination.

Reverend White (IDiot): ...As you can see, due to the immense fine-tuning of universal constants necessary to result in life, the universe as we see it could not have come about simply by chance. Therefore, we have no choice but to accept that it was indeed God who created it.

Nate Black (Atheist and professional Alter Ego): Okay, first of all, you've proven no such thing about the universe coming into existence "by chance." Even if all your math were correct (which it isn't), the best you've shown is that, if a single universe were created, it's unlikely that it would turn out exactly like this. You're completely ignoring not only good math but the fact that science makes no demand for only a single universe with one set of laws existing. Come on, your own theory goes and postulates a god that doesn't follow the same laws of this universe!

But besides that, there's one other big problem: You jump from "There must have been a designer" to "Our particular version of God must have been the designer." You're completely ignoring any alternative desiger.

White: Well come on, what other logical choice is there for a designer? It was Alvin Plantinga who proved that "God is the best explanation for the beginning of the universe." If you've got a better explanation, I'd like to hear it!

Black: First of all, he didn't prove it, he said it. And as for a better explanation, how about... oh, I don't know... me? Fine! I admit it! I created the universe. Are you happy?

White (stunned): You did not create the universe. You're just a human, not a god.

Black: Well, I'm more powerful than your god. Pray to him with all your heart, he does nothing. Pray to me half-heartedly and there's a good chance I'll do something.

White: He works in mysterious ways!

Black: And I work in obvious ways! For instance, if I think you're a bastard, I go over there and slug you. If your god thinks you're a bastard, he waits until you're dead, then he maybe does something to your soul - which may or may not exist. Maybe. Who do you think is more capable of performing the very obvious action of creating a universe?

White: You did not create the universe!

Black: Prove it!

White: What? Why should I have to prove it? You're the one who made the outrageous claim!

Black: So the person making the outrageous claim should be the one to prove it? Interesting. Well, didn't I already show that my outrageous claim was more reasonable than your outrageous claim? Why don't you start by proving that?

White: It's believed by billions of people worldwide, while your claim probably isn't even believed by you! Isn't that enough?

Black: So if I go around and convince billions of people of my claim, reality will suddenly change and it will become true? Try again.

White: Well, we have a book written by our God as evidence that he created the universe.

Black: I could write a book saying I created the universe. I could even make sure it doesn't contradict itself and makes a lot more sense.

White: Well our book was written two thousand years ago, it wasn't something written in the past few days!

Black: So if I wait two thousand years after writing my book, that will also cause reality to change and make it true?

White: No, because you didn't create the universe!

Black: A claim which you still have yet to prove.

White: You're the Anti-Christ, aren't you?

Black: What gave it away?

Proceed with your information binge...

Too much information!

A Satirist on Religion

My regulars will likely remember a few times in the past where I mentioned people's ability to recognize satire, highlighting the example of my University's paper's columnist, Brendan Pinto. In the past, I've defended him from people who have grossly misinterpreted his intentions. Today's a bit different, because this time he took on religion.

That's not to say he actually took on religion; rather, his satirical persona did. So in actuality he's either criticizing atheism or arguments against religion. I may have defended him in the past, but that's no reason not to disagree with him now. I have no sacred cows here - only spherical ones. So, let's dig into his article:

If there exists one uniting cultural force that crosses civilizations and connects the vast majority of humankind, it would have to be the hallowed institution of religion.

If there exists one uniting cultural force that crosses civilizations and connects the vast majority of humankind, it would have to be not being Canadian. Yeah, that's a pretty pointless claim, whatever you put in there. Also a bit of an appeal to popularity. Seems he can't help a few of his own beliefs slipping in. Notice how he also called it "hallowed," something most atheists would never do.

A tightly organized and fervently followed set of beliefs, held sacred by hundreds of millions of followers, providing instructions on how to live a moral life via divine revelation. Pffft. What a bunch of A-holes.

Billions of followers, actually. And the instructions are only partly on actual morals, a lot of it is on perceived morals. That is to say, it's instructions just made up to make the followers think they're better than others because they follow these crazy rules and others don't. (Read Leviticus sometime. It's full of ridiculous commandments like "Thou shalt not shave.") I'll agree with the "A-hole" part though. (And note: You're allowed to say "asshole" in a university paper; we're all adults here.)

Co-ordinating the veneration of a deity is and will continue to be the most destructive force on the planet. You need look no further than the billions of lost man-hours and wasted productivity spent in churches, temples, mosques, and whatever the hell scientologists meet in. This doesn’t even begin to include the even longer stretches of time devoted to daily prayers and reflection. With all this time spent not working, you’d think these people were hippies.

Agreed. What exactly was he trying to satirize here, I wonder? Religion is a frakking huge waste of time, and that's one of my big beefs with it.

The most notable violence incited by religion occurred during a horrific series of wars known as the Crusades. These battles were not meant to stop in-fighting among the Christians of Europe following a relative stabilization of its borders and stem the violence the aimless warriors were committing against the peasantry of the West. No, they were started because Jesus, between sermons on peace, love and helping the poor, wanted people to kill all non-Christians for the glory of his name. The Muslim army wasn’t pushing west to expand a growing Empire; it was just following the instructions in the Koran to, and my Arabic is a little weak, quote "slaughter those Jesus lovers." Look it up.

Ah, here we go, some actual arguments. First of all, I'd put the Inquisition and Witch Hunts above the Crusades, and it's a lot harder to defend those. As for the Crusades themselves, there may have been other reasons, but religion was the tool used to mobilize the masses. Crusaders were promised a free ticket into heaven if they died on a crusade. Muslims who die in religious war are promised a free ticket into heaven plus 72 virgins. You think incentives like that don't encourage warfare a bit too much?

As for stopping the in-fighting that was going on, trace it back. What was causing all of that in the first place? Minor religious differences, n'est pas? So, the crusades just refocused the warfare caused by religion. As for the Muslim side, why did they have to expand? It was because their religion commanded them to procreate more than a society with fixed borders could sustain. Religion at fault again.

Religion has been used to spur conflict almost as much as patriotism and ethnic allegiances.

More.

I say while we are abolishing religion, we get rid of the other two as well.

One world government, I like it. If we all live in the same nation, we can't very well declare war on ourselves, now can we? And if we don't have "ethnic allegiances," we also won't have racism. The problem is that we'll lose out on unique cultural contributions to art, but I'm sure you knew this. The thing is, a balance has to be reached somehow.

Even more recently we see the dangers of religion. The scandals involving lewd and lascivious acts of marauding Catholic priests committed against alter boys. If it weren’t for the Catholic Church, we wouldn’t have molestations. The strict moral teachings of religions inevitably lead to these heinous acts.

Let's see, the church demands its priests be perfectly celibate. Masturbation's also a sin, so that's out of the question. That's going to put a lot of pressure on anyone, and it's not surprising that some are going to burst. Of course, there would be pedophiles without the church, but this way it's harder on them. Plus you're giving the ones that already exist an unrivaled opportunity to abuse young boys without fear of reprisal. The church's obsession with upholding its holy image is what caused them to go on a massive cover-up, allowing pedophiles to abuse kids even longer. The church authorities are apparently the most religious people out there, and they care more about maintaining their image than protecting innocent children.

Now the odious religious types would have you believe that it is not the institution, but the individuals who are at fault.

Which might be valid if the institution either knew nothing about it, or did everything they could to stop it. Neither applies here.

They will yammer on about how it is not that the ideas of a religion are harmful, but the exploitation of their influence by those in power to oppress or do harm.

Any idea can be abused. Some tend to be more prone to abuse than others, however. Compare the basic Skeptic's message of "Critical Thinking = Good." That one's pretty hard to abuse. Now look at the basic religious message, appropriate to pretty much every religion, of, "Us = Good. Them = Bad." Yeah, that's not prone to abuse in the slightest. (Don't worry, checks are in the mail to replace any broken sarcasm detectors.)

If this is true, Jesus and Mohammad should have known that their warning to follow God’s laws are going to be taken out of context and kept the message to themselves. Seriously, what kind of a prophet are you if you didn’t see that coming?

More importantly: What kind of god doesn't see this coming? And what kind of god sees it happening and does nothing? That's right, the kind that doesn't actually exist.

Deep in the heart of all religious dogma lie the seeds of hatred waiting to germinate in the rich, fertile potting soil of the idiot population.

Sadly, it's true.

It isn’t just extremism or zealotry. Religion in and of itself is wrong.Because the concept of religion is built upon the idea that the core ‘truths’ espoused by the religion are absolute and immutable, this idea gets extended to every bit of dogma associated with that set of beliefs. This is what makes every religion wrong in every possible way — no exceptions.

Extreme literalism is indeed a problem, as is the cognitive dissonance that it creates when the truths contradict themselves.

You may be asking how I could be so sure about this. I know that I’m right because this can be one of two things — a logical fallacy in the form of a false dichotomy or the unequivocal truth, and since I never speak in false dichotomies, it must be true.

Is it just me, or does that sound a bit too much like something religiosos use to defend their claims to the truth?

As an atheist, I see the harm religion does and know that the only way to make this world a better place is to eliminate it entirely. You know, how that Stalin guy tried to do. Taking the nation he built as an example, we see that eliminating religion will lead us to a Utopia free of suffering and ignorance.

"Stalin was an atheist, therefore atheism is bad." That's one notch removed from an argument ad Nazium. And not a vertical notch, mind you, a horizontal notch. I'm tempted to point out that Hitler himself was quite religious and turned WWII era Germany into something of a theocracy with a few new rules that made the Fuhrer something to be worshipped, but that would be stooping to his level, so I won't.

Unfortunately, we are stuck in this society with all the preachy pious jerk-offs breathing down our necks, day in and day out ,telling us "killing is a sin, lying is a sin, stealing is a sin." Shit, everything is a sin according to someone.

Um, nowadays, religiosos seem to be saying more along the lines of, "Gay is a sin, evolution is a sin, questioning is a sin." And you can say "Shit" but not "Asshole"? What the frak is up with that? (A little satire of my own, if you couldn't tell.)

You can read the entire article here, though I've quoted pretty much the entire thing.

I suspect that this article is going to spawn a lot of hate from religious people who didn't get it. If I can compress my thoughts into about 500 words or so, I might throw them for a loop and send in a letter arguing with the point he actually tried to make.

Proceed with your information binge...

Too much information!

Skeptic's Circle #52

The latest Skeptic's Circle is now up, courtesy of Frank the Financially-Savvy Atheist. Go check it out.

To take a page from Bronze Dog, this is an open thread for you guys, but talking in anything but questions is FORBIDDEN.

Proceed with your information binge...

Too much information!

Betelgeuse: Evidence for God

Today in my astrophysics class, we were discussing stellar masses and densities. We looked at both ends of the spectrum, from the dense-as-rock Sirius B to the ultra-low-density Betelgeuse.

Exactly how low-density is Betelgeuse? Well, let me put it this way: You've probably often heard that Saturn has a density low enough that it could float in water given a large enough body of water. Well, Betelgeuse is light enough that in could float on air. In fact, its density is only 1/10,000th that of air.

<IDiot>

Hell, the thing's essentially a vacuum, barely more dense than the average nebula or interstellar dust. The odd thing is, interstellar dust and nebulae don't radiate light like we know Betelgeuse does, so how can Betelgeuse do it? How can something that, as we've shown, is essentially nothing, be so bright?

This is an obvious contradiction in astrophysics we have here. In fact, there's one, and only one, way to explain this miraculous light: God did it. And not just any god, the Christian God, also known as YHWH or Yahweh in the Old Testament or the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit in the New Testament. He's obviously capable of doing it, and it makes perfect sense that he would: A huge beacon to his glory.

</IDiot>

See how ridiculous the argument from large numbers sounds when taken out of the context of biology? The same easily-apparent flaws in this argument apply just as well to Intelligent Design:

"Essentially zero" - The density of Betelgeuse is so low it's taken to be essentially zero. This completely ignores the fact of how frakking huge it is (larger than the orbit of Jupiter). When you multiply this size by the density, you get a mass of around 20 times that of our sun. Get it? Small number X really large number = large number. Similarly to how even a low probability multiplied by billions of years of time can become quite likely.

Of course, ID tends to have other problems that make it even worse than the argument-from-Betelgeuse. The big one here is that they generally get the science wrong so they get an even lower number than reality.

"...therefore, God." - They've "proven" that Betelgeuse can't generate light on its own, so they immediately jump to God. And of course, not just any god, but their God. There's no serious consideration that it could be another god doing it, or even - heaven forbid - some other scientific explanation.

Proceed with your information binge...

Too much information!