Comments by Teratornis

1. Richard Dawkins interviewed by John Humphrys on Cardinal Murphy O'Connor

Comment #178135 by Teratornis on May 10, 2008 at 2:58 pm

Comment #177744 by Paula Kirby:

No, you are confusing ACHIEVING a public forum with BEING GIVEN a public forum. Day after day, week after week, religion is GIVEN free access to our airwaves. Unchallenged.

Well, be careful what you wish for. Here in the U.S. there is no comparable government subsidy of religious broadcasting (other than the tax break, which atheists can also get - I'd like to see all such tax breaks eliminated), and the result is that instead of a weak state-supported religion, made soft through centuries of being shielded from competition, we have vigorous private-sector religions.

I'm wondering, though, just how many centuries of state support it takes to cripple a religion? Whatever the figure, it appears Saudi Arabia has not had enough centuries yet to cripple its state religion of Wahhabism.

If the U.K. would switch its state religion to a younger, more vigorous religion such as Scientology or Mormonism, which might survive state support for several generations at least, then you might pray for the return of Anglicanism.

2. Richard Dawkins interviewed by John Humphrys on Cardinal Murphy O'Connor

Comment #178123 by Teratornis on May 10, 2008 at 2:40 pm

Comment #177574 by Star Spangled Eagle:

people, whether it's like Hitler or Stalin, bringing up - having a country in which, if you like, a God free zone, a dictatorship ruled by reason, and where does it lead? To terror and oppression

This must be one of the most stupid fucking things anyone could ever say.

Reason leads to oppression and terror?

This man is evil.

Certainly not my reason. I hope.

I wouldn't say the comment is stupid so much as it is becoming dated and irrelevant. It appears that modern information technologies are closing the window for Hitler-style despotism, at least in the OECD nations. The real threats today are not from first-world despotism, but from resource depletion, most immediately the peaking and decline of world oil extraction. Talking about Hitler is like being the proverbial general who insists on continuing to fight the previous war, instead of accurately meeting the new enemy.

But O'Connor's might have something of a point, in that most people who are successful at something, whether it is good or evil, usually are able to reason clearly enough to accomplish whatever they are trying to do. As Richard has pointed out, there is a "logical pathway" which can lead from faith to evil actions. Presumably, a person can only navigate a logical pathway by being somewhat logical. The starting premises may be false or illogical, but from them one can make some structurally valid logical inferences, at least enough to get the job done.

We can be certain that to carry out the attacks of 9/11, the terrorists had to employ plenty of critical thinking along the way. They had to accurately determine everything they would need to carry out the plot, and then stick to the schedule with utmost discipline and coordination.

If someone is going to succeed at doing evil, apart from stumbling into an opportunity from sheer dumb luck, they probably have to approach it systematically and apply the same tools of reason that almost all successful people use, at least within the domain of their success.

Some forms of evil do seem to require selective reason, such as for example declaring certain questions off-limits to reason: how do we really know whether we will get 72 virgins in the afterlife if we commit suicide for Allah? A comprehensively reasonable person would have serious doubts about that proposition, and consider flying airliners into skyscrapers an unlikely way to find endless romantic bliss, whereas a selectively reasonable person can easily roll with it.

However, it's not clear that more and more reason must automatically cause everyone to be kind and compassionate. On some level, it seems we are nice to (some) people not because we arrived at that strategy through cold logic, but simply because our emotional brains happen to feel like being nice to (some) people. Since our compassion does not derive from reason, it is unreasonable to suppose that everybody else will magically feel the same compassion, even if they adopt some of our reasoning. (It is also unreasonable to suppose that everyone else will adopt 100% of our reasoning, so even if our reasoning did make us nice, there is no guarantee that sharing our reasoning with other people would give them a sufficient dose to yield the same outcome.)

Furthermore, there are some moral dilemmas which appear to have no good solution at the moment. For example, suppose a person suffers from a genetic defect, and wants to make babies. Ever since Hitler, we consider it odious for the state to interfere with an individual's reproductive rights. But what about the rights of as-yet-unborn children in future generations, to be born free from genetic defects? Should the state seek to protect them?

Given our current inability to repair an individual's defective genes, our only available option is to decide whose ox will get gored. Will the person with defective genes suffer a loss of reproductive freedom, for example by having the state forcibly sterilize him or her? Or will we respect the reproductive freedom of the defective carrier, and allow him or her to inflict defects on future people?

Since the unborn aren't around to protest, we generally regard them as having no rights. Each individual is currently free to inflict as much genetic damage on future generations as his or her genome and mating opportunities allow. To my mind, few forms of terrorism sound more frightening than genetic terrorism.

There are also forms of terror and oppression that affect people who don't enjoy comfortable first-world lives. There is, for example, the terror and oppression of being judged expendable by the global market. This is happening right now in impoverished nations like Haiti, where millions of the world's poorest people are being systematically priced out of a subsistence diet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hKhbf41H6o
World Food Crisis

The global market is a ruthlessly reasonable system for allocating scarcity. The market assigns each person an economic "worth," which manifests itself in terms of our incomes and wealth, and the market assigns every desirable commodity a worth, in the form of its price. Those of us who are at least reasonably comfortable can live with the idea that Bill Gates has a lot more. But those at the bottom of the market are becoming increasingly less able to live at all.

First world consumers will, quite reasonably, seek to maintain their accustomed first world lifestyles despite declining resources. This will become increasingly difficult, now that the metaphorical ship of the world economy has blundered into the Horse Latitudes of the post peak oil era. Just as desperate ships' crews of the past threw their horses overboard to conserve water when they were becalmed, so too will first-world consumers react to higher prices for oil primarily by paying more rather than by consuming less. This will, by inexorable market logic, drive up the costs of all commodities that depend on oil, such as food.

Rising commodity prices are, at least initially, merely an inconvenience for affluent consumers, but for people who were already living at the margin, such price increases probably seem to them like being the victim of an extermination campaign.

Because it is so hard for the average person to see the effects that a local behavioral choice has on a distant nation, almost no one views the petrol-fueled morning commite, or jetting off on holiday, as equivalent to participating in a genocide. But these customary activities are equivalent to participating in the genocide that is starting up right now.

Just ask those starving kids in Port-Au-Prince, who are surrounded by food their reproductively irresponsible parents cannot afford to buy.

The people who are rioting over food prices, when oil is trading for $126/bbl, will most likely be dropping dead in large numbers when oil hits $200/bbl and keeps climbing.

One could argue, and I think correctly, that we got into this mess by being unreasonable and ignoring the warnings of the Malthusians as long as oil appeared to be cheap, and oil-fueled prosperity seemed expandable without limit. But now that reality has intruded into our fantasy, the bills are coming due, and there aren't enough lifeboats for everyone. Faced with this situation, the reasonable solution (i.e. the market solution) is going to be cruel beyond the wildest dreams of Hitler and Stalin - picture up to two billion people starving in the next ten years. That's how many people right now are too poor to afford food if the price of oil climbs as high as peak oil theorists have been predicting. Saving them might not be possible even if the wealthy nations want to save them, as the wealthy nations will be facing severe economic troubles of their own, given that no nation adequately prepared itself for life after the oil peak.

I'm not suggesting that any form of superstition could do a better job of dealing with the unfolding crisis, just that reason can unleash cruelties to rival those of unreason.

3. Shaw TV Interview with Richard Dawkins

Comment #176590 by Teratornis on May 7, 2008 at 5:15 pm

Comment #176582 by Podaar:

By the way, I understand your view on peak oil. Really I do. I think most regular readers of this site do. I think most readers probably agree with you...but, I also think you're loosing your audience.

We've probably also lost ASMarques.

I wish I could put more oil in the ground by losing my audience. Exxon would pay me billions of dollars to go around alienating people!

Unfortunately for my prospects for obscene wealth, reality doesn't care what anything thinks about reality.

When we argue with holocaust deniers, they can stay in denial forever. It's unfalsifiable, like believing in God - the belief does not depend on anything that will happen in the real world.

Peak oil is a lot more interesting, because very soon we will see who is right. Anyone who has experienced being out of gas knows how difficult it is to stay in denial about that.

Everyone should carefully examine the viability of their jobs, career plans, life plans, living arrangements, recreational preferences, etc., and see how they're set for oil at $200/bbl, $300/bbl, or $400/bbl (current price: around $120/bbl). Can your employer and your community continue to function at those prices? Can you?

Everybody should ask their employer, what's the plan if employees start having trouble getting fuel to drive to work? Are we set up to let people telecommute to the extent possible?

The $200 mark is looking like a near certainty within two years or less. The larger numbers are by no means out of the question either - throughout the oil price run-up since 2003, almost all "mainstream" projections about the future price have been too low. The exception has been the peak oil camp, of course, which said "I told you so" after the U.S. peaked in 1970, and is doing it again now that whole world appears to be peaking. The world has no spare oil production capacity any more, and demand continues to increase. New discoveries aren't keeping up with the decline in existing fields. So the price of fuel has nowhere to go but up.

I know it's a disturbing topic - which is why, of course, I obsess on it - but that's why we need everybody to get in the game. The problem is not going to solve itself, and (the nonexistent) God knows our politicians aren't going to solve it for us.

It's more fun to focus on comparatively meaningless trivia like the creation/evolution/ID controversy, or holocaust denial. We will have plenty of time to play whack-a-mole on those, but only if we solve our energy problems first.

4. Shaw TV Interview with Richard Dawkins

Comment #176581 by Teratornis on May 7, 2008 at 4:06 pm

Comment #176555 by Podaar:

Teratornis,

I look forward to your patient reply to the above. I don't have the intestinal fortitude to even approach it. The anger that you deplore is too close to the surface.

"Deplore" sounds kind of angry to me, and anger at anger seems a bit self-referential, so I'd prefer to say "The anger that I advise against", or perhaps, "The anger that I suggest we remain consciously aware of."

Anger is a natural human emotion which results from a failure to impose our will on our surroundings. Since none of us can get reality to conform exactly to our wishes, there's no way to be human and entirely free from anger, but the main danger comes from not being consciously aware of our anger, and then acting impulsively on it. That's usually a maladptive response in a civilized society.

Actually, I'd say if you feel angry upon reading ASMarques' reply, then it would be a good exercise for you to rebut it. See if you can respond using only the tools of reason and not emotion. If you can do that, then you will have accomplished something, even if you convince him of nothing - you will have convinced yourself of the value of not submitting to your anger.

Everything you need in the way of data is right here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust_denial
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Holocaust_denial

Frankly, I'm far more concerned about peak oil denial. Even if everybody on Earth rejected the facts about the Holocaust, civilization would probably carry on. Now that the Jews have nuclear weapons, they aren't likely to go down easily again. And there are still genocides occurring from time to time despite the orthodox acceptance of the reality of the holocaust, so it's not as if getting the facts right guarantees smooth sailing.

In contrast, civilization might not survive a large-scale rejection of the facts surrounding peak oil. What we think about peak oil, and how we choose to act right now, will probably have a huge impact on our prospects for the very near future.

The problem with peak oil is probably more a matter of simple ignorance. When I watch the news correspondents reporting on oil prices breaking record highs every few days, I don't see many who can provide anything resembling a coherent explanation for the price run-up. Except this guy from Australia:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kWMa1Qpusc
Alan Kohler on Oil
(1 min 26 sec into the video, notice the graph entitled "It's Simple Really")

The astounding ignorance about the imminent peaking and unavoidable decline of world oil supply matters, because most people still seem to have no inkling of the severity of the problem we face, nor of the massive changes in attitudes and lifestyles that must occur - and should have started years ago.

5. Shaw TV Interview with Richard Dawkins

Comment #176549 by Teratornis on May 7, 2008 at 3:07 pm

Comment #176534 by MPhil:

Thanks, Teratornis... Actually, that article is quite basic... I think all rational people who have ever encountered someone employing these strategies can identify them...

Well, a refresher rarely hurts. Especially if we find ourselves getting emotional during a disagreement. I can't be the only person who becomes stupider when I become angrier.

Sad nevertheless.
I'm just really pissed off by ASMarques, me being a native German who shares no responsibility, and feels no guilt, but acknowledges the responsibility of Germany as a nation (and every other nation as well) to never let such a thing happen again - to remind people to be cautious about nationalism, patriotism, discrimination, marginalisation of non-violent groups etc.

I experience at least a normal human allotment of anger so I understand the emotion all too well. Anger is the productive emotion when a cave bear wanders into "your" cave, but it is precisely the wrong emotion to bring to the Internet.

That's another example of the emotional brain looking to the past. The rather distant past in this case.

On the Internet, we do not use brute physical force. Instead, we push with the flimsy rope of logic. Imagine trying to push objects around on the other side of the room by pushing on a rope. That's what reasoned debate is like on the Internet - it takes superhuman patience and sangfroid. As I am still working on merely getting up to subhuman, I have some way to go with those.

I suggest looking on any online discussion group as an exercise in emotional desensitization. Even we atheists have our sacred beliefs, and we get upset when someone tramples them.

But let's remember we like to trample on other people's sacred beliefs. If we expect religious people to remain calm while we logically eviscerate their cherished hopes, then we might try showing them that's how we roll.

I get the idea that Sam Harris rolls that way. It's rather embarrassing that he seems to have learned his emotional control from a religious tradition rather than from a secular/scientific tradition.

I know of the importance of combined effort, and of the value of "knowing where to look" - I'm a student of philosophy after all :)

I apologize for unintentionally condescending then - I redirect my advice to anyone else reading here who might learn something from the article.

The article itself is basic, but the links therein are dense and rich.

6. Shaw TV Interview with Richard Dawkins

Comment #176530 by Teratornis on May 7, 2008 at 2:43 pm

Comment #176493 by MPhil:

Oh please, you're still here, ASMarques? The guy who accuses native Germans, who have (and have had) perhaps the most comprehensive exposure or the fullest access to the evidence, who say the holocaust did happen, of having been brainwashed... puh-leese. Teratornis posed some excellent questions there - I am anxious to read your answers.

While you're waiting, this article is a good read:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denialism

See how many of the denialist strategies you can identify in ASMarques' writing. For a harder challenge, see if you can find whether he has written something else.

Always remember - you are not alone! Nearly every argument we have is a repeat of previous arguments, and some people have used the power of collaborative editing ("we are smarter than me") to write down some pretty good arguments. That is no substitute for thinking, but part of thinking is remembering to look things up.

7. Shaw TV Interview with Richard Dawkins

Comment #176517 by Teratornis on May 7, 2008 at 2:23 pm

Comment #176496 by Podaar:

The whole thinking critically and not projecting motivations onto others is hard. I've struggled with it myself at different times of my life.

At least you are consciously aware of the struggle. That puts you light-years ahead of the generally oblivious masses, for whom emotions are reality.

As I'm sure I've already written here, since I endlessly repeat myself, critical thinking becomes especially important during times of crisis, i.e. times of rapid change.

Most logical fallacies and cognitive biases seem to be, or to have been, actually pretty good heuristics. For example, argumentum ad hominem can be a pretty reliable rule of thumb in some cases, such as: Hitler had no problems with killing people, so perhaps he wouldn't have minded telling some lies now and then. You'd want to scrutinize a claim by Hitler a bit harder than you'd scrutinize a claim by someone who appears to value honesty. Of course ideally you would logically analyze every claim the same way, but in real life there isn't time to do that. You invariably have to trust some people who you don't have time to personally check out yourself.

Similarly, appeal to tradition is a pretty good heuristic in a stable, traditional society. A society that has had thousands of years to figure out what works in its stable environment has probably settled on at least a locally optimal code of behavior by now. In a sufficiently stable society, imitating everybody else is probably a better strategy for most people than attempting to think everything through from scratch, even if there wasn't pressure from the society to conform.

But when things are not stable, and game rules are changing rapidly, then we cannot trust our emotions as much. Our emotions typically look backwards, to what worked in the past, maybe even millions of years in the past.

Responding intelligently to change demands a fresh look at new data.

I won't bother to mention the new data I have in mind just now, because my faithful readers already know the example I would give.

8. Shaw TV Interview with Richard Dawkins

Comment #176509 by Teratornis on May 7, 2008 at 2:09 pm

Comment #176495 by Star Spangled Eagle:

Question: How can you tell if someone doesn't wipe after they use the bathroom?

Answer: Check their underwears for ASSMARQUES.

If I were the referee of RDF, I would flag you 15 yards for unsportsmanlike conduct.

While I understand your hate, I don't think expressing it does much to elevate the discussion here. If someone makes an error, it's enough to point out the error and let the readers decide who to like and who to hate. It's not as if anyone needs to be told.

It's always tempting to do a goal line dance and fire AK-47s into the air and urinate on the graves of our enemies, but we must guard against lapsing into emotional thinking.

If we are not gracious in victory, we can hardly expect to be treated graciously in defeat.

When I see people on RDF dishing out the ad homs when they are right about something, I assume they want exactly the same treatment when they are wrong.

And I have a long memory about such things. So as a general warning to name-callers, don't make any mistakes on my watch. I assume everyone is prepared to take what they dish out.

A more constructive way to respond to the wrong thinking we see in others is to reflect more carefully on our own thinking. Do we really have all our logical ducks in a row, on every subject?

I have direct personal experience with having made some mistakes in my past thinking, easily on par with any mistakes I see other people making. I try to keep that in mind when I write - although I don't always manage to.

The take-home lesson is, it's all too easy to be really sure and really wrong at the same time. Anybody who thinks they've never done it, or will never do it again, is probably doing it right now.

9. Shaw TV Interview with Richard Dawkins

Comment #176492 by Teratornis on May 7, 2008 at 1:21 pm

Comment #176486 by al-rawandi:

Teratornis,

That was awesome. Just awesome. That was the perfect response for ASMarques. Perfect. Well done. Now he can choke on his shitty argument.

Thank you for recognizing my logic. It's the same logic I bring to all my writing, for example on the more important subject of peak oil (more important because the Holocaust, as horrible as it was, is history now, but the worst effects of peak oil are probably just ahead of us). However, in my experience, the thinking patterns and logical fallacies of Holocaust deniers srongly resemble those of these other groups of people:

1. Creationists

2. Cornucopians (who believe human population and resource consumption can grow exponentially forever, with no ill effects)

3. 9/11 conspiracy theorists

4. Apollo Moon landing conspiracy theorists

5. Conspiracy theorists in general

For example, the argument from ignorance (or from personal incredulity) resurfaces again and again. "I can't imagine how a monkey becomes a human, therefore humans did not evolve from monkeys." Or "I can't imagine the Germans rounding up and systematically exterminating six million Jews, therefore they did not." Or "People have incorrectly predicted that the world would run out of oil before - therefore the world can never run out." Etc.

And these arguments are always selective. The creationist, or Holocaust denier, invariably cherry-picks the claims of the orthodox position, considering some to be rock-solidly reliable, and others to be utter fabrication, without presenting a systematic method for telling which is which.

I haven't had much luck at changing anybody's mind on much of anything on which they had already formed strong emotional beliefs. But it's still fun to expose wrong thinking when I smell it.

As a general rule, when someone makes a whopping logical error such as creationism, Holocaust denial, etc., that is rarely the only error they make. So it's only a matter of time, if they keep talking long enough, for them to come up with other whoppers that are easier to refute.

Such as the ridiculous left-wing chestnut that when an Islamic suicide bomber looks into the camera before his final mission and says "We love death more than our enemies love life!" that cannot really be why he's doing it.

I've never met a conspiracy theorist who seemed truly comfortable with Occam's Razor.

10. Shaw TV Interview with Richard Dawkins

Comment #176487 by Teratornis on May 7, 2008 at 1:04 pm

To ASMarques:

1. Do you believe the Apollo Moon landings were faked on a sound stage at NASA?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Moon_Landing_hoax_theories

2. Do you believe George W. Bush ordered airliners to crash into skyscrapers on 9/11 by remote control, and the story about the Islamic hijackers was a false cover story?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11_conspiracy_theories

3. Do you accept the findings of the The President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Commission

4. What do you make of the clever arguments which cast serious doubt on the belief that the Earth is spheroidal?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Earth_Society

I'm wondering if the Holocaust is the only one of our cherished belefs you would have us abandon.

11. Shaw TV Interview with Richard Dawkins

Comment #176479 by Teratornis on May 7, 2008 at 12:46 pm

Comment #176425 by ASMarques:

though unfortunately the air bombing was, of course, a Churchillian true holocaust (in the sense of an incineration of entire cities, not of really attempting to "exterminate the Germans." My point being we are dealing with what really happened, not what might have happened or some people might have wished had happened.

What is your evidence that these massive air bombings of European cities actually occurred, or if they did occur, that the casualty figures are accurate?

It seems to me the only available evidence is of the same quality, and from the same sources, as the evidence for the Holocaust which you reject.

The only things I know (or think I know) about the firebombing of Hamburg and Dresden, I learned from historians who in turn assembled data released by the same military agencies which also told us about the Holocaust.

If you think the military and historians are way off on the number of dead Jews, why do you trust the same people to tell you how many Germans died in Dresden?

Your whole argument against the Holocaust seems to hinge on casting doubts on the credibility of the governments, militaries, and historians who tell us what happened. If these institutions and people are so good at cooking up vast conspiracies to mislead the public, how do you know when to believe them?

I.e., how do you decide which historical evidence you will cherry-pick?

12. Shaw TV Interview with Richard Dawkins

Comment #176476 by Teratornis on May 7, 2008 at 12:37 pm

Comment #176224 by ASMarques:

On a different register, what a silly theory this "sucide bombers blow themselves up because they think they'll be rewarded in heaven" thing is.

That's not the reason why they do it. Palestinian bombers, for example, do it because they are furious at the way they have been occupied, robbed of their land, humiliated, oppressed and their predicament ignored by the World at large, and they cannot fight back their Jewish overlords with equal weapons.

If a Palestinian can sneak into a crowded restaurant with explosives, why would he detonate the explosives while wearing them?

Why not just toss the explosives into the restaurant with a short-delay fuse (like a hand grenade), and attempt to flee? Even if the chance of escape is low, it is not zero. The chances improve with concealed explosives and longer fuse delays.

Asymmetrical warfare dates back to at least Roman times. See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabian_strategy

More recently, T.E. Lawrence taught Arab partisans how to blow up the supply trains of the militarily superior Turks:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T.E._Lawrence

In most cases, the weaker side in an asymmetrical conflict has a choice of many options which do not involve certain death. Accordingly, few people choose tactics which involve certain death, unless they have accepted the ideology of some sort of death cult.

There are some spontaneous tactical suicides in war, such as when a soldier dives onto a grenade to save his buddies in a foxhole, or when the pilot of a damaged airplane deliberately crashes into the enemy rather than bailing out.

However, spontaneous suicides, as well as high-risk missions, are quite different than premeditated suicides, before which the suicide warriors videorecord their last wills and testaments. Since even the most overmatched combatant still has some potentially survivable tactical options, choosing in advance to make a point of committing suicide requires some sort of ideology, over and above simple anger and resentment that could motivate someone to fight.

Consider the analogy with criminals going to jail. While many criminals eventually get caught, most of them behave as if getting caught is something they would rather avoid.

If a new cult arose in which members committed crimes in direct view of police for the express aim of getting caught and incarcerated, one could not coherently equate their motives to the motives of ordinary criminals who seek to avoid apprehension.

The risk of death has been part of combat throughout history, but it is unusual for combatants to pre-plan their deaths. It's not very convincing to claim the motives of suicide warriors are exactly the same as the motives of warriors who try to survive. Clearly, it takes some extra suicide cult ideology.

Granted, the suicide cult ideology may exploit the underlying resentment, but it is hardly the only way for people to express resentment.

13. What really goes on at the Large Hadron Collider

Comment #176106 by Teratornis on May 6, 2008 at 2:50 pm

Comment #175766 by LaTomate:

Concerning the fact that it costs a lot of money, well so does a lot of other stuff.

High-energy physics also costs brains, namely, a big chunk of the tiny minority of the people with the high intelligence and technical training necessary to save civilization from collapse as we drive off the peak oil cliff.

Money is a lot more plentiful than the people who can do what high-energy physicists do. So the real opportunity cost is in terms of what those people happen to find uninteresting at the moment.

It's not solely a question of funding. The physics community has a lot of clout for setting its own priorities. Politicians generally don't know science, so they have to trust the scientific community to tell them where the science funding should go. The near-term survival of industrial civilization may depend on how many scientists come to the same realization as CalTech's David Goodstein. Namely, peak oil is the problem that matters right now, and if we don't fix that one, then nothing else we're doing may matter much at all.

The internationally funded and run experimental fusion reactor in France is costing a lot, but you'd say it may be worth it (possibly cheap and abundant fusion energy), wheras for the LHC it is not really so since it does not solve any problems.

Hot fusion is a longshot, something like investing in lottery tickets, but there is a finite chance the lottery could pay off. Probably not soon enough to cushion the landing when we drive off the peak oil cliff, however. It might make more sense to delay the hot fusion research for a few years and have those people help figure out some things that could work sooner, like quantum dot solar cells, or algae fuel.

I have to disagree... even though practical applications of the research done there won't arrive so soon, it is through theoretical physics and experiments supporting the theory that we make the biggest advances in technology and it seems to me that the LHC won't be an exception to that rule.

I agree that if industrial civilization remains stable and prosperous enough to support the LHC for a long time, useful things should come from it. But here is the salient question: how much research will occur at the LHC when the price of oil hits $400/bbl?

(For comparison, today the oil price hit $122/bbl on NYMEX, yet another record in a long run of records so far this year. That's up from around $20/bbl in 2003.)

There are already some questions about how the global economy will manage with oil at the current price, let alone the prices that folks like OPEC and Goldman Sachs are predicting.

The question is not whether the LHC research may provide long-term value - it probably will, if it continues for a long time. The question is whether the research will continue.

Many large businesses find it important, at some point, to vertically integrate their supply chains. Similarly, scientists need to think about their own supply chain, i.e. the industrial economies which generate excess wealth to spend on science. Scientists, better than anyone else, have the ability to anticipate and mitigate threats to industrial economies. A few scientists have, in fact, predicted the peak oil crisis, and some of them even got pretty close on the timing. But this tiny group of people weren't able to get the issue into the general conversation in the same way the global warming folks have done.

Humans have almost always been in crisis of one sort or another. I agree that the latest one, climate change, is a great one, but it's not a reason to reject all scientific research to sort out other science problems.

I'm not talking about global warming. Peak oil is not global warming, although the two are related in the sense that ending our need for fossil fuels would solve both of them. Global warming is a longer-term problem - it will probably take humans at least a few decades to pump enough CO2 into the atmosphere to trigger the next anoxic event which might exterminate most if not all humans. Peak oil, in contrast, seems to have already occurred in 2005 or 2006, which if true casts some doubt on the survival of industrial civilization over the next 10 or 20 years.

Almost everything we do depends in one way or another on the availability of cheap, abundant petroleum. Almost everything we want to do, such as improve the living conditions for poor people, depends on expanding our use of petroleum.

When nature tells us we have no more cheap petroleum, and we have to steadily reduce our use of expensive petroleum on nature's schedule - not ours - then we have a very serious problem. It appears we are already in the early stages.

If people invested their time and money on these sorts of projects rather than wasting time and ressources on their religions we wouldn't be having so much trouble funding proper science.

That's true, but we can't expect religious people to think rationally. Religion is inherently about rejecting rationality. Scientists, on the other hand, should be able to recognize the correct priority ordering of our problems.

If scientists cannot think critically and reason from the available evidence, then who can?

If the major powers invested half of their military budget on pure scientific research we weouldn't be having a discussion about funding priorities either I'm afraid.

The U.S. spends more on its military than the next quite a few big-spender nations combined. During the Cold War, the impetus for military spending was superpower rivalry. Now that the U.S. is the last remaining superpower, the impetus is petroleum.

This is another reason for self-interested scientists to focus their efforts on making the U.S. self-sufficient in energy, especially to eliminate the U.S. dependence on foreign oil i.e. Islam. If the U.S. had no energy-supply worries, think of the vast resources that would be available for all sorts of useful things. The Endless Petroleum War in the Middle East is screwing up priorities.

New Orleans had lots of problems before Hurricane Katrina. Shoring up the sagging levees was just one crisis among many competing for the same limited resources.

While everyone acknowledged the city was at risk, nobody could predict exactly when a hurricane might strike, so people's focus went elsewhere, and kept leaving the levees for "next year." Then nature demonstrated its utter indifference to human schedules, and obliterated most of the city.

Peak oil is a much worse problem than a hurricane, because one cannot simply move up the river to Baton Rouge. Peak oil is a problem everywhere people depend on petroleum, which is pretty much everywhere people are these days.

Peak oil is like having a house on fire. Regardless of how many other important things you need to do, you should probably attend first to the fire.

If we solve the current energy problem, we will have the stable productive society which can afford to play around with particle accelerators.

If we don't solve the energy problem, the few people who survive the dieoff may be reduced to pre-industrial subsistence farmers, who won't be doing any science for a long time.

14. What really goes on at the Large Hadron Collider

Comment #175708 by Teratornis on May 5, 2008 at 11:13 pm

Comment #175667 by Rtambree:

Take about hype. The LHC is being talked up like Deep Thought in Hitchhikers - the answer to everything, will solve all problems! What isn't it going to find? Supersymmetry? Dark matter? Higgs bosons? Mini black holes? Evidence of string theory? Other dimensions? My missing favourite sock?

How about a source of energy capable of running the thing, let alone the countries surrounding it?

The genome project was hyped in a similar way in the late 1990s - and the payoffs haven't quite materialised.

I don't know. The crime shows are pretty good, and they would be even less plausible without DNA technology:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procedural_(genre)

I just wish these projects don't get all hyped out of the proportion - as the public will become jaded when reality repeatedly doesn't meet expectations.

We put a few men on the Moon, briefly, and yet we still have problems. Funny how that works.

Where's our customised medicine? Holidays in space? Supersonic scramjet travel? Smart houses? Self-driving cars? Robot servants? 10 hour working week? Internet as heads-up display in your sunglasses? Paperless office? AI? Resurrection of extinct species?

How about a solution to peak oil?

I don't mind the overhyping of a science project so much as all the carrying on about stuff that could look laughably irrelevant in as little as five years as the world drives off the peak oil cliff.

If all those physicists were working on, say, quantum dot solar cells, we might have economies able to support high energy physics research in the coming decades.

The sheer blithering ignorance of what the real immediate problem is, even among some of the world's smartest people, is more frightening than almost anything else that comes to mind.

Comment #175703 by auralblip:

While this is just another experiment, I would say that if they get answers to even one of the issues they are investigating it will enrich our understanding of the universe, isn't that worth it?

If the collapse of industrial civilization was not potential and imminent, we might have the luxury of entertaining such questions.

If even the medium-case scenario of peak oil turns out to be correct (never mind the worst case), we'll be looking back at almost everything we spent money on that didn't produce renewable energy as a catastrophically unacceptable opportunity cost.

Of course the Iraq war probably squanders more investment capital in one week than all of physics gets in what, a year?

15. Losing Our Spines to Save Our Necks

Comment #175698 by Teratornis on May 5, 2008 at 10:36 pm

Comment #175684 by NakedCelt:

For what it's worth, I agree with Teratorn. "Oil oil oil oil oil oil oil oil" is a perfectly reasonable description of current global economics.

What it's worth - I believe it is worth more than anything else we can say about Islam.

Islam was not much of a problem for the West when the Saudis rode camels.

It isn't possible to speak coherently about the current "clash of civilizations" without mentioning the black liquid which is fueling the clash.

It's all about oil.

16. Losing Our Spines to Save Our Necks

Comment #175696 by Teratornis on May 5, 2008 at 10:22 pm

Comment #175677 by annabanana:

No, when a politician decries "foreign oil," that is clearly a euphemism for "Islam."

I don't think this is entirely true. It would benefit the US to be completely energy-independent in many ways. Assuming the energy is a renewable source (which is what we are aiming for), it will be beneficial to the environment (presumably, depending on how this energy source is processed, what pollutants it emits, etc).

Renewable energy is not necessarily what George W. Bush is aiming for when he says we need to allow Exxon et al. to drill in ANWR, but your point is valid to some degree. Energy is a huge incredibly complex topic, allowing any number of ways for people to focus on various aspects of it to avoid thinking about whichever aspects they consider unpleasant.

For example, there is about 100 times as much publicity right now for global warming as there is for peak oil. As difficult as it is to think about global warming, a lot of people are capable of thinking about it, perhaps because they are able to think it's mostly a problem of drowning the polar bears, and any threat to them personally from global warming is probably decades off. They can think about the polar bears, instead of thinking about the Saudi Arabians pumping billions of the petrodollars we throw at them into promoting the spread of their fanatical brand of Islam.

Peak oil is quite different. The wolf of peak oil is clawing at the door right now. Thanks to the incompetence of our governments and most of our citizens, the world is almost completely unprepared for an unexpected peaking and subsequent decline of world oil extraction. There is no plan B.

Here is my wager. I wager that in five years, the topic of peak oil will dominate our discourse. It will be hard for people to talk about anything else. If the Internet is still functioning by then (and I dearly hope it will be), I will try to be here to tell everyone "I told you so." (Gloating may be one of the few remaining pleasures by then.)

Already, for example, airlines around the world are bleeding red ink and cutting back their flights. Airlines are like canaries in the coal mine, analogous to the poorest billion people in the Third World who are getting priced out of their subsistence diets. Airlines also live on a subsistence diet of sorts, because they sell a product which is only profitable when the price of oil is low. The value added per unit of oil is very low with air travel for the masses.

In contrast, there are other uses of oil which add lots of value, for example when the Google founders drive to work in the morning. They can generate a lot of value relative to the petroleum they use each day. They could easily afford to pay many times more for their fuel and still make a profit.

Flying people across continents to visit Grandma does not generate much value relative to the petroleum used. That's a lot of fuel for little value. Marginal uses like these will be the first to vanish as the market progressively grinds down consumption to match declining supply.

It's possible that in five years, commercial air travel will have virtually collapsed. Only the people who formerly flew on the Concorde will still be able to fly. That is not many people.

Most people can live without air travel. It will be harder to live without diesel trucks and petroleum-fueled ships to maintain our long supply chains (the 3,000 mile salad, and all the Wal*Mart stuff from China).

The topic gets really serious when we turn to food. It probably isn't possible for many of us to survive at all without petroleum and natural gas inputs to industrial agriculture. Not many people are capable of growing enough food to feed themselves, but soon we may have no alternative.

Granted, people will prioritize food over mobility, since we can live without mobility, but not without food. The price of food will rise to whatever level it takes to enable farmers to outbid other consumers of petroleum, reflecting our nonnegotiable need for food.

But when U.S. consumers are paying several times more for food than we pay right now, what's going to happen to all those third worlders who are rioting over the first round of food price increases? We could see famine on an unprecedented scale.

The oil available for the U.S. to import could decline by 50% in 10 years. It is almost inconceivable that renewable energy sources can make up that gap by then. The U.S. population is still growing, with a million new people to feed, clothe, and convey each year. The economy still wants to grow. Which means the shortfall from the energy we would like to use could be greater than the shortfall from our current consumption.

In theory there is no problem with renewable energy. The amount of sunlight falling on the USA is thousands of times higher than our total energy use. Our wind resources are economical to tap right now, and they are several times greater than our current energy use. But we will need a long time to carpet large areas with solar cells or greenhouses to grow algae fuel, or to put up a million giant wind turbines. The ultimate potential of renewables will not spare us the very bumpy ride we are likely to have for the next 10 to 20 years.

I think that you may have some good points, but I think that the reason the normally rational person thinks that the cognitive dissonance is ok is because it is only temporary. It is assumed that sometime in the near future, some technology will replace oil and the problem(s) will be solved.

Similarly, lots of people assume that religion will, in due course, evolve toward benign forms, so there really is no need for Richard Dawkins to be so strident and abrasive about it. If only that were true! The idea is seductive because there is some truth to it, but one has to overlook a lot of short term ugliness to maintain such a bouyant outlook.

I like the way Richard doesn't sit down and shut up. No, he states the inconvenient facts and calls a spade a spade.

There are often serious differences between the assumptions of nonexperts vs. the conclusions of experts who have actually examined the facts in detail.

People who have actually looked into the oil problem are saying the problem is far worse than the average person has any inkling of. In contrast, everyone I have read so far who claims there is no problem argues without presenting any compelling evidence.

Case in point which illustrates the comprehension gap: U.S. politicians are considering a fuel tax holiday for the summer. Motor fuel taxes in the U.S. were already irresponsibly low, so the U.S. government has little leverage for protecting U.S. gaswasters from market reality. But just the fact that people are seriously discussing this exercise in futility indicates the enormous gap between reality and the average person's understanding of reality.

Knocking a few cents off the pump price of gasoline would only make sense if the current price was some sort of temporary anomaly. But it's not. Next year's fuel prices are likely to be higher than this years. After a few more years, we'll think back on $3.50/gallon as an incredible bargain, and knocking ten cents off for a few months will be like pissing in the ocean. World oil extraction is almost certainly going to fall ever farther behind world oil demand. The gap right now is not as wide as it is likely to be next year, nor the year after that. The gap could continue to widen, relentlessly, for the next ten to twenty years. Because even if we launched an all-out effort to develop renewable fuels now, it would take at least that long to replace our current use of petroleum.

The only possible near-term remedy is to drastically reduce our petroleum consumption. There are lots of ways to do this. Not all of them have to be unpleasant. But the motivation is always price. History shows that only high fuel prices will motivate people to conserve. Not appealing to their conscience or whatever. Only a tiny percentage of people will voluntarily use less fossil fuel to save the polar bears. The average person may express regret about the drowning polar bears, but when push comes to shove, most people will purchase all the personal comfort and convenience they can afford.

In other words, the very worst thing we could do right now would be to encourage more oil consumption by slightly lowering the price to consumers. No, we should instead phase in European-style fuel taxes, to force American consumers to get up to European efficiency, and even that won't be efficient enough in a few years.

Motorists in the U.K. are paying more than double what U.S. motorists are paying at the pump. The U.S. wastes far more petroleum per person than the U.K. (which maintains a comparable quality of life), so the U.S. is exacerbating the oil supply problem right now.

Also, I'm pretty sure that al-rawandi uses public transportation on a regular (probably daily) basis, so will you maybe lighten up a bit on the "mobility addiction" stuff?

I believe I would insult al-rawandi more if I implied he was too weak to face the truth. He strikes me as a straight shooter, a free thinker, someone who doesn't lapse into irrationality often, and probably regrets it when he does. He certainly doesn't hold back to spare anyone else's little sensitive feelings when they lapse into irrationality. So no, I won't imply he's a crybaby who needs softer euphemisms.

If al-rawandi is not a mobility addict, and if he does not promote mobility addiction in others, then he cannot be bothered if I call him a mobility addict, because I would simply be mistaken in that case.

In my experience, the people most heavily committed to wishful thinking and censorship whenever the topic of peak oil comes up are, almost invariably, mobility addicts. Off the top of my head, I can't think of an exception, but I'm not really in a good position to have met an exception, because everyone I know is a mobility addict.

I don't see why mobility addicts would be upset about being called mobility addicts in any case. Is there any doubt that mobility is addicting?

Motorized mobility is addicting, both physically and psychologically. The physical addiction has to do with how societies adapt to motorized mobility. Once automobile ownership reaches a certain percentage (most parts of the U.S. are well above this percentage), it starts becoming physically difficult and dangerous not to drive a car. Cars crowd out every alternative, because cars are the most space-hungry form of transportation. Cars are also the most violent form of transportation, so mobility addicts are in the habit of accidentally-on-purpose killing just enough pedestrians and cyclists to terrorize most other people from getting in their way.

As people use cars more and more, their bodies deteriorate. There is a solid correlation between automobility and obesity. Just look around America - even before someone does a scientific study, you can plainly see what the study will find. The most automobile-dependent societies are the fattest and weakest. Once people's bodies fall apart, then they become even more dependent on automobiles, since they lose the ability even to walk a few miles.

Petroleum fuels 97% of transportation in the U.S., so even if someone uses public transportation (in the U.S., anyway), they are not entirely off the hook, although they are certainly doing better than driving a single-passenger Hummer.

My original point stands. If you want to actually do something to oppose Islam, use less petroleum. Keep using progressively less, and help other people use less, until Islam stops being a problem.

Islam wasn't much of a problem back when the Saudis rode camels.

They'll be riding camels again, when their oil runs out, but if we are smart, we will see that they return to their roots sooner.

17. Losing Our Spines to Save Our Necks

Comment #175679 by Teratornis on May 5, 2008 at 9:07 pm

Comment #175668 by Crazy_Steve:

First, my stance here is not about intelligence nor having a particular level of intelligence to be allowed to vote, it is about a person having to have a reasonable level of knowledge regarding the world and what they are voting for when casting their vote. The response that some people of low intelligence may not be able to vote only applies to those people who would by virtue of their particular intelligence level not be able to master a basic understanding of basic general knowledge of the world, and the political platforms of both that they are voting for and against, not by some arbitrary measure of intelligence or education. There is no need to judge the value of a person by their intelligence, however, I think it is dogmatic to suggest that all people should have the right to vote regardless of any qualifications whatsoever to do so.

Governments require people to demonstrate some understanding of how to operate a motor vehicle before issuing licenses to them. The idea is that motor vehicles are dangerous machines, and an incompetent operator endangers himself and everyone around him, so governments should insure that all motor vehicle operators meet some (very) minimal standard of competence.

It seems to me that voting is as potentially dangerous as operating a motor vehicle. But it would be hard to construct a truly objective of voter competence that wouldn't have systemic bias against, for example, voters who are actually opposed to our current form of government.

Unlike members of the armed services who take an oath to defend the Constitution, citizens who vote are under no such obligation. Citizens are free to vote to repeal the Constitution if they like. There is no requirement to know anything about what is in the Constitution before a voter can support a candidate who wants to repeal it.

In any case, there is a de facto selection against stupidity in the electorate, namely: incarceration. Felons who are incarcerated forfeit their right to vote for the duration of their sentences. Some states evidently do not allow even ex-convicts to vote.

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/678725/felons_can_vote_and_will_in_the_2008.html

Criminologists have known for decades that the average IQ of the prison population is significantly lower than the average IQ for the general population.

Hidden in this statistic is the extremely low incarceration rate among people with high IQs. The odds of, say, a Richard Dawkins or a Sam Harris going to jail are extremely low.

If everyone was as smart as those guys, you could probably leave your doors unlocked, and women could walk around safely at night alone.

Given the sizable prison population in a nation like the U.S., this is a substantial selection against low-IQ voters.

Then there's also self-selection - people at the bottom of the social status hierarchy have lower rates of voting, even when they qualify to vote. Social status correlates strongly with IQ, which is a polite way of saying dullards earn a lot less money on average than bright people. People with low IQs tend to lose hope in the political system as a way to solve their problems, and this is in fact a rational assessment for the most part. Governments have little ability to address the problems that result from low IQ.

And nobody else does, either. Until science cures low IQ, there is no good solution for the problems it causes. The only options are to shift the problems around to some degree.

18. Losing Our Spines to Save Our Necks

Comment #175671 by Teratornis on May 5, 2008 at 8:39 pm

Comment #175468 by al-rawandi:

Peak oil Peak oil Peak oil Peak oil Peak oil Peak oil
OIL OIL OIL OIL.

Several people in this thread asked "What can we do?" about Islam. I agree that it is almost inconceivable that anyone could still ask such a staggeringly ignorant question, and it strains credulity that people could still be unaware of the staggeringly obvious answer: to oppose Islam, stop financing it. Even if I hadn't spelled it out dozens of times here already, any person of even modest intelligence could figure this out by reading the news.

But evidently lots of people are this ignorant.

At some point, the seeming inability to connect screamingly obvious dots leads one to conclude the ignorance is willful.

But hey, as a person who aspires to be rational (not just rational when it suits me), I specialize in addressing willful ignorance wherever I find it. Willful ignorance attracts me, just like a big putrifying mammoth carcass attracted the circling teratorns back in the Pleistocene.

Give it a rest Tera.

What, if I join your campaign to ignore reality, will that make the problem magically go away?

Will the price of oil stop rising?

Will the windfall profits of Islamists vanish?

Will the decline in world oil extraction reverse itself?

Will we go back in time to the magical 1950s when petroleum was cheap and seemingly unlimited?

I'll give truth a rest when you give willful ignorance a rest.

Until then, no, I will not join your hypocritical support for Islam. If you want me to stop criticizing the financiers of Islam, e.g. you, then you'll just have to come here and behead me.

Since you haven't even attempted to refute my premise, namely that continuing to squander petroleum to feed your mobility addiction directly supports and promotes Islam, I conclude that you are fully aware that you cannot refute my premise.

So, on one hand you know that supporting Islam is bad. But you think of your mobility addiction as good. To persist in your addiction, you have to do something you view as bad. When I remind you of how your actions contradict your stated values, your emotional brain serves up a big dose of cognitive dissonance. And you react just as people beset by cognitive dissonance routinely do: by attempting to silence all reminders of your internal contradictions.

Your refusal to even attempt to think logically about the inescapable link between your energy consumption habits and the continued growth of Islam is quite alarming, to put it mildly. Because you are humanity's best hope - unlike theists who have worked hard to eradicate rationality from their minds, you actually know how to think rationally. If you refuse to think rationally when it counts, then who can?

Consider, as atheists we routinely pester theists with inconvenient truths that make them feel uncomfortable. We revel in this, in fact. Making wishful thinking dumbshits uncomfortable is fun. We like to watch them twist and stew and get upset as they struggle and sink in a quicksand of illogic.

You can dish it out. Are you man enough to take it?

If fans of Richard Dawkins are incapable of critical thinking on the topics of peak oil and Islam, what are the odds of, say, the Christian right mustering a rational thought on these topics?

Why are you afraid of committing yourself to rationality? Do you really believe that clinging to wishful thinking is a better option?

In any case, while Sam Harris points out the massive conspiracy to silence criticism of Islam (trying to silence critics - there's a strategy you can relate to), Sam overlooks the one permissible criticism of Islam that every first-world politician routinely makes (at least, George W. Bush routinely makes it) - pointing out how deplorable it is to be "dependent on foreign oil."

Now, what does that phrase really mean? Does George W. Bush deplore the fact that the U.S. imports oil from Canada, Mexico, and Brazil? Unlikely. These nations are friendly to the U.S. and valued trading partners. No, when a politician decries "foreign oil," that is clearly a euphemism for "Islam."

Come on people, connect the staggeringly obvious dots. Western politicians virtually to a (wo)man are falling over each other to demonize "foreign oil." They can't come right out and say what they really mean, which is "We have to stop sending hundreds of billions of dollars to Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Libya, et al., because lots of that money ends up promoting Islam and Islamic terrorism, and blowing up our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan", but everybody with an IQ above room temperature knows (or has no excuse for not knowing) exactly what they mean.

This is the permissible way to criticize Islam, by explaining exactly what is wrong with depending on foreign oil. We have a green light to criticize our dependence on foreign oil i.e. Islam all we want. Not only may we criticize this dependence, politicians would like some help from people who are smart enough to think of ways to overcome it.

If the West is going to overcome its dependence on "foreign oil" i.e. Islam, the solution is going to come from scientists and engineers. That's us! The kind of people who read a site like richarddawkins.net are the kind of people who can actually do something about "foreign oil" i.e. Islam.

If the truth makes you uncomfortable, then I will tell you to do exactly what I tell theists to do when truth makes them uncomfortable: grow up and free your mind from wishful thinking. Experience the pleasures of thinking clearly.

The closest a human can come to true happiness, as far as I can see, is to be free, insofar as possible, from internal value conflicts. Such a person is capable of thinking rationally about any fact which comes along, because he or she is free from the cognitive dissonance which generates the urge to censor.

If thinking about reality upsets you, wait until you experience reality.

As Robert Ringer said, "If you ignore reality, it automatically works against you."

19. Losing Our Spines to Save Our Necks

Comment #175465 by Teratornis on May 5, 2008 at 1:21 pm

Comment #175340 by rod-the-farmer:

OK, Sam, count me in. What do you suggest we rationalist foot soldiers do to help ?

I'm not Sam, but it doesn't take a neuroscientist to figure out why the West quakes in terror of offending Islamic sensibilities. Check the list of who has what's left of the world's petroleum:

http://www.energyinst.org.uk/education/natural/3.htm

The top five nations in the list, and six of the top ten, have solid Islamic majorities. The top nation, Saudi Arabia, is explicitly an Islamist theocracy.

Very few modern industrial nations are self-sufficient in petroleum or petroleum substitutes. Of those that are, perhaps only Brazil and Canada appear relatively secure for the longer term (Brazil due to its domestic oil extraction (which is not sustainable) and its vigorous sugar cane ethanol biofuels industry (which may be sustainable), and Canada due to its Athabasca tar sands (which will last for a while at current extraction rates, but at immense cost to its environment)). Oil extraction in the non-OPEC countries collectively peaked in the late 1990s and has been declining since. Most industrialized countries are dangerously dependent on petroleum imports, including the world's largest importer, the U.S. The U.K. enjoyed self-sufficiency during the 1980s and 1990s, but now the North Sea oilfields have peaked and are rapidly declining, returning the U.K. to the list of net oil importers.

Petroleum is essential for modern industrial economies. Much of the world relies heavily on petroleum for transportation, industrial agriculture, and petrochemicals.

If OPEC decided to stop exporting oil, the industrial powers would probably all collapse in a matter of weeks. Shortly there would be massive famines throughout the Third World, and possibly even in the developed world, as agriculture and food transport would be severely disrupted.

The price of oil has increased about sixfold since 2003 (from ~$20/bbl to $120/bbl at the last market close). This has delivered a tremendous windfall to the top exporters, especially to the largest of all, the theocratic state of Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia does not spend all of its oil wealth on superyachts and luxury automobiles. Quite a bit goes to promote Wahhabism:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wahhabism

as well as to vast "charity" work throughout the Muslim world, such as the financing of madrassas which indoctrinate the exploding Muslim population to hate the West.

If you are troubled by the petroleum-fueled rise of Islam, then the obvious logical response is to reduce your personal consumption of petroleum, and to persuade as many other people as you can to consume less petroleum.

Petroleum is a fungible quantity, which means the price of petroleum almost anywhere follows the global price on NYMEX and other exchanges. So even if nations like the U.S. were not directly importing the huge quantities of petroleum from nations like Saudi Arabia that they are, any consumption of petroleum adds to aggregate demand and thus drives up the price that each seller gets.

It is troubling that Sam and the other Horsemen tend to remain silent on the petroleum issue, perhaps because all of them are personally fond of petroleum-fueled jet travel. This is one of the most egregious forms of petroleum addiction, because the product being moved is nothing more than information, and information can travel cheaply in wires resulting in drastically lower donations to Middle Eastern oil barons. In the case of our Horsemen, this lapse is especially troubling because they are among the most intelligent living humans, and thus they are easily intelligent enough to master modern telecommunication technology sufficiently well to move their ideas without moving their bodies. We cannot expect the average working person to quickly grasp all the cybernetic arcana necessary to work efficiently, on their own anyway, but for the smartest living humans this is child's play.

Personal fondnesses aside, it is difficult to defeat an enemy by throwing ever-increasing piles of money at it. It seems our strategy with Islam is to hope we can modernize it by donating all our money to it, and by prostrating our economies to the control of distant unsympathetic strangers. So far this strategy is not working.

We cannot expect our governments to seriously confront Islam when our governments and our citizens have chosen to trade their precious birthright of freedom for a mess of petroleum pottage.

Pretending to care about the problems Sam raises is not the same as actually caring. Think about that the next time you decide to get in a petroleum-powered vehicle and travel somewhere. Is that trip really necessary for accomplishing whatever you are trying to accomplish? And if it is, do you really need to accomplish it? And if you do, do you really need to drive somewhere with empty seats?

20. Shaw TV Interview with Richard Dawkins

Comment #175425 by Teratornis on May 5, 2008 at 11:42 am

Comment #175253 by MPhil:

Just recently, I was talking to a person who, when the discussion came to the point of religion being a source of violence, and the scriptures recommending violence and other unacceptable things, said:

"Well, it's all a matter of interpretation"... the dialogue then went as follows:

Me:"Of course it is. The only reason European Christianity doesn't torture and kill people anymore is because they assimilated to the moral Zeitgeist. Look at the Islamic theocracies - they haven't had to do that so far."

She:"Right. As I said, you have to interpret scripture correctly, and some are just closer to the truth."

At this point the discussion veered in the wrong direction: toward generalities rather than specifics. Anybody can (and does) imagine scripture says anything generally.

Anchoring the discussion firmly in specifics gives less wiggle room. At this point you might have opened your Bible (or her Bible) to some specific passages, and then asked her to interpret those passes. Exactly how does she interpret this passage, for example:

http://www.ocupc.com/Bible/1Timothy.html
Chapter 2
8 I will therefore that men pray every where, lifting up holy hands, without wrath and doubting.
9 In like manner also, that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety; not with broided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array;
10 But (which becometh women professing godliness) with good works.
11 Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection.
12 But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.
13 For Adam was first formed, then Eve.
14 And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.
15 Notwithstanding she shall be saved in childbearing, if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety.

Does the woman you spoke to wear jewelry? Does she style her hair? Does she wear nice clothes? Does she teach men or have authority over any men? Does she vote for any women candidates? Does she learn in silence with all subjection?

How does she interpret this passge to mean anything other than what it plainly says, and what Christians down through the centuries understood it to mean?

The only way out for the modern woman is to reject that passage (and other similar passages) of scripture as thoroughly as the modern homosexual rejects the passages against homosexuality. But that raises the question of how do we know which scriptures to reject, and which to keep? Is everyone free to reject whatever scripture they don't like?

Also, whenever someone talks about interpreting away the bothersome bits of the Bible, quote:

2 Peter 1:20, "Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation."

Talking about scripture generally without quoting any specific scripture is like walking a dog on an infinite leash. One might as well have no leash.

Me: "You're not seriously claiming that just because the interpretation of their holy books of moderates conforms to our ethical standards, it therefore must be closer to a so called 'true interpretation'? How would you know that? What makes you think there is such a thing. Where is the evidence?"

She: "Does everything have to be provable?"

Me: "Not 'provable', but every statement about alleged matters-of-fact about the world has to be testable."

She: "But why?"

Ask her how much money she could scrape together by liquidating all her investments, selling everything she owns, and borrowing from everyone who trusts her.

Ask her if she will lend you all that money. Promise to pay her back double in one week.

Does she require some evidence that your investment plan is sound before she trusts you with all her money?

Before she gets on an airplane, does she require some evidence that the airplane is well-maintained, and someone is checking to make sure the crew is well-qualified to fly, and is not drunk?

If she is waiting to board an airplane, and she sees each of the ten airplanes ahead of hers crash and explode on takeoff, one by one, will she still board her airplane? (This is hypothetical, because the airport would shut down after the first crash, but suppose the airplanes just kept taking off and crashing. Most people would probably start to think twice about flying that day.)

You could promise that regardless of what she may think of you at the moment, if she consents to have sex with you, you will give her the best sex of her life. Will she believe you and immediately rip off her clothes, or will she treat your claim with some skepticism? Most women tend to be skeptical of a man's claims of sexual prowess - at least when I try it. Perhaps next time I will remember to ask, "Does everything have to be provable?"

The real question is not "Does everything have to be provable?" but "What does not have to be provable?"

With a little reflection she should realize that most people either demand proof for anything with real-world consequences, or they later regret failing to demand proof before getting suckered.

Me: "Why? Because otherwise no claim to correctness can ever have any epistemic justification. None at all. I might as well claim that there is an invisible pink unicorn standing right behind you."

She: "Yes, you cannot disprove that!"

Me: "Aside from the fact that I can on logical grounds (No entity can at the same time be 'invisible' and 'pink'),

That depends. "Invisible" is a subjective property, so it's not clear that "invisible" means "invisible to everyone" as you seem to imply. China, for example, is invisible to me right now, because I'm sitting on the other side of the Earth, but I have no reason to doubt the existence of China, because I get a lot of indirect evidence about it. It's hard for me to imagine a sufficiently vast conspiracy which could have fabricated all the information about China I have received indirectly through wires, airwaves, and the personal accounts I have heard from people who claim to be from China or to have visited it.

China may be visible to lots of people, but it is invisible to me right now.

Invisibility in the narrowest sense would mean a given observer cannot see an object now. In the broadest sense, invisibility might mean no observer can obtain any information from the object. Not even God could be that invisible, because if God was that invisible, nobody could claim to "know" God. We can only "know" things we can receive information from, either directly or indirectly. Thus we can only "know" things that somehow exchange energy or particles with the Universe.

Even back when the far side of the Moon was invisible to humans, humans could still reliably infer its existence by observing the gravitational effect of the Moon on other objects, which fixed the Moon's mass, and therefore fixed the possible dimensions of the far side of the Moon. Humans could not directly see the far side of the Moon, but they could obtain some information from it.

that's the point. There can be no evidence for it. I say it is so - why don't you believe me? Just because of that. If there are statements about alleged facts that need no evidence, what justified your rejection of any such claim. It's all just arbitrary then."

She: "But... but you can't compare god to an invisible pink unicorn."

Me: "Really? Why not. I just did - works great. Now if you'd excuse me - I need a drink."

What she really means is "You can't compare the emotions I have been conditioned to associate with the word 'God' to the emotions I have been conditioned to associate with the word 'unicorn'."

Your challenge is to get her to become consciously aware of her emotions. It might help if she could understand her emotions do not exist just outside of her skull. For most people that is a huge leap of inference they have yet to make.

Needless to say I didn't get through to her.

It's sickening, really.

Why is this sickening? Richard Dawkins frequently mentions how wonderful the universe is, how much wonder and awe he experiences by observing and trying to understand it. This woman is part of the universe. Don't you find the (mal?)function of her brain as wonderful as the function of the stars, galaxies, and nebulae that we see in photos from the Hubble telescope?

We are able to appreciate the way the stars look because we don't approach them with the expectation that they should look any particular way. Imagine if we insisted the stars must spell out the words "Hello, world!" Then we might get angry and frustrated at the stars for failing to cooperate, insuring continued need for drinks. But if we just let the stars be stars, and try to figure out why the stars are the way they are, then we don't have to get so angry at them.

Why would we divide up the universe into things we think are wonderful, and things we think are deplorable? Why can't it all be wonderful when we use science to understand it?

Rather than be disturbed by human thinking, why not be fascinated by it? There are scientists who try to explain how people such as this woman come up with the words they string together, just as there are other scientists who try to explain how planets come to exist. People, planets, both are wonderful subjects for scientific study. The potential payoff from studying people is probably orders of magnitude higher than the potential payoff from studying distant astronomical objects - which means people are even more wonderful than the stars.

Frustration comes from not knowing what to do in a given situation. An ignorant savage must feel lots of frustration, because the world seems like a confusing, capricious place. An educated person is able to make a bit more sense of the world, knowing something about what the weather may do tomorrow and so on. With more understanding comes less frustration and more efficiency.

If you're going to lock horns with people who don't think like you do, then you need to know why they think the way they do. Science isn't quite all the way there yet, but it's made some useful headway. You might start by reviewing:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases

and pretty much everything linked from:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Thinking

For example, everybody (including the woman you spoke to) finds they are unable to get past someone else's cognitive biases from time to time. Perhaps this woman was unable to persuade one of her friends to do something that was clearly better than what her friend did instead. It's perfectly clear to everyone that everyone else departs from logic routinely, with bad consequences. Get someone to recognize this, and maybe they will recognize that they, too, have some garbaged thinking in their heads.

Then try to make them aware of some belief they hold which is the result of one of these cognitive biases. Don't go straight for the heavily-defended God belief. Instead, follow Sun Tzu's advice to attack where the enemy is weakest, in this case, some invalid belief the person holds which doesn't induce too much hysteria when they analyze it. The goal is to get a person to recognize the inherent difference between truth vs. emotional certainty. It's possible to be 100% sure of things that just aren't so.

A common example is when we trust another person completely, and they betray us. All the emotional certainty we had about that person turned out to be completely worthless. In fact, our misplaced certainty itself created the harm, by making us vulnerable to a reality smackdown.

Ask this woman if she ever had the experience of being very sure about something and then finding out she was very wrong about it.

21. A New Jack Chick Tract: Moving On Up!

Comment #175071 by Teratornis on May 4, 2008 at 10:30 am

Actually Jack Chick does a lot of our work for us, with his energetic attacks on every religion but his own.

When religions expend their resources battling each other for market share, they are less able to unite around political causes such as outlawing abortion, banning stem cell research, and undermining science education.

As a counterexample, check out the get-a-room interview of Ben Stein by Pat Robertson. They were too busy fawning over each other to mention their incredibly divisive doctrinal differences, starting with the rather important question of whether Jesus was God.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4JYphxcIsE

It seems to me that when two men are poles apart on a question they cannot but consider foundational, their alliance of convenience must be to some degree consciously cynical.

At least Jack Chick is intellectually honest enough to point out that religions have differences that really matter.

Since nobody is 100% rational, the more rational a person is, the more people he must inevitably disagree with. Jack Chick is by no means 100% rational, but he at least recognizes the common thread - absolute unmitigated bullshit - which runs through all religions other than the one that suckered him.

22. A New Jack Chick Tract: Moving On Up!

Comment #175056 by Teratornis on May 4, 2008 at 9:51 am

Comment #175053 by Rawhard Dickins:

It's amazing how Jack Chick goes to the trouble of making entire films to criticise Mormons, The Qur'an and Johovahs without seeing any fault at all within Christianity.

And let's not forget Catholics:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Chick

Chick believes many of the world's problems are deliberately caused by the Catholic Church. He credits the Catholic Church with founding Islam,[21] The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints,[22] and the Jehovah's Witnesses,[23] persecuting Jews and starting the Holocaust,[24][15] and founding and promoting Communism.[15]

The guy is a real piece of work.

23. A New Jack Chick Tract: Moving On Up!

Comment #175055 by Teratornis on May 4, 2008 at 9:42 am

Comment #174930 by comet halley:

This child abuse of threatening children with Hell has got to stop.
New laws are needed.

Perhaps, but I did not need such laws. I was threatened with Hell as a child, and I believed the threats, but it hasn't occurred to me to equate my religious upbringing with abuse. There might be some people who experience post-traumatic stress disorder over it, but I don't, and I had a pretty solid dose of it.

There are some episodes from my childhood that I recall with horror, but that isn't one of them.

I would prefer to avoid watering down the word "abuse" with things that aren't really abuse. Hitch too many wagons to one rhetorical horse, and soon the poor horse cannot move. ("Racism" is another vastly overworked rhetorical horse. And not even death has lightened Hitler's rhetorical burden.)

In my case, along with the Hellfire stories, my parents also urged me to read books and take schooling seriously. I took to libraries like a duck takes to water, and I lost my faith by reading.

I would consider myself to have been "abused" as a child if my parents had successfully discouraged me from reading and exploring in libraries. As it was, they did the right thing, even if it was unwitting.

While childhood indoctrination certainly creates a lot of intellectual momentum, in the final analysis I prefer to think everyone is personally responsible for what they choose to believe.

Humanity is also a work in progress. Very few people had the luxury of growing up in environments of perfect logical correctness.

I also question the degree to which we can legislate the requirement to think logically. For comparison, the U.S. has tried to outlaw a number of recreational drugs, with decidedly mixed results.

Some people say all drugs should be legal, despite the harmful effects some drugs have on some people or those around them, because they claim the overall cost of illegalizing drugs is greater. Or maybe because they are just a bunch of stoners.

Passing laws against drugs hardly eliminates drugs, so I'd question whether passing laws that infringe on the free speech rights of parents would be any more effective. How would anyone enforce such a law? Would we monitor every communication between parent and child?

If you really want to abuse a child, raise that child to grow up addicted to automobiles. Automobiles inflict another 9/11 worth of violence on America every month in the best of times. In the worst of times, automobile addiction could lead to the collapse of industrial civilization, as the supply of liquid fuel from petroleum continues its remorseless post-peak decline. A population which has needlessly addicted itself to the most wasteful technology ever invented for moving information - dragging brains around in motor vehicles - may not be able to think rationally in time to maintain its economy as nature imposes new game rules.

24. A New Jack Chick Tract: Moving On Up!

Comment #175050 by Teratornis on May 4, 2008 at 9:19 am

Comment #174885 by Jack Rawlinson:

Teratornis: I should have excluded kids from that comment! I meant any adult that still takes Chick seriously isn't going to manage the whole growing up deal...

I agree that the older one gets, the more entrenched one's belief system usually becomes, regardless of what one happens to believe. Nonetheless, a few people in every age cohort change their minds.

Once upon a time, virtually the whole world was religious. Progress in science and philosophy led to a gradual chipping away of faith, with the process farthest along among intellectuals. Getting from a 99.9% religious population to some lower number almost certainly required there to have been quite a few adults who shrugged off their childhood religious indoctrination at some point.

Probably no two people react to a given argument in exactly the same way. An argument which appears irrefutable to one person might simply not "register" on another. But if that other person hears the argument enough times, and worded in enough different ways, eventually it might "click."

It would be interesting if we could understand the neurological basis of this flash of insight. Then we could approach religion as a straightforward debugging problem.

The fact that humans are cognitively diverse and slow to change their minds might not be entirely bad. It might slightly reduce the chances for one single compelling bad idea to sweep through an entire population and get them all to do something suicidal.

25. A New Jack Chick Tract: Moving On Up!

Comment #174874 by Teratornis on May 3, 2008 at 5:30 pm

Comment #174792 by Jack Rawlinson:

Sadly, my experiences since then have led me to the conclusion that the sort of person who can ever take a Jack Chick tract seriously isn't ever going to be able to grow up.

I used to hand out Jack Chick tracts when I was a kid. Never say never.

26. Pat Condell: Anthology DVD available now!

Comment #174872 by Teratornis on May 3, 2008 at 5:22 pm

Comment #174796 by MPhil:

Furthermore, when the Americans and British fire-bombed German cities (and the Americans leveled Japan), they made no distinction between moderate and extreme Germans. They probably killed any number of Germans who hated Hitler.

What does this have to do with the denazification after the war?

I cited two examples of the Allies lumping people together for collective punishment. That looks clear from the context in my post, upon re-reading.

I'm not justifying collective punishment, just pointing out that we have a long and glorious history of it.

The allies couldn't eradicate the mindset completely (nationalism and antisemitism existed and exist everywhere), but they could see to it that it wasn't legal for the state to promote this anymore, that people who committed the crimes went to jail and that openly denying the holocaust and calling upon people to persecute a certain group.

Yes, the Allies attempted to outlaw a belief system, and for the most part seem to have succeeded, because complex belief systems tend to have difficulty spreading in a purely grassroots kind of way. Ideologies need a class of professional ideologues to drive them, and it is difficult for such people to function efficiently without safe havens.

I'm not saying the same nations that outlawed Nazism should now outlaw Islam, just that if they decided to do that, there would be precedent.

Had the Nazis styled their ideology as a religion, there would probably still be a thriving Nazi church today.

What does the systematic eradication of civilians, the bombing of cities with phosphorous bombs in order to kill as many men, women and children have to do with that? Two wrongs don't make a right.

Those are two forms of collective punishment: bombing the good and bad Germans together, and then later outlawing the Nazi party, thereby punishing the good and bad Nazis together.

Undoubtedly there were some good Nazis, but they got punished for the sins of the bad Nazis, by having their party outlawed (and their country bombed flat).

I re-read what I wrote, and I'm not seeing anything that could be logically construed as approval for the mass murder of German and Japanese noncombatants during WWII. If it could be, then I'm a bad writer and a bad proofreader. When I say what is (or what was), I do not necessarily say what I think should be (or should have been). See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is-ought_problem

On the other hand, I'm not saying I can blame the Americans and British for bombing civilians in WWII. It's easy for us to judge them in retrospect now, but those were some desperate times, and if bombing civilians had any chance of shortening the war, I can certainly understand the calculation people made.

If I had been one of the soldiers scheduled to take part in the invasion of Japan, I probably would have been in favor of dropping as many nukes as it took to cancel the invasion, given the heavy casualties U.S. forces had just absorbed to take Okinawa. Military planners were expecting the conquest of the Japanese home islands to kill at least ten times as many U.S. troops, given the determination of Japanese soldiers to fight to the last man.

I do have to wonder, however, why the U.S. did not drop a demonstration bomb on a lightly populated area, to show what its nukes could do. Part of the problem was the very limited number of atomic bombs that were available at the time (evidently it was only the two that were actually dropped), so every bomb had to count, I suppose.

27. Pat Condell: Anthology DVD available now!

Comment #174779 by Teratornis on May 3, 2008 at 1:22 pm

Comment #172958 by Ramases:

I am surprised that so many people are fawning on the ravings of someone who appears to me to be little more than an ignorant xenophobic bigot and a perpetuator of hate speech.

When you say "ignorant xenophobic bigot" are you putting as much hate into your words as I am hearing?

I say this as an atheist who thinks it is great to have a strong intelligent and rational anti-religious movement. But there is a very big jump between arguing against religion and hijacking the atheist movement to encourage hatred towards a relatively powerless group of mostly immigrant people.

I don't know you, but you write like an educated person, and you definitely have access to a computer, so I'm going to guess you enjoy something like a First World lifestyle.

At the moment, even the most energy-efficient First Worlders (who happen to be the Swiss, who at last accounting were more than twice as efficient as the profligate Americans) are consuming quite a few times more energy from fossil fuels per capita than the world's poorest people enjoy.

This wasn't much more than a minor embarrassment back in the happy days of the 1980s and 1990s during the what will probably turn out to have been the last oil glut in history:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980s_oil_glut

However, today the game rules have changed. Just as peak oil theorists had predicted for decades, the world's annual extraction of oil peaked in 2006 and is now falling remorselessly behind demand, which continues to grow. Demand for oil continues to grow because the world has about 70 million new mouths to feed each year, most of them in the poor regions of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. As long as oil and natural gas were abundant and cheap, agronomists found increasingly clever ways to use more of these unsustainable finite resources to jack up food production.

Now the party is over, and all the world's oil consumers are locked into a Darwinian economic bidding war for increasingly scarce petroleum. Already there are food riots in dozens of countries, where millions upon millions of poor people are suddenly finding themselves priced out of a subsistence diet by First World fuel consumers who can afford to spend more on a tank of petrol than an impoverished Third Worlder can spend to feed his family for a year. That is roughly the tradeoff between petroleum for energy vs. petroleum for food. The tradeoff is direct when we compare the amount of maize it takes to generate a tank of bioethanol, but even if there is no diversion of grain to first-generation biofuels, we still spend about 10 calories of fossil fuel to produce 1 calorie of food. Therefore, when the supply of petroleum falls short of demand, the market will allocate scarcity by driving up the price of food along with the price of fuel.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_price_crisis

Listen to what the guy actually says - he talks of the "demographic profile" of muslims and the risk they will overwhelm us because of their breeding patterns. (Would he have the courage to say this about Jews or Christians?)

OK, tell me which is morally preferable:

1. Pointing out the obvious, that in a world that is crashing into resource limits, there is no positive growth rate in population which is sustainable.

2. Not pointing out the obvious, while continuing to burn a First World lifestyle's ration of fossil fuels, thereby virtually guaranteeing that some of those exponentiating Third Worlders who need that same fuel in the form of food are going to make the ultimate sacrifice to support our comfort.

I don't know about you, but I prefer honesty over hypocrisy.

In times of crisis, critical thinking is the only kind of thinking which offers any kind of solution. That means facing all the facts squarely, even the ones which are scary or offensive.

Well guess what Pat? Religions don't have demographic breeding profiles -

Actually they do. Ask any demographer. The prime determinant of birthrate is the status of women. The lower the status of women in a society, the more children women have. Conversely, the more freedom women have, the fewer children they usually decide to bear, although it may take women a couple of generations after they attain freedom to realize they want fewer children.

Since Islam in most of its current flavors holds women in low regard, the birthrates in Islamic countries are correspondingly high. Unsustainably high. In fact there are food riots in Egypt, Pakistan, and other majority Islamic countries right now.

We can expect food riots to hit even the fabulously wealthy Saudi Arabia at some point, because Saudi Arabia's population is exploding and its oil extraction should peak within a few years. The Saudis do have an immense resource of sustainable energy - the abundant sunshine beating down on their vast deserts - but they have not intelligently invested their oil wealth to exploit it, preferring instead to squander their bonanza on superyachts, luxury automobiles, and other frippery.

Birthrates are lower among most Jews, and among the Christians in the developed countries, because those religions have made some progress at learning to regard women as people, thereby ignoring what their holy books say.

However, birthrates are still high among Catholics in Latin America, and they will pay a heavy price for their foolishness as the oil crash remorselessly unfolds.

religion is about belief, no matter what ethnic group someone comes from.

And beliefs influence actions, with real-world consequences. Such as how rapidly a population exponentiates.

Talking about a demographic profile, and the risk they will overwhelm the rest of us is crossing a very important line, into the region of xenophobic and bigotry.

Every nation which polices its borders crossed that line centuries ago.

If you really want to demonstrate that you are free from bigotry, you can donate as much of your wealth as you like to feed the exponentiating poor, and then see if you can feed twice as many in 30 years.

On the other hand, if you consume more than your per capita share of the world's oil wealth, secure behind well-defended national borders, then you are having the same effect as if you were to bomb a refugee camp.

Condel not only on distinction between moderate and extreme muslims, but also none between people who come from a muslim background and extreme muslims. I have some experience in this - I worked as a volunteer with refugees, many from muslim backgrounds for a number of years and won a human rights award for my efforts.

Do you think it was wrong for the Western Allies to tell the Nazis in 1945 that they had to stop being Nazis?

The Allies made no distinction between "moderate" and "extreme" Nazis. They decided Nazi ideas were wrong, and they outlawed the whole belief system, at least in Germany.

Furthermore, when the Americans and British fire-bombed German cities (and the Americans leveled Japan), they made no distinction between moderate and extreme Germans. They probably killed any number of Germans who hated Hitler.

I know the discrimination immigrants from muslim nations face, regardless of their personal beliefs. It is no longer a cool it once was to be alertly racist, so people pretend to be "anti-muslim". In practice it works out the same.

Well, let's see. If you are saying it is wrong to generalize about Muslims, then why do you generalize all criticism of Muslims as "racism"?

You should also realize that by trying to hitch more things to the trump card of "racism," you are watering down its effectiveness. Read the story about the boy who cried wolf. Besides, the popular notion of "race" doesn't even have a rock-solid scientific basis, so you are attempting a shaky inference to a trump card which is already shaky on factual grounds.

A friend of mine is a refugee from Iran. He was in prison in Iran for two years for opposing the government, and he regards himself as an atheist. Yet he stills gets abuse from the anti-immigrant right, who slag him off as a "bloody muslim".

Evidently he finds a few invectives easier to tolerate than, say, another two years in an Iranian prison. Who knows, maybe your friend is smart enough to understand how the idea of freedom of speech makes wherever he is now better than where he grew up. When speech is free, lots of people will say things that aren't very nice. That's the price we pay for getting to say what we like.

As an American, I get to watch jihadist mobs burning American flags and shouting "Death to America!" I can certainly understand why Muslims generalize about all Americans because of what the American government does. And I expect Muslims to return the favor by understanding why everybody else generalizes about them.

Has anybody in charge of Islam thought about hiring a public relations firm? Someone should tell those idiots just how deeply they offend everybody else by strapping on explosives and blowing up families at a restaurant, or by hijacking airliners and flying them into buildings.

I mean if you wanted to persuade everybody to hate you, could you think of a more effective advertising campaign?

28. Museums teach society lacking in science literacy

Comment #174610 by Teratornis on May 3, 2008 at 12:02 am

Someone should teach kids about peak oil, since their odds of making it to adulthood depend entirely on how many people understand Hubbert peak theory and do the right things early enough.

29. Was the new finger a 'natural' miracle?

Comment #174609 by Teratornis on May 2, 2008 at 11:57 pm

I get a lot of e-mails that promise to enlarge certain body parts. None of them have mentioned pixie dust yet. I suppose if they do, they will also mention the need to chop off the tip before sprinkling.

30. Bill Good Interviews Richard Dawkins

Comment #174606 by Teratornis on May 2, 2008 at 11:33 pm

Comment #173587 by Calvinb:

Who else dies a little inside everytime an exasperated theist brings up Hitler and Stalin?

Not me. I'm still waiting for a better response than "Not my atheism!" Or the moustache argument. Or the "you shouldn't be in the dictator business..." argument.

I'm not impressed by the argument that Stalin didn't do his deeds "in the name of" atheism.

I don't know about anybody else, but I ask more of my belief system than plausible deniability. I'd not only like my beliefs to be based on evidence and logic, I'd also like them to reduce the chance that we get the next mass-murdering monomaniacal despot.

As much as we detest the nonsense of, say, Christianity, could we at least entertain the idea that some sects of Christianity haven't fielded too many dictators yet? I've lived around Christians all my life, even spent some time being one, and from what I have seen, being surrounded by garden-variety Christians is not as bad as being thrown in the Gulag. Although I merely speculate about the Gulag as I haven't been thrown there yet.

If there is any chance that the atheistic component of Communism made it even slightly easier for Stalin to take power and run wild, then I think we had better stop passing the buck on this issue.

Why? Not because beliefs need to be harmless to be true, but because scientific progress is continuously eroding religion.