Geoff's Blog

Yeah well you can prove anything with science:

What do people do when confronted with scientific evidence that challenges their pre-existing view? Often they will try to ignore it, intimidate it, buy it off, sue it for libel, or reason it away….

Professor Geoffrey Munro took around a hundred students and told them they were participating in a study on “judging the quality of scientific information”, now published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology. First, their views on whether homosexuality might be associated with mental illness were assessed, and then they were divided into two groups.

The first group were given five research studies that confirmed their pre-existing view. Students who thought homosexuality was associated with mental illness, for example, were given papers explaining that there were more gay people in psychological treatment centres than the general population. The second group were given research that contradicted their pre-existing view….

As you would expect, the people whose pre-existing views had been challenged were more likely to say that science simply cannot be used to measure whether homosexuality is associated with mental illness.

But then, moving on, the researchers asked a further set of questions, about whether science could be usefully deployed to understand all kinds of stuff, all entirely unrelated to stereotypes about homosexuality: “the existence of clairvoyance,” “the effectiveness of spanking as a disciplinary technique for children,” “the effect of viewing television violence on violent behavior,” “the accuracy of astrology in predicting personality traits,” and “the mental and physical health effects of herbal medications”….

People whose pre-existing stereotypes about homosexuality had been challenged by the scientific evidence presented to them were more inclined to believe that science had nothing to offer, on any question, not just on homosexuality, when compared with people whose views on homosexuality had been reinforced.

When presented with unwelcome scientific evidence, it seems, in a desperate bid to retain some consistency in their world view, people would rather conclude that science in general is broken.

Believe It or Not:

On matters of simple historical and textual fact … Hitchens’ book [god is Not Great] is so extraordinarily crowded with errors that one soon gives up counting them. Just to skim a few off the surface: He speaks of the ethos of Dietrich Bonhoeffer as “an admirable but nebulous humanism,” which is roughly on a par with saying that Gandhi was an apostle of the ruthless conquest and spoliation of weaker peoples. He conflates the histories of the first and fourth crusades. He repeats as fact the long discredited myth that Christians destroyed the works of Aristotle and Lucretius, or systematically burned the books of pagan antiquity, which is the very opposite of what did happen. He speaks of the traditional hostility of “religion” (whatever that may be) to medicine, despite the monastic origins of the modern hospital and the involvement of Christian missions in medical research and medical care from the fourth century to the present. He tells us that countless lives were lost in the early centuries of the Church over disputes regarding which gospels were legitimate (the actual number of lives lost is zero). He asserts that Myles Coverdale and John Wycliffe were burned alive at the stake, although both men died of natural causes. He knows that the last twelve verses of Mark 16 are a late addition to the text, but he imagines this means that the entire account of the Resurrection is as well. He informs us that it is well known that Augustine was fond of the myth of the Wandering Jew, though Augustine died eight centuries before the legend was invented.

Interesting.

Wow, I just discovered two sources that describe me to a tee. The first, Study Sheds Light on What Makes People Shy:

About 20 percent of people are born with a personality trait called sensory perception sensitivity (SPS) that can manifest itself as the tendency to be inhibited, or even neuroticism. The trait can be seen in some children who are “slow to warm up” in a situation but eventually join in, need little punishment, cry easily, ask unusual questions or have especially deep thoughts, the study researchers say….

Individuals with this highly sensitive trait prefer to take longer to make decisions, are more conscientious, need more time to themselves in order to reflect, and are more easily bored with small talk, research suggests.

Previous work has also shown that compared with others those with a highly sensitive temperament are more bothered by noise and crowds … and more easily startled. That is, the trait seems to confer sensitivity all around….

Biologists are beginning to agree that within one species there can be two equally successful “personalities.” The sensitive type, always a minority, chooses to observe longer before acting, as if doing their exploring with their brains rather than their limbs. The other type “boldly goes where no one has gone before,” the scientists say.

The sensitive individual’s strategy is not so advantageous when resources are plentiful or quick, aggressive action is required. But it comes in handy when danger is present, opportunities are similar and hard to choose between, or a clever approach is needed.

Those 20% are probably also the ones who do 80% of the work that has lasting value, i.e., that actually matters, in the long run.

The second source is in Mario Livio’s The Equation That Couldn’t Be Solved (p. 266). Based on interviews with very creative individuals, psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi “compiled a list of ten dimensions of complexity—ten pairs of apparently antithetical characteristics that are often both present in the creative minds. The list includes:”

1. Bursts of impulsiveness that punctuate periods of quiet and rest.
2. Being smart yet extremely naïve.
3. Large amplitude swings between extreme responsibility and irresponsibility.
4. A rooted sense of reality together with a hefty dose of fantasy and imagination.
5. Alternating periods of introversion and extroversion.
6. Being simultaneously humble and proud.
7. Psychological androgyny—no clear adherence to gender role stereotyping [i.e., "being on one hand very sensitive and more 'feminine' and on the other aggressive and offensive"].
8. Being rebellious and iconoclastic yet respectful to the domain of expertise and its history.
9. Being on one hand passionate but on the other objective about one’s own work.
10. Experiencing suffering and pain mingled with exhilaration and enjoyment.

Granted, it would be easy for the Forer Effect to work its way into those pairs of opposites, i.e., to a degree they could apply to anybody. But then, creativity is also meted out in degrees. And for myself, anyway, I’m at both of the extreme ends of each of those ten points.

It’s a fine balance between being sensitive and offensive, you know?

Fuck you.

You know David Rosenhan’s study about how diagnostic labels cause prejudicial and harmful treatment? From Lilienfeld et al.’s 50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology (p. 182):

Eight mentally healthy individuals—including Rosenhan himself—presented themselves to a total of 12 mental hospitals. According to plan, all pretended to exhibit mild anxiety and requested admission based on a supposed complain of unusual auditory hallucinations, namely hearing voices that repeated the words “empty,” “hollow,” and “thud.” Interestingly, all of these “pseudopatients” (fake patients) were admitted to the hospital: One was diagnosed with manic depression, the other 11 with schizophrenia. Once admitted, the pseudopatients stopped faking any symptoms of mental disorder. Aside from extensive note-taking for the purpose of data collection, the pseudopatients acted normally to see whether the hospital staff would discover their absence of illness and release them. Yet surprisingly, the pseudopatients were kept in the hospital for an average of 19 days, each with the same change in diagnosis. Their original condition was merely reclassified as “in remission,” meaning “no longer displaying symptoms of illness.” Rosenhan interpreted these findings to mean that mental health professionals can’t distinguish normality from abnormality, because all patients retained their original diagnoses upon discharge….

In a flurry of comments … scholars observed that Rosenhan … had used seriously flawed methodology, ignored relevant data, and reached uns0und conclusions. In perhaps the most devastating critique, Spitzer … contended that Rosenhan’s own data ironically offered the best evidence against his claims. For example, recall that all 12 pseudopatients’ discharge diagnoses were amended to “in remission.” This change means that the abnormal behavior noted at intake was no longer present at discharge. Spitzer gathered data suggesting that “in remission” diagnoses were extremely rare, if not unheard of, in psychiatric hospitals. The fact that all 12 pseudopatients’ diagnoses were changed in the same unusual way shows just how capably the staff recognized normal behavior when the pseudopatients stopped faking symptoms. As Spitzer noted, this fact counters Rosenhan’s claim that mental health professionals can’t distinguish normality from abnormality.

Unrelated, but from the same book (p. 249):

Research based on U.S. census reports suggests that an unusually large number of people live in places with names similar to their first names. For example, there are significantly more Georges living in Georgia than one would expect by chance, and the same holds for Louises living in Louisiana and Virginias living in Virginia…. This effect, which is small in magnitude, appears to result from people with certain names gravitating to places with similar names. This effect may reflect a form of “implicit egotism” in which people are drawn unconsciously to people, places, and things that resemble them.

Uh, yeah. Or it could result from parents naming their children in honor of the state they live in … or being “clever,” as when Mr. and Mrs. Thompson name their son Tommy, or Mr. and Mrs. Ball name their daughter Crystal. You could sort of settle that by splitting the above results based on whether the people were born in the state in question, or relocated (i.e., “gravitated to”) there; in the former case, there would obviously be no “implicit egotism” at work. I haven’t read the original study, but judging from the fact that the skeptical authors of the book didn’t bother to mention that highly-significant idea….

In related news, 96% of the girls named Kayleigh, living in the UK, were born after Marillion’s hit single of the same name. No word on whether they “gravitated to” the UK from elsewhere in the world….

Some psychological research indicates that dogs resemble their owners. In one study, judges matched the faces of dog owners to their dogs at significantly better than chance levels, although this was true only of purebred, not mixed, breeds….

Implicit egotism on the part of the (purebred) dogs, for choosing (wealthy, egocentic) owners who looked like them? Lilienfeld, et al., might think so….

(Has anyone tried that test with Paris Hilton’s or Sharon Osbourne’s pets?)

The skeptical authors also weigh in on Columbine (p. 162-5):

On the morning of April 20, 1999—perhaps not coincidentally, Adolph Hitler’s 110th birthday—two teenage students dressed in black trenchcoats strolled calmly into Columbine High School….

Interestingly, Harris and Klebold appeared to be anything but uncertain of themselves. Both were fascinated with Nazism and preoccupied with fantasies of world domination. Harris’s diaries revealed that he saw himself as morally superior to others and felt contempt for almost all of his peers.

Reminds me of myself, back when I still had some faith left in humanity.

I’m still not convinced about the “fascinated with Nazism” thing—for one thing, Klebold and Harris had originally planned the attack for the day before it happened, but had to delay it. So the “Hitler’s birthday” thing is obvious bullshit.

If they were fascinated with Nazism, there’s an easy explanation for that: In stark contrast to their powerless daily lives, Nazi role-playing allowed them membership in a very powerful group—a group which didn’t have to take shit from anyone.

The “skeptics,” again:

Harris and Klebold had frequently been teased [correction: bullied mercilessly] by classmates, and most commentators assumed that this mistreatment produced low self-esteem, bolstering Harris and Klebold’s risk for violence…. Tempting as it may be, we can’t draw the inference that because teasing [correction: merciless bullying] precedes violence, it necessarily produces it. Instead, Harris and Klebold’s high self-esteem may have led them to perceive the taunts of their classmates as threats to their inflated sense of self-worth, motivating them to seek revenge.

One’s jaw drops at reading such braindead skeptical “insight”—with Barry Beyerstein’s name on it, no less! Professor of fucking psychology at Simon Fraser! (though he died before the book was completed, so this may be someone else’s brain fart). A modicum of research, via Wikipedia, discloses:

In his journal, Klebold wrote about his view that he and Harris were god-like and more highly evolved than every other human being. His secret journal, however, records self-loathing and suicidal intentions.

From Brooks Brown’s No Easy Answers: The Truth Behind Death at Columbine (p. 20):

Like Dylan, Eric was exceptionally smart. And like Dylan, Eric saw the injustices of the world quite clearly, even as he was getting beat up [not merely "teased"] in the high school locker room or jumping to avoid the glass bottles thrown at him out of the passing cars of Columbine football players….

Kids are raised on the playgrounds of their schools, where they learn that “might makes right” and that physical brawn is a far more important asset than intelligence and cunning. Yet they also learn that when they fight back, they are punished by the people who are supposed to protect them and to dispense justice.

Dylan was harassed by kids who had never been taught [by their unfit parents and criminally irresponsible teachers/principals] why it’s wrong to beat up another classmate, or whose self-esteem was so crushed that they felt that had to destroy his, too, so theirs could be pumped up a little more.

The world, at its heart, has logical rules. Yet young people today are being taught that the opposite is true. Kids grow up in a world where they learn through experience that life is cruel, that their fellow human beings are mean-spirited bullies, and that basic questions about right and wrong are answered with rules that have no basis in reason other than “Because I said so.”

As a result, they hunt for something to believe in.

Not only that, but smart kids like Dylan and Eric (and Brooks, who tested 99th percentile as a kid) are able to figure out that the people are who “respected leaders in their communities” today were, twenty years ago, bullies throwing bottles out of cars at nerds … and that, twenty years from now, the same jocks who tormented them will be respected community leaders. Because people never really grow up, i.e., adults are really just teenagers with sagging breasts and wrinkles, not people who are in any way psychologically mature. Thus, the high-school-psychology bullying and in-grouping predictably never really stops. (I’ve experienced this in my thirties from pot-bellied MBA’s … and even in my forties, living in neighborhoods populated by shit-skin immigrants and shit-for-brains white proles.)

P. 251-2:

Dylan was angry with society, with the hand he had been dealt, and with a world where he couldn’t go a day without being spat it, mocked, or told he wasn’t good enough. He was made to believe that his dreams could never happen, and that the world would never get better….

I knew Dylan long enough to know that he didn’t start out as a monster. He became one. That what makes his fate so scary.

It’s a shame, too, because he had been accepted by the University of Arizona … to study computer design (i.e., Computer Engineering). He could be doing work today that the jocks who tormented him couldn’t understand, even if their trivial, worthless lives depended on it.

Just like Yours Truly. ‘Cause I didn’t start out as a (racist, sexist, etc.) monster either.

Married With Children had a great take on this (“growing up”), in their high-school reunion episode, where Peggy bumped into her old nemesis/competition, Connie Bender:

Connie: Peggy! “Peggy Wanker, don’t bother to thank her.”

Peggy: Connie! “Connie Bender, bring a friend, it won’t offend her.”

And then they walked straight past each other, their noses in the air, as if no time had passed at all. Which, in terms of maturity, it hadn’t.

Brown, p. 43, 50-1, 69:

Teachers would punish any kid who was involved in a fight, no matter who had started it. One time I was in the locker room after gym class when, without any provocation, a kid came up and kicked me square in the crotch. I immediately dropped to the ground, while my friend Matt Cornwell jumped on the offending kid and started throwing punches. All three of us wound up in the office.

Even though all three of us told the same story—the first kid even admitted that he’d kicked me first—all three of us were punished. I received a suspension simply because I’d been involved, even though I’d never thrown a single punch….

Sometimes kids would just ignore us. But often, we were targets. We were freshmen, and computer-geek freshmen at that. At lunchtime the jocks would kick our chairs, or push us down onto the table from behind. They would knock our food trays onto the floor, trip us, or throw food as we were walking by. When we sat down, they would pelt us with candy from another table. In the hallways, they would push kids into lockers and call them names while their friends stood by and laughed at the show….

Seniors at Columbine would do things like pour baby oil on the floor, then literally “go bowling” with freshmen; they would throw the kid across the floor, and since he couldn’t stop, he’d crash right into other kids while the jocks pointed and giggled….

One guy, a wrestler who everyone knew to avoid, liked to make kids get down on the ground and push pennies along the floor with their noses. This would happen during school hours, as kids were passing from one class to another. Teachers would see it and look the other way. “Boys will be boys,” they’d say, and laugh….

The bullies liked to propel paper clips at us with a rubber band. If a teacher saw you get hid, he or she did nothing. But as soon as you threw it back, or did something to defend yourself, you were done. The teacher would grab you and you would be in the office. We were the “undesirables,” and the teachers were just waiting for an excuse to nail us. The bullies knew it….

Two students repeatedly bullied a fifteen-year-old classmate in Physical Education class two  years before the shooting. “The victim was repeatedly subjected to ‘twisters,’ a form of pinching and twisting the skin”…. “Although the class was in session, the teacher didn’t acknowledge knowing what was taking place. Another form of bullying against this student, a practicing Jew, involved racial slurs and ethic intimidation, including threatening by the bullies to ‘build an oven and set him on fire.’ Each time a basket was made during P.E. basketball, the bullies would state, ‘that’s another Jew in the oven’”….

Jocks would call the girls who hung out with the Trench Coat Mafia “sluts” and “Nazi lesbians.” One day at lunch the jocks threw a bag full of ice water on a member of the group, which led to a fight outside. When security intervened, the Trench Coat Mafia kids wound up with three-day suspensions. The jocks who had started the fight were never even sent to the office.

I can tell you what I would have done if I had grown up in that environment: Bought a gun, and used it.

Page 202, 205:

Harris recalls [in their basement tapes] how he moved around so much with his military family and always had to start over, “at the bottom of the ladder.” People continually made fun of him—“my face, my hair, my shirts.” As for Klebold, “If you could see all the anger I’ve stored over the past four f——ing years …” he says…. As far back as the Foothills Day Care center, he hated the “stuck-up” kids he felt hated him. “Being shy didn’t help,” he admits. “I’m going to kill you all. You’ve been giving us s—— for years”….

They explain over and over why they want to kill as many people as they can. Kids taunted them in elementary school, in middle school, in high school. Adults wouldn’t let them strike back, to fight their tormentors, the way such disputes once were settled in schoolyards. So they gritted their teeth. And their rage grew. “It’s humanity,” Klebold says, flipping an obscene gesture toward the camera. “Look at what you made,” he tells the world. “You’re fucking shit, you humans, and you deserve to die.”

That’s what happens when people “threaten your high self-esteem” … by making your life not worth living just because they can, eh? Moron, incompetent-researching bloody incompetent skeptics. But then, when have you ever seen real psychological insight from such people? In all seriousness, in half a dozen years of learning from (and bettering) them, I can’t recall having ever been impressed with their confidently-meager knowledge of human nature. (Including their own gullibility when it comes to trusting government, the medical profession, and big business.) And these are the ones who consider themselves fit to debunk the myths of pop psychology!

Things were better at Columbine [after the shooting], as far as how people treated one another,” [Brooks' brother ] Aaron recalls. “At least, that’s how it was for the first month or so. But by two or three months after we got back, things were back to the way they had been before”….

Attempts are already being made to rewrite history…. [I]n this morning’s paper, a Columbine teacher told the reporter, “[Harris and Klebold] scared me more than any other kids in the building. They bullied more kids [e.g., in calling younger ones—the only people in the world they could look down upon—‘faggots’] than they were bullied.”

It was better for awhile because the jocks knew damned well why Eric and Dylan shot up the school, and they were scared about provoking the same thing again, and taking a well-deserved bullet through the head in return for their wanton cruelty. But then they tried getting away with little stuff, and nobody said anything, and they didn’t get punished for it; and then they tried bigger stuff, and got away with it…. So where else would that spiral end up, except back exactly where it started? Especially when you’re dealing with sociopaths (the conscience-bereft jocks, I mean; not Harris and Klebold):

Dylan promises his parents [in the tapes] that there was nothing they could have done to stop him. According to the Rocky Mountain News article, “War is War,” “You can’t understand what we feel,” he says. “You can’t understand, no matter how much you think you can.”

The Rocky Mountain News quoted Eric as offering praise for his parents. “My parents are the best fucking parents I have ever known,” he says. “My dad is great. I wish I was a fucking sociopath so I don’t have any remorse, but I do. This is going to tear them apart. They will never forget it.”

Turns out that Skeptical Inquirer magazine has an RSS feed for online-available articles.

Good to know.