Note: Just noticed I neglected to include a link to Pinker's article when I posted this. Sorry.
Steven Pinker's recent column in The New Republic supposedly defending science against the charge of scientism is a good example of a piece growing wronger as it grows longer, there is so much he is just plain wrong about it would require a far longer piece to point all of it out.
In what is clearly an opportunistic muddling of the issue Pinker claims that the definition of "scientism" is unclear.
The term “scientism” is anything but clear, more of a boo-word than a label for any coherent doctrine. Sometimes it is equated with lunatic positions, such as that “science is all that matters” or that “scientists should be entrusted to solve all problems.” Sometimes it is clarified with adjectives like “simplistic,” “naïve,” and “vulgar.” The definitional vacuum allows me to replicate gay activists’ flaunting of “queer” and appropriate the pejorative for a position I am prepared to defend.
There isn't anything incoherent about what scientism is in so far as denotation, it is the holding that science is the only means of really knowing something. Most famously, it is the ideology of Bertrand Russell's famous and incoherent statement.
While it is true that science cannot decide questions of value, that is because they cannot be intellectually decided at all, and lie outside the realm of truth and falsehood. Whatever knowledge is attainable, must be attained by scientific methods; and what science cannot discover, mankind cannot know.
Which is a statement that, obviously, couldn't be known because science is unable to tell you if it is true that science is the only method of knowing something. And there was no one who should have more painfully learned that truth by the year he said that, 1935, than Bertrand Russell. That is the definition of scientism, however there is nothing preventing authors from misusing the term (imagine someone in his profession mistaking connotation for denotation). Something that Pinker immediately did after he wrote that.
Scientism, in this good sense, is not the belief that members of the occupational guild called “science” are particularly wise or noble. On the contrary, the defining practices of science, including open debate, peer review, and double-blind methods, are explicitly designed to circumvent the errors and sins to which scientists, being human, are vulnerable. Scientism does not mean that all current scientific hypotheses are true; most new ones are not, since the cycle of conjecture and refutation is the lifeblood of science. It is not an imperialistic drive to occupy the humanities; the promise of science is to enrich and diversify the intellectual tools of humanistic scholarship, not to obliterate them. And it is not the dogma that physical stuff is the only thing that exists. Scientists themselves are immersed in the ethereal medium of information, including the truths of mathematics, the logic of their theories, and the values that guide their enterprise. In this conception, science is of a piece with philosophy, reason, and Enlightenment humanism. It is distinguished by an explicit commitment to two ideals, and it is these that scientism seeks to export to the rest of intellectual life.
The first temptation is to go through some of Pinker's writing to see how much of what he asserts is backed up by rigorous use of the armamentarium of methods he mentions, but that would require another post. The rigor with which scientists do not apply those and strictly hold to their pledged procedures is another enormous topic. Science is very much a sometimes thing, even leaving aside occasional mistakes and accidental lapses. Again, taking into account Pinker's professional field, it's amazing that he could make such a facile statement about this.
Scientism is an ideology, it is a statement of an ideological position. And one of the worst things about ideologies is that they become an a priori substitute for the substance of thinking, rejecting information and filling where that belongs with previously held ideological holdings, rejecting new information that contradicts or fails to confirm that holding. It is a school of thought, in which the thinking either conforms to the requirements of the school or it is expelled or drops out.
If you believe, with Russell, that only those aspects of human experience which are susceptible to treatment by science, on one hand, you will reject everything that can't be adequately observed, quantified and analyzed to treat with science. That inevitably rejects the possibility that those human experiences can possibly be valid and that the truth of them can be had. In its most popular form today, that leads the ideologue of scientism to declare that large amounts of human experience is delusional, is false, is a lie when there is no evidence to support that rejection other than their ideological disqualification of it.
On the other hand, there is a far more subtle and far more dangerous tendency to try to fit human experience, that is undeniably there, into a simulation of science, of scientific treatment, when it isn't possible to make the adequate observations, measurements and analysis. The method typical of such science is to leave things inconvenient to their purposes out of it, no matter how obviously relevant they are. Pinker's piece, reflecting his professional interest, goes into defending behavioral and related sciences that could stand as the quintessential example of that practice. He began:
The great thinkers of the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment were scientists. Not only did many of them contribute to mathematics, physics, and physiology, but all of them were avid theorists in the sciences of human nature. They were cognitive neuroscientists, who tried to explain thought and emotion in terms of physical mechanisms of the nervous system. They were evolutionary psychologists, who speculated on life in a state of nature and on animal instincts that are “infused into our bosoms.” And they were social psychologists, who wrote of the moral sentiments that draw us together, the selfish passions that inflame us, and the foibles of shortsightedness that frustrate our best-laid plans.
His list of who he's talking about is rather interesting to consider for how accurately they fit into his retrospective categorization of their work into those currently fashionable within his ideological school of cognitive science.
These thinkers—Descartes, Spinoza, Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Rousseau, Leibniz, Kant, Smith—are all the more remarkable for having crafted their ideas in the absence of formal theory and empirical data. The mathematical theories of information, computation, and games had yet to be invented. The words “neuron,” “hormone,” and “gene” meant nothing to them. When reading these thinkers, I often long to travel back in time and offer them some bit of twenty-first-century freshman science that would fill a gap in their arguments or guide them around a stumbling block. What would these Fausts have given for such knowledge? What could they have done with it?
That's quite a shopping list. Especially considering how much of what they concluded is unfashionable today. I mean, Descartes? Rousseau? As cited by a c. 2013 cognitive scientist? Has Pinker even read them? I wish some medium could consult them to ask what they think of the contemporary literature that Pinker contributes to as compared with their own work. I somehow doubt that it would stand up well to the destructive acid of Descartes method. I'd like to know what he thought about fMRI as superior to all too fallible human perception, especially if he reads the literature critical of its use -especially the famous example of brain activity being imaged in a dead salmon at Dartmouth. If there's one thing I am certain of, the scientists who fooled the fMRI machine knew the fish was dead.
I wonder why he didn't include the most famous examples of Galileo and Newton. I, somehow, think neither of them would be too impressed by the rigor of the methods by which the neruo and cognitive scientists of today glue their assertions to rigorously made observations and measurements, not to mention the far more resistant surface of the reality of what happens outside of their labs. I'm far from confident that some of them would be all that impressed with the rigor of observation and some may point out that a great deal of it is far from rigorous at any step. If Pinker wanted to give his guests from the distant past an honest view of it, they should be made familiar with the self-deception of more recent scientists in these areas, the ephemeral value of their firmly held scientific holdings.
Notice that I didn't put science in quotations in that last sentence. The practice of separating once firmly held but now discontinued science from what is science today is to falsify reality. I say that just as religion has to own up to its unattractive history and features, if it's going to be held up to be so far very superior in honesty and integrity, science must be required to own its own past.
Science is only what is considered to be science by those making the assertion of it. It is whatever purported truth is held to constitute science at any time, all of those ideas held to be science without sufficient opposition to be rejected as science. This is far from the ideal held to constitute science, even the formal ideal of only those ideas which meet the most rigorous requirements alleged to constitute the methods of science and scientific review.
As a reader of Retraction Watch it's crystal clear that even that most formal meaning of the word, "science," those ideas held in the minds of the most informed of scientists, includes many ideas that are soon shown to be false, at times entirely fraudulent but which have, nonetheless, passed through the contemporary methods of review of science. The Platonic ideal that is generally held to comprise science is clearly not present on the Earth, in the minds of scientists, the only place in which science is known to reside. And, in reality, science doesn't even get to live only in that elite neighborhood but is also in those far from well informed and far from rigorous minds which hold ideas it believes and CAN PASS OFF TO OTHERS as being science. The minds of those with but little learning in science is the residence of the largest part of science. That's not really true of one related discipline, mathematics which practices such formal rigor and is, itself, not about anything vulnerable to a really popular treatments of the kind that Pinker specializes in. And that fact is what makes mathematics so far less vulnerable for its truths becoming an embarrassment to be unmentioned or to be insulted by putting its identity as mathematics in quotations for current purposes.
As I said, Pinker's article would require a far longer refutation than I'm able to give it in one post. But I might go back to it. It is such a rats nest of false ideas, superficial thinking and clearly wrong assertion of fact that it could produce another series.
Wednesday, August 14, 2013
Tuesday, August 13, 2013
A Correction Not Of My Making
In my long post Sunday, I quoted several passages of PZ Myer's outrageous and, I would imagine, libelous blog post, "What do you do when someone pulls the pin and hands you a grenade?" One of them is mentioned on page 3 of a letter from Michael Shermer's lawyers to Myers, noting that the version I copied from Myer's blog was a version that differs from the one Myer's originally posted. There is a crucial difference in that the first version says
“The anonymous woman who wrote to you through Carrie is known to me, and in fact I was in her presence immediately after said incident...."
The version I copied from Myer's apparently revised post reads
“The anonymous woman who wrote to you is known to me, and in fact I was in her presence immediately after said incident....”
Apparently Myers may not have even had the accusation directly from the woman he says made it. His claim of how he learned of it is certainly deceptive if that's the case
So I’ve been given this rather…explosive…information. It’s a direct report of unethical behavior by a big name in the skeptical community (yeah, like that hasn’t been happening a lot lately), and it’s straight from the victim’s mouth. And it’s bad. Really bad.
So the charge may well have been third hand by the time Myers' posted what he did. The lawyer's letter indicates that the "Carrie" in the version of the "confirmation" e-mail is Carrie Poppy another person involved in and around the "Free Thought" Blogs, which a number of commentators have said has sort of been sniping at Michael Shermer for a while, now.
In a more recent post Myers' asks "Are We Having Fun Yet?" discussing what apparently are charges being made against CFI, a "skeptic"-atheist organization I've been critical of in the past but which, unless they are actually guilty of anything in regard to sexual harassment, aren't guilty of that. My first temptation was to sit back and watch people and groups I don't especially like fighting among themselves to their mutual and self-inflicted harm - I have been extremely critical of the James Randi "Educational" Foundation that Carrie Poppy makes accusations against a the link above. But this entire thing has gone far beyond where that would be either ethical or especially edifying. CFI was mentioned by some, speculating that it was the "organization" charged with sweeping the accusation under the rug on Myers' comments.
That Myers' apparently classifies these charges as "fun" is pretty disgusting. He does get in what seems to be becoming a habit, issuing preemptive self-pity based on precognitions of future negative consequences for himself and taking the opportunity to get in a final dig.
And now Chris Clarke spurns CFI-LA. The informal offer he mentions was the result of a conversation I had with CFI-LA; they were considering bringing me out for a Darwin Day event, and also snagging Chris to share the stage, which would have been excellent.
It may all be moot now, anyway. I suspect I’m on the CFI blacklist along with a few other speakers whose names you can probably guess…but they won’t be the well-known men who have reputations for womanizing. Funny how that works.
While I'm certainly opposed to what is generally covered under my rather old-fashioned conception of "womanizing" - a word which one might suspect Myers' chose due to its less actionable ambiguity - it's a new one on me to have "free thinking," "skeptical," religion-bashers standing up for old fashioned sexual propriety. In my understanding of the term, it most definitely and absolutely doesn't cover rape, even cads of my and earlier generations would not do that. Though it definitely covers philandering, and fooling around and even seduction of the willing, something I'd always thought was one of the more popular attractions of the "free thought" set. But these are murky and frequently brackish waters. If you're going to dip into them, you'd better be careful to point out exactly what you mean and have first hand evidence to back it up or you may find yourself opening long letters from law firms if not the police. I'd definitely think that the use of alcohol should be avoided before swimming. Let me put in another plug for acting like an adult instead of a teenager.
But what Myers' did certainly doesn't count as fun and rape isn't anything to center the PZnut gallery fun-time around.
Update: For any of you who read through large numbers of the comments at PZ's blogs before, here's his condemnation of .... well.....
Here’s another challenge for the growing atheist movement: can we avoid the trap of charismatic leadership and the cult of personality?
Can we avoid the trap of charismatic leadership and the cult of personality?
Um, PZ? Or should I say that PZ?
You really don't get why, from you, that's kind of ironic to about the 60th power?
“The anonymous woman who wrote to you through Carrie is known to me, and in fact I was in her presence immediately after said incident...."
The version I copied from Myer's apparently revised post reads
“The anonymous woman who wrote to you is known to me, and in fact I was in her presence immediately after said incident....”
Apparently Myers may not have even had the accusation directly from the woman he says made it. His claim of how he learned of it is certainly deceptive if that's the case
So I’ve been given this rather…explosive…information. It’s a direct report of unethical behavior by a big name in the skeptical community (yeah, like that hasn’t been happening a lot lately), and it’s straight from the victim’s mouth. And it’s bad. Really bad.
So the charge may well have been third hand by the time Myers' posted what he did. The lawyer's letter indicates that the "Carrie" in the version of the "confirmation" e-mail is Carrie Poppy another person involved in and around the "Free Thought" Blogs, which a number of commentators have said has sort of been sniping at Michael Shermer for a while, now.
In a more recent post Myers' asks "Are We Having Fun Yet?" discussing what apparently are charges being made against CFI, a "skeptic"-atheist organization I've been critical of in the past but which, unless they are actually guilty of anything in regard to sexual harassment, aren't guilty of that. My first temptation was to sit back and watch people and groups I don't especially like fighting among themselves to their mutual and self-inflicted harm - I have been extremely critical of the James Randi "Educational" Foundation that Carrie Poppy makes accusations against a the link above. But this entire thing has gone far beyond where that would be either ethical or especially edifying. CFI was mentioned by some, speculating that it was the "organization" charged with sweeping the accusation under the rug on Myers' comments.
That Myers' apparently classifies these charges as "fun" is pretty disgusting. He does get in what seems to be becoming a habit, issuing preemptive self-pity based on precognitions of future negative consequences for himself and taking the opportunity to get in a final dig.
And now Chris Clarke spurns CFI-LA. The informal offer he mentions was the result of a conversation I had with CFI-LA; they were considering bringing me out for a Darwin Day event, and also snagging Chris to share the stage, which would have been excellent.
It may all be moot now, anyway. I suspect I’m on the CFI blacklist along with a few other speakers whose names you can probably guess…but they won’t be the well-known men who have reputations for womanizing. Funny how that works.
While I'm certainly opposed to what is generally covered under my rather old-fashioned conception of "womanizing" - a word which one might suspect Myers' chose due to its less actionable ambiguity - it's a new one on me to have "free thinking," "skeptical," religion-bashers standing up for old fashioned sexual propriety. In my understanding of the term, it most definitely and absolutely doesn't cover rape, even cads of my and earlier generations would not do that. Though it definitely covers philandering, and fooling around and even seduction of the willing, something I'd always thought was one of the more popular attractions of the "free thought" set. But these are murky and frequently brackish waters. If you're going to dip into them, you'd better be careful to point out exactly what you mean and have first hand evidence to back it up or you may find yourself opening long letters from law firms if not the police. I'd definitely think that the use of alcohol should be avoided before swimming. Let me put in another plug for acting like an adult instead of a teenager.
But what Myers' did certainly doesn't count as fun and rape isn't anything to center the PZnut gallery fun-time around.
Update: For any of you who read through large numbers of the comments at PZ's blogs before, here's his condemnation of .... well.....
Here’s another challenge for the growing atheist movement: can we avoid the trap of charismatic leadership and the cult of personality?
Can we avoid the trap of charismatic leadership and the cult of personality?
Um, PZ? Or should I say that PZ?
You really don't get why, from you, that's kind of ironic to about the 60th power?
The Art of Adulthood:
or Please, Let’s Don’t Have To Go Through That All Over Again
Note: Got What's Going Around So A Rerun First posted at Echidne of the Snakes January 04, 2009
You probably know the feeling. Sitting with my sister-in-law one afternoon a mutual friend of ours dropped in. Over coffee our friend told us about her recent dates, she’d reached after breakup stage where she was dating again. Lucy (not her real name) complained that she’d had a bad time.
My sister-in law said, “I thought you were seeing Bill. He’s a nice guy, has a good job. Didn’t you like him?”
- Oh yeah, he’s all right. He asked me to go out again.
- Well?
- I don’t know.
- Well, why don’t you go out with him again?
- I don’t know. He’s a real good guy. He’s just not very exciting.
My sister-in-law and I had exactly the same thought at that time, Lucy’s last long term relationship had been with a man who cultivated the semi-outlaw image of the motor-head variety. He was all right, never in jail as far as I knew. He stayed with Lucy through a child, a decade of mortgage payments and many turbulent episodes providing considerable excitement. He wasn't physically abusive or verbally abusive. All right, he was fairly good looking but talking with him tended towards noncommital mono-syllables. After he took up with a younger woman, after Lucy tried, unsuccessfully to get him to marry, they split. His phobia to commitment, which could withstand the bonds of parenting* and buying a house together, couldn't withstand fifteen minutes in front of a justice of the peace. I suspected that at the bottom of it, he couldn't square that particular and entirely symbolic act with his outlaw image. Those spurs that "jingle jangle jingle" ? You remember that "they sing, oh, ain't you glad you're single?" and, "that song ain't so very far from wrong."
We both thought Lucy could do with considerably less excitement than their relationship had provided. As I said, both of us thought it, only I was impolitic enough to say it
My generation was brought up with two dominant models of men. There were the outlaws, cowboys, bikers, the so-called rugged individualists. The other predominant model was the reliable man, the pillar of the community, the family man. In pop-culture you could differentiate them easily enough, cowboys vs. Father Knows Best. As an aside, for a gay kid, it was mostly noticeable in that cowboys on TV wore impossibly tight pants.**
When the 60s arrived the secret agents became sort of cowboys in service to the establishment, creating a third alternative, though one less available for emulation. Then there was the brief attempt to break out of all of them by a lot of us. It was all very complicated and so confusing and the escape from the bonds of masculine identity was hardly perfect even as newer roles developed, a lot of them just pasted sideburns and facial hair on one of the other identities and went right on.
With that background it was kind of strange for me to see the two-generations removed nostalgia for the family man model that the The Art of Manliness blog represents. What’s wrong with a model that tells men that they should be responsible and mature, that they should take care of their families and be responsible citizens? Oh, it’s hard to say. For a lot of people it might work all right. I’d have loved to have someone attend to the details of house etc, I’d probably have been a much better musician if I’d been relieved of those. But it would have been at a cost.
Doing what’s necessary is a requirement to achieving full adulthood. Being able to fix the plumbing (which I can’t do) or shoveling the driveway, taking responsibility for finances and the other petty details of life might be as necessary to any self-respecting adult as being able to stand up and say you don’t agree with the consensus in a meeting and being able to give a rational reason why.
In the world of the 50s, the Father Knows Best ideal was essentially at odds with women achieving adulthood. Men got to be adults, women were supposed to be as vacuous as June Cleaver or most of the roles that Marilyn Monroe was assigned. Even Eve Arden, sardonic and clever, longed for the day she could hand her adulthood to Mr. Right. I think that in popular culture of the time, there being a prohibition on a woman expressing her own sexual desires, it was replaced by the cult of material and social stability. But to get that, women had to give up their status as autonomous individuals, sublimating their ideas under a blanket of husbandly dominance. The trade-off, largely unavailable to those who chose to go with the outlaw model, was that the man was supposed to “be a man” and provide that security. In practice, that was achieved only in some cases.
I suspect my friend was the victim of that model under which she also grew up. She saw her choice between someone who was exciting and undependable or someone who was stifling but dependable. And that’s what’s wrong with The Art of Manliness. The risk of the daddy-adult stifling women. It’s a role that could easily fall back into the 50s model, that clearly hankers after that kind of reliable, maybe even benevolent, daddy-husband. The icky Reagan marriage as archetype.
None of the past models of manliness was worth keeping, none of them worked as advertised. The lives of those who tried to adopt them were either shallow and selfish or impossibly burdensome to men. And they all required roles of women which were, if anything, more destructive. No one should be pressured into sublimating their adulthood, no one outlaw men or women, should be relived of the requirement to grow up. The knowledge that you are being responsible that you are giving up transient, personal wants because it is necessary, of doing things for other people, of facing the truth, of being fully grown up, is a human need as much as sex is. Adults, in the absence of some actual mental disease, are kept healthy by acting like adults. They make themselves likable by acting like adults, by doing what’s responsible. They gain the respect and affection of other people through that. And that is a human requirement of all genders, gender orientations, of any ethnicity, whatever condition of life we find ourselves in.
* As I recall, she did most of the actual parenting, until the kid was old enough to pal around with.
* * If real cowboys wore pants as tight as TV cowboys they’d never have been able to do their chores.
Maximalist Music
Paul Dukas Piano Sonata
François-René Duchable - Piano
One of the longest and most challenging sonatas in the repertoire, sometimes called the French Hammerklavier. Composed in the last year of the 19th century and the first of the 20th century, it sums up the one and anticipates a lot of the second. It always comes to my mind this time of the year, when summer is changing to fall even as it reaches its fullest maturity as summer.
François-René Duchable - Piano
One of the longest and most challenging sonatas in the repertoire, sometimes called the French Hammerklavier. Composed in the last year of the 19th century and the first of the 20th century, it sums up the one and anticipates a lot of the second. It always comes to my mind this time of the year, when summer is changing to fall even as it reaches its fullest maturity as summer.
Monday, August 12, 2013
György Ligeti
ETUDE XIII THE DEVIL'S STAIRCASE
This is something I just look at the music for and say, I'd never be able to play it. But I'm glad someone can. This is played incredibly and brilliantly and beautifully by Claudio Martinez Mehner.
ETUDE XIII THE DEVIL'S STAIRCASE
This is something I just look at the music for and say, I'd never be able to play it. But I'm glad someone can. This is played incredibly and brilliantly and beautifully by Claudio Martinez Mehner.
Do You Know Where Your Online Privacy Is Tonight?
Ten minutes ago I was on Glenn Greenwald's comment thread at The Guardian. The topic was one I agree with him about almost on every point EXCEPT that I think Edward Snowden was incredibly stupid to choose Hong Kong as a sanctuary carrying an apparently disputed number of laptops with him (the figure I've seen mentioned most often is four) and the rest of what followed that brilliant decision.
First, on The Guardian website, I was given a choice of venues for commenting, including Face Book and Google, because, you know everyone knows that those are entirely devoted to the privacy of their customers, especially their Chinese customers, apropos of the Privacy Martyr Snowden taking refuge in the land of privacy.
I chose Google because I figure they've got everything on me since I'm a Blogger blogger and use G-mail and I wouldn't trust Face Book and have no idea how to use it.
Anyway, in response to some snark I made a snarky comment about superheroes. I went to another website. Guess what was all over the ads? Superheroes, something I have never in my life had anything to do with and which have never, in my memory appeared there before. Ten minutes, ONE MENTION IN ONE COMMENT ON THE GUARDIAN WEBSITE IN WHICH GLENN GREENWALD BLOWS HIS TOP ABOUT ONLINE PRIVACY. And I'm supposed to get infinitely more upset that the NSA might take an interest in the e-mail addresses of people I'm foreign-e-mailing in some way that I'm not upset about Google reading a lot more than that AND INSTANTLY AND AUTOMATICALLY SELLING THE INFORMATION.
First, on The Guardian website, I was given a choice of venues for commenting, including Face Book and Google, because, you know everyone knows that those are entirely devoted to the privacy of their customers, especially their Chinese customers, apropos of the Privacy Martyr Snowden taking refuge in the land of privacy.
I chose Google because I figure they've got everything on me since I'm a Blogger blogger and use G-mail and I wouldn't trust Face Book and have no idea how to use it.
Anyway, in response to some snark I made a snarky comment about superheroes. I went to another website. Guess what was all over the ads? Superheroes, something I have never in my life had anything to do with and which have never, in my memory appeared there before. Ten minutes, ONE MENTION IN ONE COMMENT ON THE GUARDIAN WEBSITE IN WHICH GLENN GREENWALD BLOWS HIS TOP ABOUT ONLINE PRIVACY. And I'm supposed to get infinitely more upset that the NSA might take an interest in the e-mail addresses of people I'm foreign-e-mailing in some way that I'm not upset about Google reading a lot more than that AND INSTANTLY AND AUTOMATICALLY SELLING THE INFORMATION.
Putting Yourself In That Position: On Having Dangerous Sex With Strangers
This piece was written on December 30, 2010 for Echidne of the Snakes, where I used to write. It was an answer to comments on a post I did about the accusations made against Julian Assange in Sweden. At the time there was a lot of talk about whether or not what he was accused to have done during consensual sex constituted rape or something like rape. Something that is still argued about. At the time I wrote this, no one seemed to have asked if two women who didn't know him but had invited him to their place to have sex might have shared in producing what happened. He didn't force himself into their residences, he wasn't a stranger who forced himself into their beds, he was a stranger asked to spend the night. Given what gay men of my generation had learned about what could happen when you have sex with people you don't know, I thought someone should bring up that they could have thought about that before hand. I'm more convinced of the points I made in it today than I was then. After my own experience, had since the early 1980s, it was a relief to finally say what had to be said. And it will have to be said over and over again by lots of people. I've added an update for 2013. One thing had to be changed, the CDC reports that the actual figures for HIV transmission in the United States is about ten thousand more than the figures I found when this was written.
----------------
Imagine you have a gay son. Of course some of you won't have to imagine that because you have a gay son, or, perhaps, a son who is gay and hasn't come out. Imagine your gay son is a teenager or young adult. Immediately, you know that it is very likely that your gay son is going to have sex with other gay men, if not when he's a teenager, when he's an adult. You know about AIDS and HIV, you know that it is spread through unprotected anal sex and you might know that anal sex is among the most common* sexual practices among gay men today. If you are aware of what is known about the transmission of HIV you certainly would want to encourage your son to not engage in unprotected anal sex and, if you are brave enough, you might at least make certain that he is aware of what he needs to know to lessen his chances of becoming infected. That's not easy, even for a gay uncle who is all too well aware of what AIDS is. I know this from personal experience. I would imagine it's harder for most straight parents.
One of the most important realizations about the AIDS epidemic in gay men in the 1980s and 90s was that it was largely a product of the legal oppression of gay men. Gay men hadn't been allowed to marry, they were forced to remain hidden to escape discrimination and violence. That situation prevented many gay men from forming intimate sexual relationships that were ongoing, though some did manage to have them. It also led to the phenomenon of known cruising spots where you could find other men who would have sex with you, strangers who would have sex anonymously and who you might never see again. Those places were everywhere, there were guides published of where to find anonymous sex even in the most surprising rural locations.
Even before AIDS, the practice of casual sex with strangers led to very high rates of venereal diseases among gay men including hepatitis, I remember hearing one gay man assert that having hepatitis was something of a right of passage for gay men. That hepatitis is a seriously dangerous illness, that often leads to cancer of the liver, wasn't taken seriously by a lot of gay men and most other STDs were thought of as being a minor inconvenience. Again, there were and are gay men who don't engage in casual sex with strangers, there are many.
With the identification of AIDS , even before the virus was identified, lessening the impact of the practice of anonymous sex among gay men led to the temporary decrease in new HIV infections, but only after a massive effort to change habits. And that effort was met with strong objection, especially on the part of some of the theorists of gay politics of the 70s. Anything that discouraged gay men from having casual sex with whomever, in whatever way was declared by these thinkers to be internalized oppression. They held that the liberation of sex from love was a major achievement of the gay revolution they imagined they were the bulwark of. They rejected the public health campaign that encouraged condom use and taking measure to protect gay men from the virus, in the early days of the crisis, in the most strident terms. Apparently something called “sex” was, they imagined, separable from the people who participated in it. Which goes as great thinking in some quarters.
When Gloria Steinem said “The sexual revolution was not our war,” it was a brilliant insight. The sexual revolution of the 60s and 70s were mostly for the benefit of straight men, Hugh Hefner's adolescent fantasy life becoming generally available. Without equality, without both political and social equality and the rights that equality is made of, just being able to have sex without social and legal repercussions is bound to result in an extension of oppression. That has been the case extending into history when men were almost always free to rape slaves with impunity, with the approval, explicit or implied, of the law and general society**. I assert that it was also not the revolution that gay men needed either.
The dynamics of freeing sex in a culture of inequality is somewhat harder to see in gay men because even gay men aren't oppressed in the same way and to the extent that women are. But there are inequalities within gay relationships, sometimes economic, sometimes based on differences in intelligence and experience, quite often based on relative psychological vulnerabilities and not infrequently on the basis of differences in physical strength. The variations within any identified group are enough to make any general assertions about the members of that group, increasingly inaccurate.
Some people have noted that the AIDS crisis organized gay men as nothing else ever had. After the idiocy of the fashionable political cant of the 70s was overcome, to some extent, gay communities organized to try to change behavior and stop the transmission of the virus. And that was pretty successful until the idiotic assertion that “AIDS is over” was declared with the availability of drugs to suppress the virus in those who already had it. Though that was a lie, there are about 50,000 new infections in the United States every year, the drugs have major and serious side effects and are expensive and there is no guarantee that the virus won't continue to generate resistant forms that could be even more devastating than the original strains were.
And, as you know, women are infected with HIV through vaginal sex as well as through anal sex by men who are infected. Straight men are often infected through anonymous sex with women or men just as gay men are. I suspect that for many women, who have grown up with the idea that AIDS is primary a problem for gay men are at the stage gay men were in the early days before the syndrome even had a name.
Of course this is all by way of explanation for my comments on the accusations made about Julian Assange. Being a witness to the deaths of dozens of gay men I knew, knowing that just about all of them with a few exceptions, likely were infected through casual sex with someone they didn't know, knowing that women can be infected by men, all of that informs my thinking on whether or not people should be having casual sex with people they don't know in 2011. And the fact is they shouldn't. Women deserve better than they're going to get from men under those circumstances, men who have sex with men deserve better than they get from it. There is nothing liberated about being infected with HIV or hepatitis or chlamydia or any number of other infections that can injure and kill you. Having sex with someone who can persuade you to engage in sex you don't want or who can trick or force you into it is the opposite of free choice. No more than getting robbed by a conman. And there is no law you can make that will protect you from any of that which is stronger than protecting yourself. And there is nothing that is more likely to protect you than knowing who it is you're agreeing to have sex with.
Imagine that these women had sex with a man who was infected with HIV and he was enough of a con artist to convince them to engage in sex without a condom. I would find it hard to believe anyone who doesn't realize that is possible for many if not most women or gay men, especially if they are young and inexperienced. There is no law that is going to protect you from a good con man who is already in your house or in your bed.
I have nieces who I love as well as if they were my daughters, I have nephews who I feel the same way about. I don't want them to have sex with people they don't know because it is dangerous and it leads to a general cheapening of relationships and a decreased respect for other people. I don't want them to grow up feeling coerced into having dangerous and casual sex with people who they have no reason to believe will care about them and have any regard for their well being. The sexual revolution wasn't the right war. The one for equality is. Equality is the supreme political value, with it comes all other rights. Equality is valued less that liberty precisely because it comes with personal obligations to treat other people as you would want to be treated, and more so if you don't think you deserve to be treated well. Only within a culture of the personal restraints required by equality would it be safe to assume that you could engage in casual sex with strangers safely. And even within that, other, culture and with those unavailable assumptions, it would still be risky enough to be unwise if not irresponsible.
* There is a lot of evidence that anal sex wasn't the predominant form of sex among gay men in the United States until the 1970s. There is a large percentage of gay men who don't practice anal sex even today, due to personal preference and in response to HIV. Personally, I didn't and don't and am disgusted at the coercion that gay men often experienced to engage in it has, apparently, become acceptable among young straight people.
** Hagar's treatment in Genesis is pretty standard treatment for slaves. In the story Sarah even suggested it to Abraham as a means of having a son. But the idea that she might have sex with a slave, if it was Abraham who was infertile, doesn't seem to have been seen as an option.
Note: You might want to read this more recent discussion between Gloria Steinem and Suheir Hammad which discusses some of these issues.
Update 2013:
It is one of my most bitter disappointments that young people today not only didn't learn the lessons from the experience of my community, gay men, about with sexual responsibility and HIV-AIDS. But with the rise of the insanity of the entirely phony "sex-pos" "feminism," hook-up culture, etc. facilitated and encouraged by online social networking teenagers and young adults are turning themselves into the stage set for more epidemics that will kill millions more people.
In 1980 there was no indication that a virus such as AIDS was about to make itself known, kill huge numbers of people around the world and remain as a pandemic decades later. But now we know what is possible.
There is no law of probability that holds that HIV-AIDS is going to be the only such virus or pathogen that takes hold in the petri-dish that people practicing high-risk, highly promiscuous sex, especially in the context of modern transportation, make of themselves and their sexual partners. And, yes, I will commit the thought crime of noting their responsibility for that. Gay men bought a completely false and irresponsible line promoting having casual and anonymous sex with abandon in the 1970s, after the temporary suppression of many of the previous epidemic sexually transmitted diseases, we were told anything goes by way of seeking sexual pleasure. Which proves that even as epidemic levels of other serious sexually transmitted diseases, such as hepatitis were causing serious health problems in people we knew, it's still easy to sell an attractive lie.
After AIDS, there is no excuse for not knowing that but people with things to sell, lines to sell and seeking their own fame and fortune are successfully selling that lie to the general population. I will predict that if the present trends in promiscuous sexual behavior continue, what one virus was able to evolve into, many others of the uncounted myriads of viruses will evolve into. Various strains of highly drug resistant syphilis are first reported in prostitutes who are subjected to dangerous sex on a daily basis. HIV evolved in modern times from some other virus that apparently didn't have what it came to be. The AIDS epidemic only proved that such diseases will still evolve given the right culture and a large sexually promiscuous population turns themselves or are forced into becoming the culture right for that to happen.
There is no law of nature that says the next one might not be a lot worse and prove impossible to treat.
----------------
Imagine you have a gay son. Of course some of you won't have to imagine that because you have a gay son, or, perhaps, a son who is gay and hasn't come out. Imagine your gay son is a teenager or young adult. Immediately, you know that it is very likely that your gay son is going to have sex with other gay men, if not when he's a teenager, when he's an adult. You know about AIDS and HIV, you know that it is spread through unprotected anal sex and you might know that anal sex is among the most common* sexual practices among gay men today. If you are aware of what is known about the transmission of HIV you certainly would want to encourage your son to not engage in unprotected anal sex and, if you are brave enough, you might at least make certain that he is aware of what he needs to know to lessen his chances of becoming infected. That's not easy, even for a gay uncle who is all too well aware of what AIDS is. I know this from personal experience. I would imagine it's harder for most straight parents.
One of the most important realizations about the AIDS epidemic in gay men in the 1980s and 90s was that it was largely a product of the legal oppression of gay men. Gay men hadn't been allowed to marry, they were forced to remain hidden to escape discrimination and violence. That situation prevented many gay men from forming intimate sexual relationships that were ongoing, though some did manage to have them. It also led to the phenomenon of known cruising spots where you could find other men who would have sex with you, strangers who would have sex anonymously and who you might never see again. Those places were everywhere, there were guides published of where to find anonymous sex even in the most surprising rural locations.
Even before AIDS, the practice of casual sex with strangers led to very high rates of venereal diseases among gay men including hepatitis, I remember hearing one gay man assert that having hepatitis was something of a right of passage for gay men. That hepatitis is a seriously dangerous illness, that often leads to cancer of the liver, wasn't taken seriously by a lot of gay men and most other STDs were thought of as being a minor inconvenience. Again, there were and are gay men who don't engage in casual sex with strangers, there are many.
With the identification of AIDS , even before the virus was identified, lessening the impact of the practice of anonymous sex among gay men led to the temporary decrease in new HIV infections, but only after a massive effort to change habits. And that effort was met with strong objection, especially on the part of some of the theorists of gay politics of the 70s. Anything that discouraged gay men from having casual sex with whomever, in whatever way was declared by these thinkers to be internalized oppression. They held that the liberation of sex from love was a major achievement of the gay revolution they imagined they were the bulwark of. They rejected the public health campaign that encouraged condom use and taking measure to protect gay men from the virus, in the early days of the crisis, in the most strident terms. Apparently something called “sex” was, they imagined, separable from the people who participated in it. Which goes as great thinking in some quarters.
When Gloria Steinem said “The sexual revolution was not our war,” it was a brilliant insight. The sexual revolution of the 60s and 70s were mostly for the benefit of straight men, Hugh Hefner's adolescent fantasy life becoming generally available. Without equality, without both political and social equality and the rights that equality is made of, just being able to have sex without social and legal repercussions is bound to result in an extension of oppression. That has been the case extending into history when men were almost always free to rape slaves with impunity, with the approval, explicit or implied, of the law and general society**. I assert that it was also not the revolution that gay men needed either.
The dynamics of freeing sex in a culture of inequality is somewhat harder to see in gay men because even gay men aren't oppressed in the same way and to the extent that women are. But there are inequalities within gay relationships, sometimes economic, sometimes based on differences in intelligence and experience, quite often based on relative psychological vulnerabilities and not infrequently on the basis of differences in physical strength. The variations within any identified group are enough to make any general assertions about the members of that group, increasingly inaccurate.
Some people have noted that the AIDS crisis organized gay men as nothing else ever had. After the idiocy of the fashionable political cant of the 70s was overcome, to some extent, gay communities organized to try to change behavior and stop the transmission of the virus. And that was pretty successful until the idiotic assertion that “AIDS is over” was declared with the availability of drugs to suppress the virus in those who already had it. Though that was a lie, there are about 50,000 new infections in the United States every year, the drugs have major and serious side effects and are expensive and there is no guarantee that the virus won't continue to generate resistant forms that could be even more devastating than the original strains were.
And, as you know, women are infected with HIV through vaginal sex as well as through anal sex by men who are infected. Straight men are often infected through anonymous sex with women or men just as gay men are. I suspect that for many women, who have grown up with the idea that AIDS is primary a problem for gay men are at the stage gay men were in the early days before the syndrome even had a name.
Of course this is all by way of explanation for my comments on the accusations made about Julian Assange. Being a witness to the deaths of dozens of gay men I knew, knowing that just about all of them with a few exceptions, likely were infected through casual sex with someone they didn't know, knowing that women can be infected by men, all of that informs my thinking on whether or not people should be having casual sex with people they don't know in 2011. And the fact is they shouldn't. Women deserve better than they're going to get from men under those circumstances, men who have sex with men deserve better than they get from it. There is nothing liberated about being infected with HIV or hepatitis or chlamydia or any number of other infections that can injure and kill you. Having sex with someone who can persuade you to engage in sex you don't want or who can trick or force you into it is the opposite of free choice. No more than getting robbed by a conman. And there is no law you can make that will protect you from any of that which is stronger than protecting yourself. And there is nothing that is more likely to protect you than knowing who it is you're agreeing to have sex with.
Imagine that these women had sex with a man who was infected with HIV and he was enough of a con artist to convince them to engage in sex without a condom. I would find it hard to believe anyone who doesn't realize that is possible for many if not most women or gay men, especially if they are young and inexperienced. There is no law that is going to protect you from a good con man who is already in your house or in your bed.
I have nieces who I love as well as if they were my daughters, I have nephews who I feel the same way about. I don't want them to have sex with people they don't know because it is dangerous and it leads to a general cheapening of relationships and a decreased respect for other people. I don't want them to grow up feeling coerced into having dangerous and casual sex with people who they have no reason to believe will care about them and have any regard for their well being. The sexual revolution wasn't the right war. The one for equality is. Equality is the supreme political value, with it comes all other rights. Equality is valued less that liberty precisely because it comes with personal obligations to treat other people as you would want to be treated, and more so if you don't think you deserve to be treated well. Only within a culture of the personal restraints required by equality would it be safe to assume that you could engage in casual sex with strangers safely. And even within that, other, culture and with those unavailable assumptions, it would still be risky enough to be unwise if not irresponsible.
* There is a lot of evidence that anal sex wasn't the predominant form of sex among gay men in the United States until the 1970s. There is a large percentage of gay men who don't practice anal sex even today, due to personal preference and in response to HIV. Personally, I didn't and don't and am disgusted at the coercion that gay men often experienced to engage in it has, apparently, become acceptable among young straight people.
** Hagar's treatment in Genesis is pretty standard treatment for slaves. In the story Sarah even suggested it to Abraham as a means of having a son. But the idea that she might have sex with a slave, if it was Abraham who was infertile, doesn't seem to have been seen as an option.
Note: You might want to read this more recent discussion between Gloria Steinem and Suheir Hammad which discusses some of these issues.
Update 2013:
It is one of my most bitter disappointments that young people today not only didn't learn the lessons from the experience of my community, gay men, about with sexual responsibility and HIV-AIDS. But with the rise of the insanity of the entirely phony "sex-pos" "feminism," hook-up culture, etc. facilitated and encouraged by online social networking teenagers and young adults are turning themselves into the stage set for more epidemics that will kill millions more people.
In 1980 there was no indication that a virus such as AIDS was about to make itself known, kill huge numbers of people around the world and remain as a pandemic decades later. But now we know what is possible.
There is no law of probability that holds that HIV-AIDS is going to be the only such virus or pathogen that takes hold in the petri-dish that people practicing high-risk, highly promiscuous sex, especially in the context of modern transportation, make of themselves and their sexual partners. And, yes, I will commit the thought crime of noting their responsibility for that. Gay men bought a completely false and irresponsible line promoting having casual and anonymous sex with abandon in the 1970s, after the temporary suppression of many of the previous epidemic sexually transmitted diseases, we were told anything goes by way of seeking sexual pleasure. Which proves that even as epidemic levels of other serious sexually transmitted diseases, such as hepatitis were causing serious health problems in people we knew, it's still easy to sell an attractive lie.
After AIDS, there is no excuse for not knowing that but people with things to sell, lines to sell and seeking their own fame and fortune are successfully selling that lie to the general population. I will predict that if the present trends in promiscuous sexual behavior continue, what one virus was able to evolve into, many others of the uncounted myriads of viruses will evolve into. Various strains of highly drug resistant syphilis are first reported in prostitutes who are subjected to dangerous sex on a daily basis. HIV evolved in modern times from some other virus that apparently didn't have what it came to be. The AIDS epidemic only proved that such diseases will still evolve given the right culture and a large sexually promiscuous population turns themselves or are forced into becoming the culture right for that to happen.
There is no law of nature that says the next one might not be a lot worse and prove impossible to treat.
Sunday, August 11, 2013
You Want To Know What's Really Funny?
I just read a piece about the horrible violation of personal liberty it was for the NSA to collect the records of phone calls between people in the U.S. and other countries AND THE COMMENTING SYSTEM REQUIRED YOU TO BE A MEMBER OF FACE BOOK!
Of course that's because everyone knows how much Face Book respects the privacy of its members.
This is such a ridiculous "scandal," especially after the Bush II years. I predict it will actually end up delaying when the FISA system is reformed because as soon as the next inevitable terrorist incident happens, the reform efforts will be discredited through the extreme inflation of the hysteria. Not to mention what happens as soon as it's revealed how much Snowden gave away to stay in the protective custody of first the Chinese and then the Russian governments. Because if there's one thing sure of that, it's that they extracted a price from him to stay there. He will never return to the United States where he might be compelled to reveal that. That is, of course, unless he's stupid enough to flee with four laptops full of classified information to Hong Kong and then Moscow. So maybe he will come back. His father seems to be stupid enough to think he should.
Of course that's because everyone knows how much Face Book respects the privacy of its members.
This is such a ridiculous "scandal," especially after the Bush II years. I predict it will actually end up delaying when the FISA system is reformed because as soon as the next inevitable terrorist incident happens, the reform efforts will be discredited through the extreme inflation of the hysteria. Not to mention what happens as soon as it's revealed how much Snowden gave away to stay in the protective custody of first the Chinese and then the Russian governments. Because if there's one thing sure of that, it's that they extracted a price from him to stay there. He will never return to the United States where he might be compelled to reveal that. That is, of course, unless he's stupid enough to flee with four laptops full of classified information to Hong Kong and then Moscow. So maybe he will come back. His father seems to be stupid enough to think he should.
Bedřich Smetana - Piano Trio in G minor, Op. 15
Very fine and very unusual piano trio, a real masterpiece.
Notice:
I have been asked to remove comment moderation from my blog for this discussion. I will as an experiment but it will go back on if people abuse it. I won't tolerate terms of misogyny, misandry, ethnic or racial bigotry or against LGBT folk or anyone else, I won't tolerate lies and slander that I happen to notice. I have the right to remove any comment I deem offensive or just plain useless.
No You Can't Claim A Right To Be Irresponsible And Then Blame It On Someone Else
I had hoped to be done with the topic of PZ Myers' incredibly irresponsible post accusing Michael Shermer of serial rape but what I've been reading on the topic needs looking into. The entire accusation, other than rumors he claims he'd heard Myers entire accusation was based on this passage Myer's says is from an e-mail:
At a conference, Mr. Shermer coerced me into a position where I could not consent, and then had sex with me. I can’t give more details than that, as it would reveal my identity, and I am very scared that he will come after me in some way. But I wanted to share this story in case it helps anyone else ward off a similar situation from happening. I reached out to one organization that was involved in the event at which I was raped, and they refused to take my concerns seriously. Ever since, I’ve heard stories about him doing things (5 different people have directly told me they did the same to them) and wanted to just say something and warn people, and I didn’t know how. I hope this protects someone.
Myers said:
I will again emphasize, though, that I have no personal, direct evidence that the event occurred as described; all I can say is that the author is known to me, and she has also been vouched for by one other person I trust.
So Myers' is admitting that he has "no personal, direct evidence that the event occurred as described" on one of the more if not most widely read blogs made an accusation against a named person of serial rape, to tens of thousands and by now, I'd guess, millions of people.
Before going on, and in light of not only what I read elsewhere, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that on the description given, no one could possibly know if what is alleged to happen would even constitute rape as legally defined anywhere. I don't even know what being "coersed into a position where I could not consent" means. I doubt any jury would ever find anyone guilty of anything on that basis. If the legal standard is "beyond a reasonable doubt" then someone making an accusation of a crime should not provide the doubts in what they claimed happened. To do so makes it impossible for an honest policeman or prosecuting attorney who shares your outrage at the behavior and even your desire to punish the one you feel has done you wrong to do anything about it.
If that was the description she brought to the "organization" she notified, she made it impossible for them to do more than avoid an association with him. People making an accusation have a responsibility to articulate an actual wrong, especially adults of average or above intelligence and unencumbered by mental illness. If I were forced to sit on a jury hearing a case based on a lot of the complaints like those I've been reading, I couldn't possibly honestly say that I didn't have a reasonable doubt as to the guilt of even someone I found truly awful. Based on what Myers' provides, I'd have to admit I would have to have a reasonable doubt based in the possibility that he made it up. And I start this by having disliked Michael Shermer for about as long as I've known he existed and being on record as doubting his honesty.
After a lot of talk about the possibility of Myers' being sued for libel, he produced what he said was corroboration of the account given above. But it didn't contain anything helpful, in fact, it made Myers' assertions even more open to doubt
The anonymous woman who wrote to you is known to me, and in fact I was in her presence immediately after said incident (she was extremely distraught), and when she told the management of the conference (some time later).
From that, I wouldn't even be able to tell you that the person was even talking about the woman who wrote the first e-mail. How, on the basis of what Myers' said, would he or she know they were talking about the same person or incidence? This doesn't even hold up as confirmation that they are talking about the same thing.
Well after that, Myers posted this in an update:
Michael Shermer was the guest of honor at an atheist event I attended in Fall 2006; I was on the Board of the group who hosted it. It’s a very short story: I got my book signed, then at the post-speech party, Shermer chatted with me at great length while refilling my wine glass repeatedly. I lost count of how many drinks I had. He was flirting with me and I am non-confrontational and unwilling to be rude, so I just laughed it off. He made sure my wine glass stayed full.
And that’s the entirety of my story: Michael Shermer helped get me drunker than I normally get, and was a bit flirty. I can’t recall the details because I was intoxicated. I don’t remember how I left, but I am told that a friend took me away from the situation and home from the party. Note, I’d never gotten drunk at any atheist event before; I was humiliated by having gotten so drunk and even more ashamed that my friends had to cart me off before anything happened to me.
But I had a bad taste in my mouth about Shermer’s flirtatiousness, because I’m married, and I thought he was kind of a pig. I didn't even keep his signed book, I didn't want it near me.
Who was supposed to be keeping track of how much they drank? Who apparently didn't say "no I'm not interested, I'm married" or even "buzz off"? About the only thing that this claims is that Shermer was flirting with a married woman who got drunk because a famous atheist was overly generous with the wine. I can't even claim to have any sympathy for AN ADULT WHO VOLUNTARILY GETS DRUNK in this story. Especially as she says that she "was a bit flirty". As a gay man, instead of alleging that what happened supports a charge of serial rape against someone doing what she's accusing him of, if it were me I'd call what happened ME MAKING A FOOL OF MYSELF.
This is a world away from those incidents in which young girls and boys are raped while they are too drunk or drugged to resist, there is no doubt that that is rape, a serious crime. This is not like people who are mentally incapacitated being taken advantage of due to the fact that they cannot really give informed consent. This is adults making fools of themselves and regretting it later. Even ADULTS who serially make fools of themselves, someone who sleeps with creeps and sleazes is an adult who is legally able to give consent under normal circumstances. If anyone even pointed out that they were being stupid there would be angry, enraged denunciations that you were infantilizing them, violating their "agency" or some such other trendy buzzword. The situation is someone demanding they have the right to make fools of themselves, refusing to even admit that's what they've done, and then blame it on other people.
I'm unaware of any place in the United States where it is illegal to have sex with someone who has had a drink, never mind the very generous legal limits in some states. So even if it is a crime to have sex with someone who is drunk when they say yes, if I were on a jury hearing the case, I'd be hard put to say I knew they were sufficiently drunk for it to constitute the legal definition of rape. I'd say unless there was clear physical proof of blood alcohol levels, there was a reasonable doubt that the person who was conscious was temporarily unable to give consent.
If Michael Shermer is guilty of a crime is for a jury in a criminal or civil trial to say, not anyone else, certainly not PZ Myers based on what he so irresponsibly claimed in his blog post, setting off an even more irresponsible comment thread of the kind that a blogger of his experience would certainly know was bound to be the result of what he did. By bringing these charges up the way he did was the most irresponsible thing I've seen by a blogger considered to be a serious academic, relied on for accuracy and honesty do. But in researching the issue, some even more disturbing developments in blog culture came to my attention. The very concept of people acting like adults seems to be in danger.
--------------------
Here is another account from Michelle Acciavatti, " a neuroscientist and free-lance science writer interested in clinical ethics." I'll give the entire thing:
As someone who was raped after a party, I often find myself falling for rape-apologist language. The guy that raped me would be most likely be horrified if I had accused him of rape. The guy that raped me is a good person. In fact, the guy that raped me was someone I found sexually attractive and had been flirting with for several weeks. I remember accepting his invitation for a ride home from a party. I don’t know what I was thinking. I do know that as a chronic drinker it is nearly impossible for others to tell when I've had too much. So, doesn't my drinking to excess, and accepting a ride home from this guy make me at least a little culpable? If I’d driven home in that state and killed someone in a car accident I couldn't use the excuse that I was too drunk to make the right decision about getting behind the wheel to not be charged with vehicular manslaughter. I’d have made the decision to drink and drive. Period. Impaired judgment would never enter the conversation.
It’s taken me a long, long time to realize that the drinking-and-driving scenario is not analogous to drinking-and-getting raped. To this day I have a hard time not accepting responsibility for my actions that night.
But I am not responsible. I did not make the decision to go out and get raped.
I am sure the guy that raped me didn't make the decision to go out and rape either, and that’s when I get sucked right back into the apologists rhetoric.
Because alcohol (or any other drug) does make consent difficult. And it is putting a lot of responsibility on one party to make them decide whether or not their sexual partner is capable of consent. Especially when that party may be impaired themselves.
Because, as my Dad tried to teach me, if it seems like a good idea tonight, it will still be a good idea in the morning.
I didn't listen to my father, I didn't listen to most of what I learned in sex ed. But, I try not to walk alone at night. I moderate my drinking when I go out to unfamiliar places. I use the buddy system at parties. I make friends with my bartenders and bouncers. I never leave my drink unattended. I never let someone buy me (or bring me) a drink. I have listened to the lessons of rape culture.
And I am sick of it. I am sick of being the one responsible for not getting raped. I am sick of “responsible” and “rape” being used in the same sentence.
It is time to start talking. Not about why people rape, or get raped, but about consent. Just like turning your keys in when you know you are too drunk to drive, when you go out to get impaired you need to turn your sexual expectations in. Any night when you get impaired the only thing you should go home with is a phone number and the excitement of maybe getting a phone call.
When you make the decision to get “fucked up”, then you also need to make the decision to not engage in sexual activity. You have to give up your right to consent, because you can not be responsible for someone else’s ability to consent.
This conversation needs to start happening as soon as sex ed does. Consent is not just “yes” and “no”. It is not a “mess”. Consent is awareness of all consequences of the intended action. Consent requires sobriety. It is that simple.
First, if the guy she had sex with was also drunk, didn't she rape him? If someone accused me of raping them while describing the scenario she does, I'd sue them for serious damages. This was not rape, this was her deciding she made a fool of herself, or even just regretting who it was she chose to have sex with. It might even be the kind of self-deception that many of us who have family members who are alcoholics are all too sadly familiar with. For an allegedly "feminist" blog to be telling women that what she did was OK and that the consequences of her bad choices WHICH SHE CONSENTED TO is someone elses fault is to demand all of the privileges of adulthood while being excused from any of the responsibilities of adulthood.
I'm left wondering what the hell is she complaining about. This isn't an account of a rape, it's someone wanting to get attention by claiming to be a rape survivor when what she describes isn't rape, it's her deciding after the fact that she's made a fool of herself. She isn't "sick of being the one responsible for not getting raped," she's apparently sick of taking any responsibility as an adult for her own actions and her own decisions. If I were on a jury listening to her account, I'd say that people with drinking problems of the kind she includes in her account frequently present their alcoholism in the same terms. That's always someone else's responsibility too. Admitting that's a lie is part of them giving it up, of them acting like a responsible adult. Responsibility is the price of being a full adult. AND THIS IS SOMEONE WHO SEEMS TO BE SETTING HERSELF UP AS AN ETHICIST!
Men can be real scum, believe me, I've had sex with men, I've had men come onto me. When I was young, even illegally drinking before the legal age of 21 (back then I wasn't even legally an adult), older, far more experienced men came onto me in bars, when I still drank too much, before giving it up. I know. Gay rape is a lot more common than is believed and it is widely considered to be a joke, even among those who have learned not to make light of rape of women. I've even read prison rape jokes on "feminist" blogs. Gay rape, when the victim is a gay man, would have been laughed out of court, if it ever got past the first interview with the police. But this is just stupid. This kind of claim cheapens the concept of being raped, of being the victim of a serious crime based in someone sexually attacking someone who doesn't say yes or who, by something far more serious than making a fool of him or herself. This is adults refusing to act like grownups while demanding that they not be advised to not make fools of themselves. I hate to have to be the one who breaks it to you, but that doesn't make it any kind of stand a serious person should be required to take seriously. It's something that any rational person is entirely within reason in rejecting. It is just plain irresponsible and stupid.
Men can be real jerks, and, being fully the equal of men, women can be too. Being a jerk is not a right that any civil rights movement will successfully claim. It's what real civil rights movements fight against. It's when civil rights movements claim that right that they discredit their movement. It's when you know it's time for the real adults to take it back.
At a conference, Mr. Shermer coerced me into a position where I could not consent, and then had sex with me. I can’t give more details than that, as it would reveal my identity, and I am very scared that he will come after me in some way. But I wanted to share this story in case it helps anyone else ward off a similar situation from happening. I reached out to one organization that was involved in the event at which I was raped, and they refused to take my concerns seriously. Ever since, I’ve heard stories about him doing things (5 different people have directly told me they did the same to them) and wanted to just say something and warn people, and I didn’t know how. I hope this protects someone.
Myers said:
I will again emphasize, though, that I have no personal, direct evidence that the event occurred as described; all I can say is that the author is known to me, and she has also been vouched for by one other person I trust.
So Myers' is admitting that he has "no personal, direct evidence that the event occurred as described" on one of the more if not most widely read blogs made an accusation against a named person of serial rape, to tens of thousands and by now, I'd guess, millions of people.
Before going on, and in light of not only what I read elsewhere, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that on the description given, no one could possibly know if what is alleged to happen would even constitute rape as legally defined anywhere. I don't even know what being "coersed into a position where I could not consent" means. I doubt any jury would ever find anyone guilty of anything on that basis. If the legal standard is "beyond a reasonable doubt" then someone making an accusation of a crime should not provide the doubts in what they claimed happened. To do so makes it impossible for an honest policeman or prosecuting attorney who shares your outrage at the behavior and even your desire to punish the one you feel has done you wrong to do anything about it.
If that was the description she brought to the "organization" she notified, she made it impossible for them to do more than avoid an association with him. People making an accusation have a responsibility to articulate an actual wrong, especially adults of average or above intelligence and unencumbered by mental illness. If I were forced to sit on a jury hearing a case based on a lot of the complaints like those I've been reading, I couldn't possibly honestly say that I didn't have a reasonable doubt as to the guilt of even someone I found truly awful. Based on what Myers' provides, I'd have to admit I would have to have a reasonable doubt based in the possibility that he made it up. And I start this by having disliked Michael Shermer for about as long as I've known he existed and being on record as doubting his honesty.
After a lot of talk about the possibility of Myers' being sued for libel, he produced what he said was corroboration of the account given above. But it didn't contain anything helpful, in fact, it made Myers' assertions even more open to doubt
The anonymous woman who wrote to you is known to me, and in fact I was in her presence immediately after said incident (she was extremely distraught), and when she told the management of the conference (some time later).
From that, I wouldn't even be able to tell you that the person was even talking about the woman who wrote the first e-mail. How, on the basis of what Myers' said, would he or she know they were talking about the same person or incidence? This doesn't even hold up as confirmation that they are talking about the same thing.
Well after that, Myers posted this in an update:
Michael Shermer was the guest of honor at an atheist event I attended in Fall 2006; I was on the Board of the group who hosted it. It’s a very short story: I got my book signed, then at the post-speech party, Shermer chatted with me at great length while refilling my wine glass repeatedly. I lost count of how many drinks I had. He was flirting with me and I am non-confrontational and unwilling to be rude, so I just laughed it off. He made sure my wine glass stayed full.
And that’s the entirety of my story: Michael Shermer helped get me drunker than I normally get, and was a bit flirty. I can’t recall the details because I was intoxicated. I don’t remember how I left, but I am told that a friend took me away from the situation and home from the party. Note, I’d never gotten drunk at any atheist event before; I was humiliated by having gotten so drunk and even more ashamed that my friends had to cart me off before anything happened to me.
But I had a bad taste in my mouth about Shermer’s flirtatiousness, because I’m married, and I thought he was kind of a pig. I didn't even keep his signed book, I didn't want it near me.
Who was supposed to be keeping track of how much they drank? Who apparently didn't say "no I'm not interested, I'm married" or even "buzz off"? About the only thing that this claims is that Shermer was flirting with a married woman who got drunk because a famous atheist was overly generous with the wine. I can't even claim to have any sympathy for AN ADULT WHO VOLUNTARILY GETS DRUNK in this story. Especially as she says that she "was a bit flirty". As a gay man, instead of alleging that what happened supports a charge of serial rape against someone doing what she's accusing him of, if it were me I'd call what happened ME MAKING A FOOL OF MYSELF.
This is a world away from those incidents in which young girls and boys are raped while they are too drunk or drugged to resist, there is no doubt that that is rape, a serious crime. This is not like people who are mentally incapacitated being taken advantage of due to the fact that they cannot really give informed consent. This is adults making fools of themselves and regretting it later. Even ADULTS who serially make fools of themselves, someone who sleeps with creeps and sleazes is an adult who is legally able to give consent under normal circumstances. If anyone even pointed out that they were being stupid there would be angry, enraged denunciations that you were infantilizing them, violating their "agency" or some such other trendy buzzword. The situation is someone demanding they have the right to make fools of themselves, refusing to even admit that's what they've done, and then blame it on other people.
I'm unaware of any place in the United States where it is illegal to have sex with someone who has had a drink, never mind the very generous legal limits in some states. So even if it is a crime to have sex with someone who is drunk when they say yes, if I were on a jury hearing the case, I'd be hard put to say I knew they were sufficiently drunk for it to constitute the legal definition of rape. I'd say unless there was clear physical proof of blood alcohol levels, there was a reasonable doubt that the person who was conscious was temporarily unable to give consent.
If Michael Shermer is guilty of a crime is for a jury in a criminal or civil trial to say, not anyone else, certainly not PZ Myers based on what he so irresponsibly claimed in his blog post, setting off an even more irresponsible comment thread of the kind that a blogger of his experience would certainly know was bound to be the result of what he did. By bringing these charges up the way he did was the most irresponsible thing I've seen by a blogger considered to be a serious academic, relied on for accuracy and honesty do. But in researching the issue, some even more disturbing developments in blog culture came to my attention. The very concept of people acting like adults seems to be in danger.
--------------------
Here is another account from Michelle Acciavatti, " a neuroscientist and free-lance science writer interested in clinical ethics." I'll give the entire thing:
As someone who was raped after a party, I often find myself falling for rape-apologist language. The guy that raped me would be most likely be horrified if I had accused him of rape. The guy that raped me is a good person. In fact, the guy that raped me was someone I found sexually attractive and had been flirting with for several weeks. I remember accepting his invitation for a ride home from a party. I don’t know what I was thinking. I do know that as a chronic drinker it is nearly impossible for others to tell when I've had too much. So, doesn't my drinking to excess, and accepting a ride home from this guy make me at least a little culpable? If I’d driven home in that state and killed someone in a car accident I couldn't use the excuse that I was too drunk to make the right decision about getting behind the wheel to not be charged with vehicular manslaughter. I’d have made the decision to drink and drive. Period. Impaired judgment would never enter the conversation.
It’s taken me a long, long time to realize that the drinking-and-driving scenario is not analogous to drinking-and-getting raped. To this day I have a hard time not accepting responsibility for my actions that night.
But I am not responsible. I did not make the decision to go out and get raped.
I am sure the guy that raped me didn't make the decision to go out and rape either, and that’s when I get sucked right back into the apologists rhetoric.
Because alcohol (or any other drug) does make consent difficult. And it is putting a lot of responsibility on one party to make them decide whether or not their sexual partner is capable of consent. Especially when that party may be impaired themselves.
Because, as my Dad tried to teach me, if it seems like a good idea tonight, it will still be a good idea in the morning.
I didn't listen to my father, I didn't listen to most of what I learned in sex ed. But, I try not to walk alone at night. I moderate my drinking when I go out to unfamiliar places. I use the buddy system at parties. I make friends with my bartenders and bouncers. I never leave my drink unattended. I never let someone buy me (or bring me) a drink. I have listened to the lessons of rape culture.
And I am sick of it. I am sick of being the one responsible for not getting raped. I am sick of “responsible” and “rape” being used in the same sentence.
It is time to start talking. Not about why people rape, or get raped, but about consent. Just like turning your keys in when you know you are too drunk to drive, when you go out to get impaired you need to turn your sexual expectations in. Any night when you get impaired the only thing you should go home with is a phone number and the excitement of maybe getting a phone call.
When you make the decision to get “fucked up”, then you also need to make the decision to not engage in sexual activity. You have to give up your right to consent, because you can not be responsible for someone else’s ability to consent.
This conversation needs to start happening as soon as sex ed does. Consent is not just “yes” and “no”. It is not a “mess”. Consent is awareness of all consequences of the intended action. Consent requires sobriety. It is that simple.
First, if the guy she had sex with was also drunk, didn't she rape him? If someone accused me of raping them while describing the scenario she does, I'd sue them for serious damages. This was not rape, this was her deciding she made a fool of herself, or even just regretting who it was she chose to have sex with. It might even be the kind of self-deception that many of us who have family members who are alcoholics are all too sadly familiar with. For an allegedly "feminist" blog to be telling women that what she did was OK and that the consequences of her bad choices WHICH SHE CONSENTED TO is someone elses fault is to demand all of the privileges of adulthood while being excused from any of the responsibilities of adulthood.
I'm left wondering what the hell is she complaining about. This isn't an account of a rape, it's someone wanting to get attention by claiming to be a rape survivor when what she describes isn't rape, it's her deciding after the fact that she's made a fool of herself. She isn't "sick of being the one responsible for not getting raped," she's apparently sick of taking any responsibility as an adult for her own actions and her own decisions. If I were on a jury listening to her account, I'd say that people with drinking problems of the kind she includes in her account frequently present their alcoholism in the same terms. That's always someone else's responsibility too. Admitting that's a lie is part of them giving it up, of them acting like a responsible adult. Responsibility is the price of being a full adult. AND THIS IS SOMEONE WHO SEEMS TO BE SETTING HERSELF UP AS AN ETHICIST!
Men can be real scum, believe me, I've had sex with men, I've had men come onto me. When I was young, even illegally drinking before the legal age of 21 (back then I wasn't even legally an adult), older, far more experienced men came onto me in bars, when I still drank too much, before giving it up. I know. Gay rape is a lot more common than is believed and it is widely considered to be a joke, even among those who have learned not to make light of rape of women. I've even read prison rape jokes on "feminist" blogs. Gay rape, when the victim is a gay man, would have been laughed out of court, if it ever got past the first interview with the police. But this is just stupid. This kind of claim cheapens the concept of being raped, of being the victim of a serious crime based in someone sexually attacking someone who doesn't say yes or who, by something far more serious than making a fool of him or herself. This is adults refusing to act like grownups while demanding that they not be advised to not make fools of themselves. I hate to have to be the one who breaks it to you, but that doesn't make it any kind of stand a serious person should be required to take seriously. It's something that any rational person is entirely within reason in rejecting. It is just plain irresponsible and stupid.
Men can be real jerks, and, being fully the equal of men, women can be too. Being a jerk is not a right that any civil rights movement will successfully claim. It's what real civil rights movements fight against. It's when civil rights movements claim that right that they discredit their movement. It's when you know it's time for the real adults to take it back.
Saturday, August 10, 2013
Thank You All of My Many Detractors
I just read a well-respected journalist I like who, until recently, had taken the entirely unfashionable position that Edward Snowden was incredibly irresponsible in taking his four laptops to Hong Kong. In his hedging and walk back I think there is the tell-tale sign of someone anxious that he's no longer kewl due to an excess of realism. Like owning an enormously expensive car or jewel, the price of having the kewl is to be constantly anxious at losing it. And you can lose it so easily, you can stumble into it merely by reasoning your way out of it.
In my recent research of the kewl kids at a still kewl blog, I saw the signs of said well-respected journalist having his kewl kuotient suffering over his excessively realistic line on Snowden and the required faith that master spy Snowden was right, that those honorable, honest, privacy-respecting, civil libertarians of the Chinese intelligence service hadn't gotten a thing from him. By virtue of his supernatural wiles and superhuman abilities to resist drugging, sleep deprivation, pressure, coercion, threat, bribe, etc. Edward Snowden was able to guarantee the total security of his laptops and any magical, unbreakable encryption codes he relied on. The Chinese Intelligence Services vs. Edward - in their physical control in Hong Kong, desperate to avoid return to the U.S. desperate to get somewhere else safe from them - Snowden. That's VS. CHINESE INTELLIGENCE. Oh, and, yes, then Russian intelligence.
And that those oh, so honorable Chinese government officials would arrange his travel plans making sure that their rivals in Moscow practiced the same levels of honor and Boy Scout level code of conduct that they did, not extracting any kind of favor from the Russians to allow Snowden and, you remember, his laptops to enjoy their hospitality.
Thank God I'm not tempted to pretend that quantity of complete crap to keep my cache of kewl. Thank you, my detractors, you've spared me from having to make those kinds of decisions.
In my recent research of the kewl kids at a still kewl blog, I saw the signs of said well-respected journalist having his kewl kuotient suffering over his excessively realistic line on Snowden and the required faith that master spy Snowden was right, that those honorable, honest, privacy-respecting, civil libertarians of the Chinese intelligence service hadn't gotten a thing from him. By virtue of his supernatural wiles and superhuman abilities to resist drugging, sleep deprivation, pressure, coercion, threat, bribe, etc. Edward Snowden was able to guarantee the total security of his laptops and any magical, unbreakable encryption codes he relied on. The Chinese Intelligence Services vs. Edward - in their physical control in Hong Kong, desperate to avoid return to the U.S. desperate to get somewhere else safe from them - Snowden. That's VS. CHINESE INTELLIGENCE. Oh, and, yes, then Russian intelligence.
And that those oh, so honorable Chinese government officials would arrange his travel plans making sure that their rivals in Moscow practiced the same levels of honor and Boy Scout level code of conduct that they did, not extracting any kind of favor from the Russians to allow Snowden and, you remember, his laptops to enjoy their hospitality.
Thank God I'm not tempted to pretend that quantity of complete crap to keep my cache of kewl. Thank you, my detractors, you've spared me from having to make those kinds of decisions.
PZ Myers Has Become Unquestionable and Infallible To His Fans And That Has Made Him Reckless
The temptation in the accusation of serial rape that PZ Myers made against Michael Shermer is to assume you know what happened when you have no evidence to base that on. But you don't. I don't, neither does Myers, which is why accusations of rape belong in the hands of the police and prosecutors or, those failing, RESPONSIBLE investigative reporters who are answerable to their publishers. Other than the very vague and oddly phrased passage that Myers presents as a rape victim's account, several years after the rape may have happened, and lots of assertions of rumors about Shermer's behavior towards women, literally everything said in this is an expression of opinions and attitudes where facts and evidence should be required. A charge of a crime depends only and completely on the facts of that particular incident, it doesn't depend on any or even every other possible case or assertion presented as similar, though that is the practice of the "skeptics" discussing this at Myers' blog. If that were not the case then an accusation of rape against Myers could be determined to be true based on the kind of thing he presented on his blog and brought to his comment thread by his fan club. It is the standard that anyone could be up against based on the whim of any popular blogger without so much as an editor to hold them back.
I've read through a good part of the comments at PZ's and, aside from a very few people who don't figure they already know what happened in the complete absence of facts, it's about 2000 comments of some of the most wildly irresponsible blog babble I've ever seen anywhere. None of them more irresponsible than Myers' own comments. Here's what he said BEFORE any discussion happened, at comment #1.
PZ Myers
8 August 2013 at 11:14 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Oh, hey, look — the explosion to also took out my career within this community!
Fuck.
Given his title and this first comment, it's clear that Myers figured on setting off an "explosion". Which is what he did. He's done that before, his Great Desecration a well known example, it's a well established part of his act. But when he makes an accusation of serial rape against a named person, that turns what might be merely irresponsible into epic irresponsibility. That is true if the accusation is true, possibly damaging any future prosecution of perpetrators at "skeptical" conferences. I bet that by the end of next week, virtually every person who might attend those will have read PZ's post and or the blog chatter about it, polluting the pool of witnesses. Of course, if the charge is false, then its irresponsibly is magnified many times.
One thing that I think Myers counted on was that his explosion was going to be an IED, not a suicide bomb. Despite his peremptory self-pity, short of a successful suit for libel, PZ will probably come out of this more famous, more the adored hero of a large number of "skeptics" who unquestioningly accept what he said, no evidence required.
It also exposes how PZ Myers has become a problem through his assumption of prosecutorial powers to himself, influencing a large number of internet fans.
At #53 he shows just how little in the way of checking his story he figures he's required to do before making such a serious accusation.
PZ Myers
9 August 2013 at 12:06 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
"Personally, I think I would have first taken it up with Shermer before coming out with this."
Yeah? And what do you think he would have said if he were guilty?
Apparently Myers didn't ask himself if maybe he should have done more than assume he already knew what happened. Which is rather odd for someone who bills himself as a skeptic, or at least it should be. I've had this kind of experience with professional "skeptics" before. Would you believe me if I said that there are few groups I've encountered who are more certain of their beliefs than skeptics? Would you just take my word for that assertion involving no accusations of committing serous felonies which, from my brief look at possible penalties, could send someone to prison for the rest of his life or, in the absence of any finding of guilt, destroy his life? Will Myers and his fan club be willing to live with this standard of "evidence" having it applied to them? Of course not. I've never yet encountered a professional or avocational "skeptic" who was willing to live by their own standards of evidence, including, to be fair, Michael Shermer.
What if I said that Myers was looking for an easy way to get a lot of hits on his blog and he knew from past experience that this post was a sure way to do that? Would I have to do more research than he did before launching an accusation of serial rape against a named individual? Would it be demanded that I talk to Myers and see what he could present as evidence that he hadn't made the whole thing up including the two women he claims sent him e-mails? Not by his fans who believe, on the basis of what he's presented is entirely real and accurate and they've been proposing punishments for Shermer and even the unnamed "organization" that they assume is guilty of sweeping true and well evidenced accusations under the rug. . That is, not if they aren't going to hold themselves to the more favorable side of a double standard. Which is exactly what they do.
But, as I said last night, I'm not insisting that Myers publish the names of the women along with their entire e-mails on his blog, I'm insisting that this is an extremely serious accusation of an extremely serious crime, which may or may not be true and that it belongs in the hands of the legal authorities who can prosecute that. Or, if the women are unwilling to go to them, then their evidence should be given to a responsible and professional investigative reporter such as those who broke the pedophile priest scandal. Responsible and professional reporters who will do what Myers has not, find supporting evidence and making a logical and evidence based accusation. Or, failing to find that, not publish what are accusations they couldn't support with evidence.
Considering the body of his published claims about what is required before you are allowed to believe even a neutral idea, considering he's supposed to be a scientist, Myers' failure to live up to the requirement to rely on evidence completely discredits his position. Given his influence, it is just a matter of time before he produces real victims in the way Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh can, real victims whose lives are destroyed and who can not get relief or redress. And I'm not going anywhere near as far as Myers' has in making these accusations. No one is going to bring a criminal prosecution against Myers for being entirely irresponsible. "Free Thought" Blogs shares some of the blame for this. They provide Myers a platform from which to throw his bombs.
I've read through a good part of the comments at PZ's and, aside from a very few people who don't figure they already know what happened in the complete absence of facts, it's about 2000 comments of some of the most wildly irresponsible blog babble I've ever seen anywhere. None of them more irresponsible than Myers' own comments. Here's what he said BEFORE any discussion happened, at comment #1.
PZ Myers
8 August 2013 at 11:14 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Oh, hey, look — the explosion to also took out my career within this community!
Fuck.
Given his title and this first comment, it's clear that Myers figured on setting off an "explosion". Which is what he did. He's done that before, his Great Desecration a well known example, it's a well established part of his act. But when he makes an accusation of serial rape against a named person, that turns what might be merely irresponsible into epic irresponsibility. That is true if the accusation is true, possibly damaging any future prosecution of perpetrators at "skeptical" conferences. I bet that by the end of next week, virtually every person who might attend those will have read PZ's post and or the blog chatter about it, polluting the pool of witnesses. Of course, if the charge is false, then its irresponsibly is magnified many times.
One thing that I think Myers counted on was that his explosion was going to be an IED, not a suicide bomb. Despite his peremptory self-pity, short of a successful suit for libel, PZ will probably come out of this more famous, more the adored hero of a large number of "skeptics" who unquestioningly accept what he said, no evidence required.
It also exposes how PZ Myers has become a problem through his assumption of prosecutorial powers to himself, influencing a large number of internet fans.
At #53 he shows just how little in the way of checking his story he figures he's required to do before making such a serious accusation.
PZ Myers
9 August 2013 at 12:06 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
"Personally, I think I would have first taken it up with Shermer before coming out with this."
Yeah? And what do you think he would have said if he were guilty?
Apparently Myers didn't ask himself if maybe he should have done more than assume he already knew what happened. Which is rather odd for someone who bills himself as a skeptic, or at least it should be. I've had this kind of experience with professional "skeptics" before. Would you believe me if I said that there are few groups I've encountered who are more certain of their beliefs than skeptics? Would you just take my word for that assertion involving no accusations of committing serous felonies which, from my brief look at possible penalties, could send someone to prison for the rest of his life or, in the absence of any finding of guilt, destroy his life? Will Myers and his fan club be willing to live with this standard of "evidence" having it applied to them? Of course not. I've never yet encountered a professional or avocational "skeptic" who was willing to live by their own standards of evidence, including, to be fair, Michael Shermer.
What if I said that Myers was looking for an easy way to get a lot of hits on his blog and he knew from past experience that this post was a sure way to do that? Would I have to do more research than he did before launching an accusation of serial rape against a named individual? Would it be demanded that I talk to Myers and see what he could present as evidence that he hadn't made the whole thing up including the two women he claims sent him e-mails? Not by his fans who believe, on the basis of what he's presented is entirely real and accurate and they've been proposing punishments for Shermer and even the unnamed "organization" that they assume is guilty of sweeping true and well evidenced accusations under the rug. . That is, not if they aren't going to hold themselves to the more favorable side of a double standard. Which is exactly what they do.
But, as I said last night, I'm not insisting that Myers publish the names of the women along with their entire e-mails on his blog, I'm insisting that this is an extremely serious accusation of an extremely serious crime, which may or may not be true and that it belongs in the hands of the legal authorities who can prosecute that. Or, if the women are unwilling to go to them, then their evidence should be given to a responsible and professional investigative reporter such as those who broke the pedophile priest scandal. Responsible and professional reporters who will do what Myers has not, find supporting evidence and making a logical and evidence based accusation. Or, failing to find that, not publish what are accusations they couldn't support with evidence.
Considering the body of his published claims about what is required before you are allowed to believe even a neutral idea, considering he's supposed to be a scientist, Myers' failure to live up to the requirement to rely on evidence completely discredits his position. Given his influence, it is just a matter of time before he produces real victims in the way Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh can, real victims whose lives are destroyed and who can not get relief or redress. And I'm not going anywhere near as far as Myers' has in making these accusations. No one is going to bring a criminal prosecution against Myers for being entirely irresponsible. "Free Thought" Blogs shares some of the blame for this. They provide Myers a platform from which to throw his bombs.
Friday, August 9, 2013
An Accusation of Serial Rape Is Too Serious To Turn It Into Vent-a-thon Porn
See updates below
In one of the most stunningly irresponsible blog posts I've ever seen, PZ Myers accused Michael Shermer of serial rape, naming him and giving what he says is part of the account given to him of a victim of the rape. I have no idea if the accusation is true or not but, either way, this belongs in the hands of a prosecutor or, at the very least, in the hands of a COMPETENT investigative reporter who could generate what Myers doesn't present, evidence to support the charge he made. I have no idea if it is true or not and neither does anyone else but those making the accusation and Shermer. Nothing has been proved, no evidence has been presented, only fragments of what Myers says is testimony. All of this, so far, is based on Myers' say so. And that isn't enough to know anything because he doesn't claim to have been a witness. To increase the seriousness, the accusation is that he has raped many other women.
Myer's accusation was first published as a single allegation he says is from a woman he says he knows, which may be entirely accurate or it may not be. Later, after I briefly entered the discussion, he presented what he said was confirmation from another woman. Both of the women are unnamed, neither of the statements I read were an entire document but were, apparently, edited by Myers. One thing that all of us apart from the unnamed women knows, we don't know if what PZ posted was an accurate account of a crime or not. But the person accused as a rapist is named.
If a charge of rape is true, the case should be given to the police or the prosecutor in the district where the crime was committed. It is irresponsible to write a blog post about it before that is done. Myers says that the woman making the accusation "reported it to an organization".
It’s been a few years, so no law agency is going to do anything about it now; she reported it to an organization at the time, and it was dismissed. Swept under the rug. Ignored.
Given how he phrased that, I gather the "organization" was not the police. One of the problems is that Myers doesn't come out and say exactly what this means. If the woman did give the information to the police, it's possible that they were negligent or it's possible her accusation couldn't be prosecuted. We don't know because nothing is said about that. If it's the case that the police were negligent then it is important for people reading his account to know that. If that's the case, then their higher-ups should be made aware of the fact. If the "organization" was not the police or prosecutor, then they should have had the account of the crime given to them. An "organization" other than the police or the prosecutor's office can do nothing to bring justice in the matter.
An accusation made in such vague terms by an unnamed person against a named individual is extremely dangerous. It could, conceivably, scotch a possible prosecution of a criminal or it could falsely destroy the life of an innocent person. At this point, having gone this far, Myers owes it to Michael Shermer to reveal more about his accusation. And, until the individuals who say they were attacked come forward, it is Myers who is making the accusation. And he owes it to people who read him and, generally, to all of us. If the women who are telling him this will not bring it to the police then there is nothing they can do about it, if they are not willing to do that they could bring it, as already noted, to a COMPETENT investigative reporter who will follow up their information to find corroborating accounts, testimony and evidence BEFORE PUBLISHING. If the accusation is as old as Myers indicates, then all of that should have been done long before now, any possible future victims alerted by a legitimate criminal accusation or, at the very least, a competently investigated and evidence based report in a reputable newspaper or magazine that passed by their editors and legal council.
No one is served by what Myers did except those of his fans who, by their disgusting behavior on his comment threads, prove that they are not interested in justice, they're interested in venting and posing and playing. If Shermer is innocent, I hope he at least gets a cease and desist and gets Myers to stop doing this kind of thing. If it were me, I'd be calling a good lawyer to bring a libel action against him. If the accusations are true, that's an entirely different matter. In that case I hope a prosecutor tells Myers to stop playing Grand Inquisitor and leave it to the professionals. And then the professionals can deal with it professionally and responsibly.
I truly dislike Michael Shermer, I dislike his career and don't find him honest. But I don't have to like him to know that no one should have to answer this kind of blog post and the jury of Myers' fan club which has already filled in for the lack of evidence and decided the case. If he committed a crime, he has an absolute right to face his accusers in a court of law. So would Meyers or the women who he says told him what he posted. So would any of us accused of a very serious felony. This isn't truth or dare, this isn't a game, it is entirely serious.
Update: OK, as of now, this morning, the links seem to be working again.
In one of the most stunningly irresponsible blog posts I've ever seen, PZ Myers accused Michael Shermer of serial rape, naming him and giving what he says is part of the account given to him of a victim of the rape. I have no idea if the accusation is true or not but, either way, this belongs in the hands of a prosecutor or, at the very least, in the hands of a COMPETENT investigative reporter who could generate what Myers doesn't present, evidence to support the charge he made. I have no idea if it is true or not and neither does anyone else but those making the accusation and Shermer. Nothing has been proved, no evidence has been presented, only fragments of what Myers says is testimony. All of this, so far, is based on Myers' say so. And that isn't enough to know anything because he doesn't claim to have been a witness. To increase the seriousness, the accusation is that he has raped many other women.
Myer's accusation was first published as a single allegation he says is from a woman he says he knows, which may be entirely accurate or it may not be. Later, after I briefly entered the discussion, he presented what he said was confirmation from another woman. Both of the women are unnamed, neither of the statements I read were an entire document but were, apparently, edited by Myers. One thing that all of us apart from the unnamed women knows, we don't know if what PZ posted was an accurate account of a crime or not. But the person accused as a rapist is named.
If a charge of rape is true, the case should be given to the police or the prosecutor in the district where the crime was committed. It is irresponsible to write a blog post about it before that is done. Myers says that the woman making the accusation "reported it to an organization".
It’s been a few years, so no law agency is going to do anything about it now; she reported it to an organization at the time, and it was dismissed. Swept under the rug. Ignored.
Given how he phrased that, I gather the "organization" was not the police. One of the problems is that Myers doesn't come out and say exactly what this means. If the woman did give the information to the police, it's possible that they were negligent or it's possible her accusation couldn't be prosecuted. We don't know because nothing is said about that. If it's the case that the police were negligent then it is important for people reading his account to know that. If that's the case, then their higher-ups should be made aware of the fact. If the "organization" was not the police or prosecutor, then they should have had the account of the crime given to them. An "organization" other than the police or the prosecutor's office can do nothing to bring justice in the matter.
An accusation made in such vague terms by an unnamed person against a named individual is extremely dangerous. It could, conceivably, scotch a possible prosecution of a criminal or it could falsely destroy the life of an innocent person. At this point, having gone this far, Myers owes it to Michael Shermer to reveal more about his accusation. And, until the individuals who say they were attacked come forward, it is Myers who is making the accusation. And he owes it to people who read him and, generally, to all of us. If the women who are telling him this will not bring it to the police then there is nothing they can do about it, if they are not willing to do that they could bring it, as already noted, to a COMPETENT investigative reporter who will follow up their information to find corroborating accounts, testimony and evidence BEFORE PUBLISHING. If the accusation is as old as Myers indicates, then all of that should have been done long before now, any possible future victims alerted by a legitimate criminal accusation or, at the very least, a competently investigated and evidence based report in a reputable newspaper or magazine that passed by their editors and legal council.
No one is served by what Myers did except those of his fans who, by their disgusting behavior on his comment threads, prove that they are not interested in justice, they're interested in venting and posing and playing. If Shermer is innocent, I hope he at least gets a cease and desist and gets Myers to stop doing this kind of thing. If it were me, I'd be calling a good lawyer to bring a libel action against him. If the accusations are true, that's an entirely different matter. In that case I hope a prosecutor tells Myers to stop playing Grand Inquisitor and leave it to the professionals. And then the professionals can deal with it professionally and responsibly.
I truly dislike Michael Shermer, I dislike his career and don't find him honest. But I don't have to like him to know that no one should have to answer this kind of blog post and the jury of Myers' fan club which has already filled in for the lack of evidence and decided the case. If he committed a crime, he has an absolute right to face his accusers in a court of law. So would Meyers or the women who he says told him what he posted. So would any of us accused of a very serious felony. This isn't truth or dare, this isn't a game, it is entirely serious.
Update: OK, as of now, this morning, the links seem to be working again.
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of The "Reality Community"
Anyone who thinks a modern country could operate allowing what Edward Snowden did to be perfectly legal has marked themselves as hopelessly unrealistic and deluded. If there's one thing about that which is certain, the world where he could have stolen what he is known to have stolen and remain at perfect liberty and unharassed does not and will not ever exist. Such a state would cease to exist quite rapidly. Including those countries and institutions pretending that isn't the case, including those who have voiced such support for Snowden stealing and revealing information from another country. I can guarantee you that if it were their country or institution whose sensitive information was stolen and revealed, it would be different. Even civil liberties groups depend on some information being concealed, which is why they so often protest - often quite legitimately - when they find they've been spied on. I'd like it if that wasn't true and there were total and absolute transparency everywhere on Earth but I'd also like to have wings and be able to fly while invisible. People in hell want ice water, too.
Not to mention the myriad of bloggers and commentators who wax unrealistically about it WHILE CONCEALING THEIR IDENTITY BEHIND PSEUDONYMS AND TROLL NAMES.
Grow up.
Update: Someone remind me to not write two involved series while something like this stuff is going on. By the time I can give it my full attention everyone's gone nuts over it. It's best to see something like that happening gradually.
Not to mention the myriad of bloggers and commentators who wax unrealistically about it WHILE CONCEALING THEIR IDENTITY BEHIND PSEUDONYMS AND TROLL NAMES.
Grow up.
Update: Someone remind me to not write two involved series while something like this stuff is going on. By the time I can give it my full attention everyone's gone nuts over it. It's best to see something like that happening gradually.
Thursday, August 8, 2013
Smetana - On the Sea Shore - Concert Etude in G sharp minor, Op. 17
Jitka Čechová - pianist
There are so many really great pianists you'll never hear of because there are just so many and so few get all the attention. Not always the ones who deserve it, either.
A Few More Thinking Points For the Snowden Cult To Consider
Update response as prelude: What people were getting worked up about was that the NSA were collecting the records of communications between the United States and other countries. Even if they weren't collecting that information here THE COMMUNICATIONS WERE TO OTHER COUNTRIES, MANY OF WHICH HAVE NO RESTRICTIONS ON TAPPING INTO THE COMMUNICATIONS OF THOSE ON THEIR END INCLUDING THAT SAME INFORMATION YOU'RE WORKED UP ABOUT BEING COLLECTED BY THE U. S. GOVERNMENT. It really isn't hard to figure these things out, all of the information required is contained in the same news stories, only, you've got to do something called thinking about them. No reason to be so rude about it. On the other hand, comment moderation is making my life a lot easier.
As pointed out, whatever Snowden brought with him from his position sort of at the NSA is now certainly in the hands of the Chinese and Russian intelligence. They would never have let him leave Hong Kong for anywhere else but American custody or allowed him to stay in Russia without him surrendering everything he had with him, including the keys to any encryption he had it "protected" by. Possibly that information could open up even more information that they have access to through espionage or hacking. That could very well mean they've now got access to whatever it is you were upset with the NSA having and the means to get more.
As pointed out, whatever Snowden brought with him from his position sort of at the NSA is now certainly in the hands of the Chinese and Russian intelligence. They would never have let him leave Hong Kong for anywhere else but American custody or allowed him to stay in Russia without him surrendering everything he had with him, including the keys to any encryption he had it "protected" by. Possibly that information could open up even more information that they have access to through espionage or hacking. That could very well mean they've now got access to whatever it is you were upset with the NSA having and the means to get more.
The point made in a comment below about what a Chinese or Russian incarnation of Alan Turing could do with the clues embedded in any material Snowden surrendered to those intelligence agencies could allow them to reproduce a lot of if not all of the same apparatus that you're so worked up about the NSA having, including whatever of Snowden's claims about the close to all-seeing, all-knowing powers the NSA and its contractors actually have. Now in addition to the American system with FISA, you'll have the intelligence services in those two countries to worry about and I'm not aware of them having anything like the FISA courts to keep them from snooping into your records etc. You figure they're more open than even that far from transparent process meant to protect U.S. citizens in a way that is going to protect you? Oh, if you hadn't considered the possibility of either of those countries producing someone who could figure that out, consider it now. Turing's task was a lot harder in his day than this one would be today and Turing had far, far less evidence to go on than would be contained in the codes copied by Snowden.
You still think Snowden is a hero? I thought he might be before thinking about what he's done and who he stupidly put himself in the hands of. That he isn't is one of the few things about this that I'm certain of now. If you hadn't thought about those things, try it. I'm sure they did in Hong Kong and Moscow.
Update: Oh, and something for all of us to consider. The Republicans, mostly, who were so hot on privatizing all of this stuff, especially the Bush family and its allies, are responsible for creating a system in which the highest level of spying and espionage is guaranteed. Edward Snowden was a creation of the privatization cult and the ideology that invented it. If there's one thing that this proves it is that the system they created destroys national security. Who knows how much of the information that goes through corporations owned by the Carlyle Group and others isn't being skimmed for their corporate use? You want to bet that their sense of honor, morality and patriotism would keep them from stealing data in their financial interest?
Update: Oh, and something for all of us to consider. The Republicans, mostly, who were so hot on privatizing all of this stuff, especially the Bush family and its allies, are responsible for creating a system in which the highest level of spying and espionage is guaranteed. Edward Snowden was a creation of the privatization cult and the ideology that invented it. If there's one thing that this proves it is that the system they created destroys national security. Who knows how much of the information that goes through corporations owned by the Carlyle Group and others isn't being skimmed for their corporate use? You want to bet that their sense of honor, morality and patriotism would keep them from stealing data in their financial interest?
Magical Thinking of the Naive Left
It used to be that it was conservatives of the strict constructionist type who held a truly superstitious view of the Constitution of the United States. They believe that it is some kind of infallible document which, in its pure and pristine form, held in the minds of the supernatural figures called "The Founding Fathers" -all dead in the pre-electronic past- was mystically inerrant, a potent magical talisman against all that is evil and taboo. But those times are past. Not that that isn't the current ahistorical and nonsensical assertion of "strict constructionists" or the various other cults that go by different names but boil down to about the same superstition, it's that the delusion has spread throughout those who believe themselves to be liberals, though, as I've said before, a lot of them are a lot closer to conservatives than true liberals. When the great Barbara Jordan thundered that her faith in The Constitution "is whole; it is complete; it is total", she didn't mean that kind of thing.
I've had several comments on what I've written about the Snowden affair that seem to not realize that none of the provisions of the Bill of Rights is going to protect their online communications in other countries through which they physically pass and in which copies of those are retained on servers. Which is not only stunning but potentially dangerous naivety. The United States Bill of Rights does not apply in those countries, it isn't going to magically prevent the governments in those countries from reading and revealing your e-mails and nothing is going to keep internet companies in those countries from fully complying with demands or even requests to hand those over. And even your e-mail to the person in the next room can pass through lines and servers all over the world, or so I've read over and over again. Those are not protected by the patron saints Jefferson, Madison and Mason from being retrieved. They're not even going to be really protected from countries friendly to the United States - and by "countries friendly" when it's one government to another you should understand that to mean "governments who think they can trade information for something they want a lot more than protecting your privacy."
Do you think that your messages aren't being collected by any government outside of the United States and, in those countries with sufficient technical ability, analyzed for their own purposes, including sharing information they find therein with some branch of the United States government? How much do you want to bet that that isn't being done right now? Just how many cookies do you have on your computer right now? Do you know what they are and, really, where those come from? Do you think that, in addition to companies and those terrifyingly knowledgeable and potent computer gangsters (many of the most able and equipped, by the way and apropos of the Snowden affair, located in Russia) the governments in which those are would not have the ability to stealthily get right into your computer now?
The convenience of pretending that the privacy that always depended on mutually held beliefs in honor and morality being generally held in societies holds in online communications doesn't do anything to change the fact that by putting information online exposes it to people who don't have that or, in many cases, any code of honor and no moral restraints on their stealing your information and using it in what ever way they want or see as more important than your privacy. When you put even encrypted messages online you're trading convenience and speed for increased possibilities that the message, or copies of it routinely held in who knows where, can be retrieved and decoded. And the abilities that the NSA have to do that with computers will, very soon, be available to many other governments and many large corporations, the very companies that develop the encryption you rely on will probably sell them the keys. If there's one thing you shouldn't rely on, it's the honor and morality of people who can make a lot of money by violating even the moral code they, themselves claim to follow. That's business, especially in the absence of legal regulation. Ah, legal regulations and the judges who get to decide on those, you can't get away from that weak link in the chain of privacy.
If you want a secret held in absolute security, don't tell anyone, not even those you trust. Especially don't write it down, paper is no guardian of a secret, it will spill your guts to anyone who looks at it. As soon as you either tell a trusted friend or put it on paper, you've already compromised its security. And when you send it online you've put your secret in so many other hands, in so many other lands and you've also created many copies of it stored in places you don't even know exist. You don't only have to depend on the United States government to follow your idea of the law to prevent them copying it and reading it, you've got to depend on judges and "justices" agreeing with your idea of the law and, trust me, they often won't. And, as I said above, those won't protect you from other countries, even those who follow their own laws. Of course, none of them will protect you from people outside of governments who successfully break laws. They also won't protect you from the company that provides you your browser in exchange for their use of your information, including, it seems, selling what of that they find it in their interest to sell, here and abroad. You get to vote for the United States government and have the minimal amount of control that that fact provides, you're at the mercy of the internet providers. You do what they demand to get online or you stay off line. And they demand that you hand over some of your privacy. You've already agreed to give that up.
So, can we at least get that nonsense out of the way? By your putting your information online you've already given away your 4th 5th amendment protections and all other protection to privacy under the Bill of Rights? Because if you think its power extends that far, you are thinking magically, no matter how much you insist you don't do that. If you want a good example of what can happen to even the most heavily protected secrets look at what Snowden made off with, which I'm just about 100% sure Chinese and Russian intelligence has already had from him, while he slept or in exchange for keeping him out of the hands of .... how did Putin put it? "our American partners." Ian Flemming couldn't have said it with more deliciously insincere, and self-serving hypocrisy. Would you like to be in Snowden's position of having to trust Putin's sense of honor and morality? Snowden has got whatever information he purloined. Snowden has got nothing else that they'd want more than they'd want the U.S. government to owe them one. I wouldn't be surprised if his passage from Hong Kong to Moscow wasn't in accord to some trade between the Chinese and Russian governments, conveying the carrier of information they both wanted and what the Chinese government didn't mind each other having. I think Snowden figured on gaming the Chinese government for his own gain like the plot of a spy novel, or, more likely movie or video game. His travel itinerary has no other explanation. He'd have gone directly to Venezuela or Ecuador and communicated with Greenwald directly and privately if he hadn't been playing some kind of game like that. He really believed he could work it his way. The guy is a total idiot anyway you look at it. The privacy of your online information depends on people like him.
I've had several comments on what I've written about the Snowden affair that seem to not realize that none of the provisions of the Bill of Rights is going to protect their online communications in other countries through which they physically pass and in which copies of those are retained on servers. Which is not only stunning but potentially dangerous naivety. The United States Bill of Rights does not apply in those countries, it isn't going to magically prevent the governments in those countries from reading and revealing your e-mails and nothing is going to keep internet companies in those countries from fully complying with demands or even requests to hand those over. And even your e-mail to the person in the next room can pass through lines and servers all over the world, or so I've read over and over again. Those are not protected by the patron saints Jefferson, Madison and Mason from being retrieved. They're not even going to be really protected from countries friendly to the United States - and by "countries friendly" when it's one government to another you should understand that to mean "governments who think they can trade information for something they want a lot more than protecting your privacy."
Do you think that your messages aren't being collected by any government outside of the United States and, in those countries with sufficient technical ability, analyzed for their own purposes, including sharing information they find therein with some branch of the United States government? How much do you want to bet that that isn't being done right now? Just how many cookies do you have on your computer right now? Do you know what they are and, really, where those come from? Do you think that, in addition to companies and those terrifyingly knowledgeable and potent computer gangsters (many of the most able and equipped, by the way and apropos of the Snowden affair, located in Russia) the governments in which those are would not have the ability to stealthily get right into your computer now?
The convenience of pretending that the privacy that always depended on mutually held beliefs in honor and morality being generally held in societies holds in online communications doesn't do anything to change the fact that by putting information online exposes it to people who don't have that or, in many cases, any code of honor and no moral restraints on their stealing your information and using it in what ever way they want or see as more important than your privacy. When you put even encrypted messages online you're trading convenience and speed for increased possibilities that the message, or copies of it routinely held in who knows where, can be retrieved and decoded. And the abilities that the NSA have to do that with computers will, very soon, be available to many other governments and many large corporations, the very companies that develop the encryption you rely on will probably sell them the keys. If there's one thing you shouldn't rely on, it's the honor and morality of people who can make a lot of money by violating even the moral code they, themselves claim to follow. That's business, especially in the absence of legal regulation. Ah, legal regulations and the judges who get to decide on those, you can't get away from that weak link in the chain of privacy.
If you want a secret held in absolute security, don't tell anyone, not even those you trust. Especially don't write it down, paper is no guardian of a secret, it will spill your guts to anyone who looks at it. As soon as you either tell a trusted friend or put it on paper, you've already compromised its security. And when you send it online you've put your secret in so many other hands, in so many other lands and you've also created many copies of it stored in places you don't even know exist. You don't only have to depend on the United States government to follow your idea of the law to prevent them copying it and reading it, you've got to depend on judges and "justices" agreeing with your idea of the law and, trust me, they often won't. And, as I said above, those won't protect you from other countries, even those who follow their own laws. Of course, none of them will protect you from people outside of governments who successfully break laws. They also won't protect you from the company that provides you your browser in exchange for their use of your information, including, it seems, selling what of that they find it in their interest to sell, here and abroad. You get to vote for the United States government and have the minimal amount of control that that fact provides, you're at the mercy of the internet providers. You do what they demand to get online or you stay off line. And they demand that you hand over some of your privacy. You've already agreed to give that up.
So, can we at least get that nonsense out of the way? By your putting your information online you've already given away your 4th 5th amendment protections and all other protection to privacy under the Bill of Rights? Because if you think its power extends that far, you are thinking magically, no matter how much you insist you don't do that. If you want a good example of what can happen to even the most heavily protected secrets look at what Snowden made off with, which I'm just about 100% sure Chinese and Russian intelligence has already had from him, while he slept or in exchange for keeping him out of the hands of .... how did Putin put it? "our American partners." Ian Flemming couldn't have said it with more deliciously insincere, and self-serving hypocrisy. Would you like to be in Snowden's position of having to trust Putin's sense of honor and morality? Snowden has got whatever information he purloined. Snowden has got nothing else that they'd want more than they'd want the U.S. government to owe them one. I wouldn't be surprised if his passage from Hong Kong to Moscow wasn't in accord to some trade between the Chinese and Russian governments, conveying the carrier of information they both wanted and what the Chinese government didn't mind each other having. I think Snowden figured on gaming the Chinese government for his own gain like the plot of a spy novel, or, more likely movie or video game. His travel itinerary has no other explanation. He'd have gone directly to Venezuela or Ecuador and communicated with Greenwald directly and privately if he hadn't been playing some kind of game like that. He really believed he could work it his way. The guy is a total idiot anyway you look at it. The privacy of your online information depends on people like him.
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