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The Discovery of Consciousness

Wow. Shocking. So this “talented” student has discovered consciousness. This is a “breakthrough”.

I assume these tests were normally conducted by employers to evaluate employees and judge how suitable they might be for senior level positions. Managers. Leaders. Supervisors.

What Carolyn Bate did was apply these tests to a number of students. First she measured their IQs. Then she had them answer a number of questions the answers to which will help assess whether the person is capable of empathy or other normal feelings of compassion or kindness. After collecting this information, Carolyn had the subjects go through a different test utilizing Galvanic Skin Response– a lie-detector, really– to measure responses to a series of pictures which are intended to evoke feelings of empathy and compassion.

Carolyn found that the GSR responses among her participants were much as she would have predicted – except for the fact that it was only those with lower levels of intelligence who displayed the expected levels of excitement.

In other words, smart people were able to fool the lie-detector. I mean, the Galvanic Skin Response machine. They were able to fake the right emotional responses.

Like Generals and politicians and hedge-fund managers and brokers and bankers and investors and General Motors executives and arms manufacturers and football players and so on and on and on.

This kind of muddies the issue. Do organizations use the Galvanic Skin Response machine to test their employees?

Can it be that most psychology students, until now, have assumed that people filling out their questionnaires simply responded to their queries with uninhibited instinctive honesty? Oh woeful day! Now they will have to go back over all of their studies and begin to account for the fact that people might have understood what those questions were about and how their responses might be interpreted and whether or not they like those interpretations and whether or not they really like the feeling of revealing their true thoughts to a stranger, even if it’s all supposed to be anonymous and private.

But Carolyn misses the biggest point of all: how many corporations would not, in fact, leap at the chance to hire a true psycho who was capable of concealing his complete lack of empathy for customers, investors, civilians, and reporters?

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Lies

Lies

In the astonishing case of Brig. General Jeffrey Sinclair, a woman claimed to have been sexually assaulted by the general.

During the process of prosecuting Sinclair, it emerged that Sinclair and the woman had been conducting an affair for three years. The general was married. Adultery, in the army, is a serious offense, but it is not a criminal offense outside of the army: it is grounds for divorce. In any case, prosecutors dropped the assault charges after the credibility of the woman making the charges was shattered: personal e-mails showed that the affair was more than consensual. She badly wanted him to divorce his wife and marry her.

There was an outcry. Injustice! Yes, I agree, a person who knowingly lies about a serious matter like that should be punished. She almost caused General Sinclair to be court-martialed and imprisoned for life. You read that right: in the military, sexual assault can lead to a life sentence. So people are naturally outraged.

Except that she is not the target of her outrage.

They are outraged that General Sinclair “got away with it”!

Now, you may or may not agree that the woman should be punished for lying to prosecutors, but to continue to insist that General Sinclair should be punished for carrying on a consensual affair is absurd. The chief army prosecutor in the case, Colonel Helixon, upon discovering the complainant’s dishonesty, moved to have the case dismissed, as he should have. But his superior officers, aware of the growing public controversy– Senator Kirsten Gillibrand was demanding a change to the way the army handles cases of sexual assault– ordered him to press ahead with a case he did not believe in. He was so troubled by this, he threatened to withdraw from the case, and seemed to have some kind of mental breakdown. He did eventually withdraw but his successor, Colonel Stelle, came to the same conclusion and conceded that he would be unlikely to win a conviction if the case went to trial. This time, the brass acceded to his recommendation to withdraw charges against Sinclair.

That is not an insignificant fact: the prosecution believed that a judge would not believe the charges against Sinclair. In other words, there was strong evidence that it was nothing more than a consensual affair that had gone sour, and when it was discovered, the supposed victim realized that she herself could be charged and punished unless she insisted that she had not consented, that she had, in fact, been raped. And, what the hell, the General only seemed interested in sex. She wasn’t having his way with him anymore.

It is possible, if not likely, that she was motivated by revenge.

Incidentally, Senator Gillibrand, a Democrat, has received a 100% approval rating from the National Rifle Association. She describes herself as having one of the most conservative voting records in the state of New York, when she was a Congressional Representative.

A rather fawning profile of Senator Gillibrand in Vogue. Apparently “her eyes flicker with joy” when discussing gay rights, according to author Jonathan Van Meter.

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Rape Culture

The Pentagon poll defined sexual assault broadly enough to include a slap on the behind-and half of its self-reported victims were men. Cathy Young, Reason.com

It is such a touchy topic. Why? Because there is a very well documented history of men dismissing rape as something trivial and victims as complicit. If a professor or an employer or a soldier was accused, his colleagues and compadres rallied to his defense. Defense lawyers were allowed to make suggestive forays into a woman’s sexual history. There was a cultural adherence to the idea that it was impossible to rape a truly unwilling woman, and the shame of it all. In conservative nations today, that attitude yet prevails.

There has been progress, though not enough, on these issues, But there also been excess, to the point where some feminists openly assert that any woman who claims to have been sexually assaulted should automatically be believed, which, in defiance of the facts, many seem to insist on in the Sinclair case (left). And yet we continue to have cases where women clearly lied and men have been falsely accused, reputations destroyed, lives upended. And too often, these lies have been excused and the women or girls who made the false accusations have suffered no consequences.

I am more than a little perplexed by the number of women, including prominent politicians like Kirsten Gillibrand, who continue to insist that the woman in this affair must have been assaulted, no matter what her credibility issues. Some even insist that, whether she was “assaulted” or not, any relationship between two people who have unequal power or authority is inherently abusive. Does this mean that it is impossible that two people in such positions can be mutually attracted to each other or have a mutually consensual relationship?

Or is this all about the adultery? Our moral repugnance at the thought of two adults having consensual sex.

These peoples’ jobs, by the way, is to kill people. When pilots recklessly bombed their own (and Canadian) troops in Afghanistan, all was forgiven, even when other soldiers warned them that the target was questionable. When they bombed a wedding by mistake killing more than a dozen old men, women, and children… It was understandable. Boys will be boys. War is hell. And when helicopter pilots murdered a group of civilians in Iraq, including a Reuters reporter: well, you just don’t understand the pressures these boys are under. They were just doing their job. We’ll give each victim’s family 2000 big U.S. dollars.

But when two of them touch each other and kiss and bring each other to physical ecstasy? THIS must be stopped.

And when it is revealed that the affair was more than consensual– well, it can’t be consensual, really, because he was her commanding officer. She couldn’t possibly have said no, or reported him immediately. She could wait three years (until it became apparent that he was not going to leave his wife for her, and that he had other girlfriends).

One letter writer in the New York Times says: “Excuse me? Wives are raped by their husbands all the time.” I’d be curious to know what she means by “all the time”.

This is a model of “justice” which essentially works out to this: a woman can start an affair with a superior officer any time she pleases and, no matter how she behaves in this relationship, always retain the option of suddenly deciding that she has been assaulted and forced into sex. She thereby is able to excuse her own behavior, which, under the Military Code of Justice is also illegal (if the sexual partner was married) and destroy her lover, economically, socially, and psychologically.

This is obscene, but it appears to be the standard that Gillibrand and others are demanding.

The Redefinition of Rape

Other Notes

Real Wisdom, from the NY Times article above:

At the same time, students need to be told clearly that if they are voluntarily under the influence (but not incapacitated), they remain responsible for their sexual choices.

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Comedy of the Transgressive

One of the things that depressed Kurt Colbain was the realization that many if not most of the people in his audiences were very like the people he despised in his songs. Braying, angry, violent, and easily led. Here we are now: entertain us!

It was a realization that came to Dylan early on in his career as well and contributed to his evolution as an artist, and into songs about personal reflection, social hypocrisy, and absurdity that dominated his career in the mid 60’s. From a militant “The Times They are A’Changin'” to the ridiculous (and ridiculously brilliant) “Visions of Johanna”:

See the primitive wallflowers freeze
as the jelly-faced women all sneeze
see the one with the moustache say
‘geez, I can’t find my knees’.

How dark a moment is it when you realize that the essence of your persona as an artist is a paradox: to lead people to not trust leaders, to think for themselves, when all they want to do is worship you. When they call you prophetic for telling them about false prophets.

Or, you cater to them.

Doug Stanhope surely must find himself in Bob Dylan’s predicament often. While he ridicules drug treatment programs, pious commemorations, and, gently, affably, Mitch Hedberg’s family (for using donations to set up a drug treatment program which, considering Hedberg’s passion for drugs, is like holding a commemorative barbeque for a deceased vegetarian), he can’t not be aware of that large segment of the crowd that is rooting for him to use the word “fuck” and roars with delight every time he does. And when he seems to imply that only representational paintings qualify as art and should be rated by how much they duplicate the function of a photograph, and that modern art is a fraud, he’s got this crowd on his side.  They feel smart again.  He can’t be that stupid.  Modern art is stupid.

Doug Stanhope is a very good, astute stand-up comedian. Every comedian will sound uneven over an hour but Stanhope does better than most (“Before Turning the Gun on Himself”).

Good (or bad) stand-up comedians often provoke this response in me: if I criticize the part of his routine that makes fun of things I admire, am I being a hypocrite when I enjoy him making fun of things I hold in contempt, like the religious zealotry surrounding commemorations of 9/11 (when the attackers were themselves driven by similar values), or the drug war, or grief counselors?

He ridicules the idea of effecting social change through comedy or art, yet he insists the world would be better if we legalized drugs. He hectors us with contempt for comedy that hectors us. That is a social change. That’s a policy, it’s politics. I get the feeling that– back to my high school/college paradox (left column: comedians are funnier if they don’t allow themselves to be too smart)– he embraced some social movements and then was deeply shocked and disappointed and personally wounded when he discovered it would take more than one or two rallies and a year of advocacy to make decisive change in the world.

The style of comedy itself is ripe for parody: imagine a stream of satirical elements mocking the way these comedians strive to continuously find something that will continue to shock after every other comedian has ratcheted up the standard. Stanhope talks at length and in detail about his lack of constipation, his use of porn sites and booze and drugs. He has to go further than anyone else to maintain that transgressive vibe, risking what eventually looks like a cheap laugh.

 

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Push the Button First, Gothamites!

You buy a product from a store. The store charges you extra. Then they give you “air miles” which they pay for with the extra money they charged you. This induces a hypnotic state of bliss in the customer.

In “The Dark Knight”, the Joker sets up a situation in which there are two ferries, one filled with upstanding citizens of Gotham, and the other with criminals. They each have a detonator linked to explosives on the other ferry. Whoever pushes the button first will be spared but the other boat will blow up killing all of its occupants.

This is the same principle behind air miles. The profitability of the system depends upon the fact that people like me refuse to collect them. Those who do collect air miles are pushing the button: they get the benefit of this surcharge, while I do not. But the truth is, both of us are paying more for products and services because of this idiotic scheme that vendors have induced people to buy into.

The same applies to discount coupons and affinity cards. Do people seriously believe that the store has reduced prices just because they love having you as a customer? The only reason any vendor has to provide a discount to any particular custom with a coupon or an affinity card is because they can charge more to people who are willing to shop there because of the cheap, meaningless thrill of getting a “discount”.

 

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The Decline of the “Alien” Franchise

Gino (Richard Hervey) gets left behind when he stops to light a cigarette, he is also attacked.

From the synopsis of “It! The Terror From Beyond Space” at IMDB.

I would have thought smoking would have been banned in space ships by the time distant future had rolled around. But then again, there is smoking on the ship in “Aliens”. It’s the first thing John Hurt does after waking from his cryogenic sleep.

“Alien” truly is a very original, very well-made science-fiction horror film. Considering how derivative most effects-laden blockbuster Hollywood movies are nowadays– including it’s own sequel, “Aliens”– that’s an accomplishment.

But it was not conceived ex nihilo. In fact, it is quite surprising to me how much of the story is derived from earlier books and movies. This should be a lesson to aspiring writers: steal from the best. No wait– steal from the worst. They will have less money to sue you with.

First of all there is, “IT! The Terror from Beyond Space”.

First of all, what’s “beyond space”? I have no idea. But here’s the plot: a lone spaceman is the survivor of an expedition to Mars. He is rescued but where is the rest of his crew? He is suspected of killing the others but claims an alien creature is responsible. Earth does not believe him and plans to court-martial him…. until, his fellow travelers start disappearing one by one, including a gentleman stopping to light a cigarette. The creature has stowed away on the rescue ship and now stalks the rest of crew.

Whoa– the creature uses the air vents to travel through the ship! It hauls crew members into the vents, then attacks the others when they try to recover the victims.

When an autopsy is done on a deceased crew member, it is found that every ounce of moisture has been taken from the body. They try nuking the creature but that fails. Then they finally get into their space suits and vent the atmosphere from the ship causing the alien to be sucked out into outer space.

Not quite exactly like “Alien” or “Aliens” but there some striking similarities.

In “The Voyage of the Space Beagle” an insect like creature called Ixtl implants it’s eggs into living hosts. The author of the story upon which it is based sued the makers of “Alien” and received an out-of-court settlement. In other words, there enough similarities to make a court case out of it, or the studio wanted him, A. E. Van Vogt, to just go away.

Vogt’s stories revolve around a space ship staffed by a thousand castrati. I’m not making this up: that must be how he conceived peace and good order on this vessel during these grueling, extended absences. Thankfully, this particular detail was not plagiarized either by “Star Trek”, which bears more than a few similarities, or “Alien”, or it’s sequels.

The makers of “Alien” acknowledge a debt to “2001: A Space Odyssey”, “Star Wars”, and “Texas Chain-saw Massacre”. Apparently, that latter film blew away Ridley Scott who suddenly realized that he could make his movie a lot bloodier and more violent without offending mainstream audiences.

However, he could not make Dallas or Lambert transgender, as originally written: decent, moral, law-abiding audiences draw the line somewhere.

But go ahead with the exploding chests.

In “Alien Resurrection”, Ripley is reconstituted from the DNA in a blood sample 200 years after the events in Alien3. They do this to retrieve the alien embryo from her body where it was implanted.

I’m confused by this: how would rebuilding her from her DNA in a blood sample also rebuild the alien embryo which couldn’t possibly have the same DNA?

“It! the Terror From Beyond Space”  Synopsis  Movie

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Equality at Last!

The evidence presents a seeming paradox, because the tests of creativity generally show men and women scoring about the same, yet through history some men have been much more creative than women. An explanation that fits this pattern is that men and women have the same creative ability but different motivations. [See web link in right column.]

Studies can prove whatever you pretty well want them to prove. I admire the way Mr. Roy Baumeister has tried to conceal his tracks here: “some men” is a clever alternative to saying that every major invention and design has originated with a man. By isolating “motivation” as a component separate from creativity– as if such a thing were possible– he claims that really, men and women are equally creative, but women just aren’t as motivated as men to actually create. It’s like saying that men eat more food then women but they are equally hungry. The problem is, we don’t really care who is more hungry: we care about how much we eat.

But let’s get to the bait and switch here. Who is “good”? What makes a gender “good” and another gender “bad”? Is this contest rigged? Do we have someone who examines the two genders, identifies a number of traits belonging to each, and then decides that one particular set of traits are “good”, and the other bad. Surprise: women are better. Then he proceeds to argue that even though women are better then men, they are essentially the same. Women can do anything men can do, on their own, better.

Maybe there really isn’t any point in arguing which gender is better because both genders are absolutely essential to life and culture and history and society. There is nothing you would have without both genders. It is quite arguable that if neither gender could create culture or society on it’s own, than neither gender could be good or bad or better. They are essentially one being.

I remain unconvinced that women would ever have been capable of building a steam locomotive. To build a steam locomotive, or, rather, to embark on the path of theoretical development, and design, and development, and research and physical construction, necessary to end up with, say, a Soo Line Locomotive 2713, requires a lot of specific energies and aptitudes and inclinations, which I don’t think are strong enough in women to succeed.

Some “research” claims to show that women are just as capable at math as men are but are less motivated to work towards advanced degrees. Oh, the lovely rationalizations! “Yeah, we could do that physics thing if we really wanted to, you know, but we just don’t want to, so there!” But if there was ever a place for that kind of rationalization it would be in the lonely feminine assets: men could be more nurturing and supportive and collegial if they wanted to, but they don’t. They don’t because the drive to succeed, to get on top, to be the alpha dog, to make a lot of money, is part of what drives achievement. And locomotives.

Women are moving into business management. First, business culture in the western world had to expand it’s inconsequential middle, the layer of people who don’t produce any real objects or services but simply “manage”, so that women had a class of professions to move into.

Women are More Equal Then Men

So do it.  Check out: the top ten inventions by women.  They include liquid paper, a remedy for vaginal infections, and square-bottomed paper bags.  And the circular saw.

Wow.

One thing that is not going to get mentioned very much in this debate: a certain definite percentage of human beings are born with ambiguous genitalia.  We have no idea of how many men and women in history may actually have been hermaphrodites.

It shouldn’t need to be said but will be: the belief in legal equality has nothing to do with belief in equal capability.

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The $37,000 Voice

President Obama recently flew to Chicago to attend a fund-raising dinner. The trip cost $175,000 an hour for Air Force One. The President gets to fly on Air Force One because he is the President and he is not “allowed” to fly on a commercial jet. To attend this dinner you need to give $37,000 to the Democratic Party. The money is not for Obama– he can’t run again. It is for the 2014 mid-term congressional elections.

[By the way, “not allowed” is bullshit.  Politicians love it because they can claim that they are just plain folk, humble and unpretentious, but those damn Secret Service guys insist.  The President and Congress are the government.  They create this policy and then pretend they didn’t even know it existed.]

There are a lot of people– some of them rational– who will insist that it is reasonable to insist that the President fly on Air Force One to any function no matter how private or personal or partisan, because the chief executive of the mighty United States of America must remain in constant contact with his generals and cabinet ministers and congressional leaders and such at all times.

I don’t care how many people insist this is true: it is not. Nor is it true that the President cannot go to a restaurant or park or bar without huge pre-arrangements, security details, block closings, and other ridiculous efforts. Did you know that if he goes into a book store, the Secret Service must clear everybody else out in advance? Is this a genuine security issue, or because the President might be uncomfortable having to chat with a real, live citizen for a change?  Or, more likely, because the President and his acolytes just adore the prestige of being so important, so amazing, so precious, that everyone else must leave the store.

People do believe the security and the privilege are necessary under the pervasive delusion that the President of the United States is a kind of supernatural magical leader of indescribable talent and judgment who cannot be replaced. They believe he is indispensable because it is in the interests of the President and of the Secret Service and the entire security-industrial complex to convince us that he is indispensable. They also believe the security benefits of the President flying around in a gigantic 747 all to himself outweigh the disadvantages.

“The cemeteries are full of people the world could not do without. ” Elbert Hubbard.

The disadvantages are this: your leader is completely out of touch with reality. He exists in a marvelous bubble of insular gratifications and illusions. Every detail of day to day life for most Americans becomes theoretical and abstract.

The truth is that, in a pinch, any number of cabinet officials or Senate or Congressional leaders could fill in for the President without doing any harm to the nation. The truth is that most decisions are are made by functionaries and high-level civil servants and presented to the president mainly for the official imprimatur of an elected authority. Does the president ever, out of the blue, suddenly say something like, “hey, let’s take a look at tv advertising — I’d really like to limit the number of ads that can be shown every hour”? No. It’s more like, “Mr. President, this proposed oil pipeline is generating a lot of opposition from environmentalists. We recommend you sit on it.”

Would I have him take a commercial flight? Absolutely. But I’m a reasonable person. A small, private jet supplied by the Democratic Party would do. He could still be accompanied by a few Secret Service agents, and the local police at his destination could do the rest. Does he need a motorcade to the hall? No, damn it, he does not. And yes, I would have the President of the United States of America get stuck in traffic once in a while because that would tell the world that, first of all, we are democracy and everyone is equal under the law, and, secondly, our leaders are in touch with the concerns of the average voter.

And most importantly: the average person’s idea of what is truly exceptional about famous people is completely and utterly false and needs to be corrected. And once people once again have the impression that leaders are a lot more like you and me than they are like gods, democracy would be healthier.

One More Thing

Once again the conservatives on the U.S. Supreme Court, who claim a passion for keeping big government out of our lives when it comes to safety or health, think it would be marvelous to let the police collect and store your DNA even if you haven’t been charged with a crime.

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Three Strikes and You’re a Witch

Ruling on Texas “three strikes” law in 1980, the court upheld a life sentence for a man who refused to return $120.75 he’d been paid to repair an air-conditioner.
The article in NYTimes.

We have a hard time comprehending why a group of adult men would want to seize a young girl and burn her alive at the stake because they believe her to be a witch.

Why? What’s so hard to understand? What the hell is hard to understand about human behavior that is barbaric, savage, cruel, and irrational? Like locking up a man for life because he refused to return $120 for fixing an air conditioner?

Even better: the justices in their dramatic robes, from their solemn benches, proclaimed that this was indeed rational and just and provided for good order in our society

I don’t feel any need to be diplomatic about the U.S. justice system: Americans who support it and perpetuate it are barbarians and idiots.

Update: Nicolas Kristof on excessive sentencing.

NY Times OpEd on the subject.

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Recovered Memories

If you lost your car keys a year ago and never found them, would it be possible for you to suddenly “recover” a memory, that, say, you left them in your hockey duffle bag?

We are not talking about fifteen minutes ago or a day ago or a few days ago.  Let’s say a year, but maybe more.  Would it be possible to suddenly find that experience in your memory, of, say, putting the keys in a tin can under the deck so someone could pick them up there, or under a mat, or even in your toiletry bag under the sink in your bathroom?  Would such a memory be reliably accurate?

I wouldn’t say that that never happens.  But if it does, it is very, very rare.  In fact, it is very, very, very rare.

Most of the time, if you can’t find something because you forgot where you put it, you will not, a year or more later, suddenly “recover” a memory of where you put it.  In fact, the further away, in time, from the moment when you lost the item, the less likely it is that you will ever remember where you left it.

And if you did, by some remarkable chance, suddenly think– oh, it’s in my hockey duffle bag– I remember— and you find your keys there, I would put it to you that it was purely by chance.

What you might recover, with the blatant encouragement of a counselor, is a constructed memory. Your keys won’t be there, except, by pure chance.  And the odds of the keys being somewhere you might store keys is not zero.

We don’t think of all memories at once. Never. Memories come into consciousness as they are prompted by the mind, in search of a missing item, a moment with a fondly remembered friend, a smell or sound, or a piece of music. Memories are not like tape recordings: we often blend elements of different past experiences or present perceptions into recalled activities.

There are many people who fervently believe that some memories, especially of trauma, can be “repressed”. These people are rarely not advocates for some social action of some kind.

I don’t believe it. I believe that bad experiences, in fact, provide vivid memories. You may choose to not bring them forward in your mind very often, but they are not hidden or buried.

Have you ever heard a Holocaust victim speak about his or her experiences? Have you read “Maus”? Or any of a hundred books on wartime experiences in Europe? If “repression” were possible, it beggars the imagination that these witnesses bear such voluminous, eloquent testimony.

They remember.

Because it really happened.