#29: Those Darling Little Bamsters of Burlington, NJ

Is it a coincidence that in late September of 2009 we should discover a group of small children in a NJ school chanting

“Barack Hussein Obama, mmm, mmm, mmm!”?

Coincidence? I think not!

On Oct. 11, 1968, Star Trek aired the episode And the Children Shall Lead Them which revolved around a small group of children who also chanted. They chanted Hail, hail, fire and snow, call the angel, we will go, far away, for to see, friendly angel come to me (I looked it up – don’t worry, I haven’t memorized Star Trek episodes). But, they were instruments of a malign figure, namely the “friendly angel,” who, in reality, was not a friendly angel at all, but a powerful evil entity out to destroy them; and the children were to be the instruments of that destruction.

A coincidence? A coincidence that exactly (well, roughly) 40 years after the airing of this episode, we should see reality imitating art?

OK, I admit it, it’s a reach, but I still hold that the chanting little bamsters are very spooky. And it’s not like there haven’t been more frightening antecedents for this scene than the one from Star Trek. Have we already forgotten the vicious little bamsters in the Hitlerjugend? They also liked to sing, particularly the Horst Wessel Song and Deutschland Uber Alles. They also liked to turn in their mothers and fathers to the SS. True, these were Nazis, but, as I have argued in a prior post, Nazis were just nationalist commies. And didn’t Obama’s White House only recently request that people report neighbors (family?) who were critical of Obama to the White House?

Do we have to go back that far? How about the marching zombies of North Korea? Surely they began as little chanting bamster zombies? And there are murdering child “soldiers” to be found everywhere among the “third world” populations so dear to the sentiments of the Left, sweet little tykes festooned with Kalashnikovs and grenades. They probably chant as they march just like the little bamsters, just like the munchkins in the Wizard of Oz, except for their bandoleers and AK47s.

Barack Hussein Obama, mmm, mmm, mmm!

And, lest we forget, there are the endearing little moppets of Hamas, packed round their little tummies with nails, ball bearings, and high explosives, happy just as long as they can murder Jews, just as they were taught in their little madrassahs with their little chants.

O brave new world.

#28: David Hume, Miracles, and Progressive Thought

David Hume is best known for his critical discussion of causal, i.e. inductive, reasoning. He argues that what we call “reasoning” here is actually nothing other than a psychological disposition to anticipate events together that we have frequently experienced as associated. That is, if we have frequently seen B to follow A, we will expect to see B when we see A in the future. His point is that this is not reasoning at all, merely conditioned response; and it is not reasoning simply because there is no defense or justification possible for the expectation.

Hume is of the view that our capacity for being conditioned is not only a survival mechanism, it is far superior to “reasoning” for that purpose. It is more reliable and it is far faster. Today, I would make his point by reference to athletic performance. Responding to a serve in squash is far more successful if one doesn’t “think” the response, but allows one’s purely conditioned reaction to take place. While Hume did not appeal to any notion of “natural selection,” he did think in terms of the utility for survival of biological characteristics. In this sense, he had a pre-Darwinian notion of evolution.

Our natural conditioned responses apply to what we sometimes call “predictions” (they turn into “anticipations” or “expectations” or “beliefs about the future”), but they also apply to “retrodictions” (beliefs about what happened in the past). In both cases, the apparent purpose of the psychological mechanism is to allow us to use the experience we have already had as a guide for what we could expect, were we in a new situation, say in the future or in the past.

This anticipation mechanism, however, is far from perfect. If it were perfect, we should expect that we would only form beliefs that had been reinforced by earlier experiences. There is, though, one glaring example that this is not the case, and Hume was well aware of this. The glaring example is that of the belief in miracles. It is undeniable that some people believe that events took place in the past that are incompatible with all of our experience. For example, some people believe that once in history a man rose from the dead. Today, of course, we do think that this is possible, what with resuscitation and all, but in Hume’s day this was taken to be an event incompatible with the laws of nature. The “laws of nature” record, as it were, regularities in human experience that have had no exceptions. Thus, if Hume’s theory of learning and causal “reasoning” were true, it should actually be psychologically impossible to believe in miracles. But people do believe in miracles.

Clearly, Hume has to amend or elaborate his theory, and he does, though not in a very convincing way. This is what he writes:

93. Secondly. We may observe in human nature a principle which, if strictly examined, will be found to diminish extremely the assurance, which we might, from human testimony, have, in any kind of prodigy [extraordinary event]. The maxim, by which we commonly conduct ourselves in our reasonings, is, that the objects, of which we have no experience, resemble those, of which we have; that what we have found to be most usual is always most probable; and that where there is an opposition of arguments, we ought to give the preference to such as are founded on the greatest number of past observations. But though, in proceeding by this rule, we readily reject any fact which is unusual and incredible in an ordinary degree; yet in advancing farther, the mind observes not always the same rule; but when anything is affirmed utterly absurd and miraculous, it rather the more readily admits of such a fact, upon account of that very circumstance, which ought to destroy all its authority. The passion [emotion] of surprise and wonder, arising from miracles, being an agreeable emotion, gives a sensible tendency [inclination] towards the belief of those events, from which it is derived. And this goes so far, that even those who cannot enjoy this pleasure immediately, nor can believe those miraculous events, of which they are informed, yet love to partake of the satisfaction at second-hand or by rebound, and place a pride and delight in exciting the admiration of others. (David Hume, EHU; bracketed insert my own, as well as italicization)

Miracle-belief takes place this way: as our experience of an event diminishes, all other things being equal, our expectation of it also diminishes; this rule holds all the way to virtually no experience at all, where our belief is also virtually non-existent; however, at precisely the point where we have no experience at all, for some people their belief suddenly shoots to the very maximum. In other words, they believe most, when prior conditioning is totally absent.

Now, while I am skeptical about Hume’s explanation of this phenomenon, there is no doubt at all that it exists. We still see it exemplified today in the belief in religious miracles, but interestingly also in a secular analogue. Modern “progressive” or “liberal” thought continues to believe that governmental actions and governmental institutions can successfully intervene in human affairs to the benefit of the governed.

All of history testifies to the falsity of this belief, and yet an ever increasing population continues to cling to it. For only a few examples in our own day, consider just the following:

1) U.S. Social Security – just short of bankruptcy;

2) The U.S. Postal Service – bankrupt;

3) U.S. welfare – produces more welfare clients, rather than reducing them;

4) Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac – bankruptcy;

5) U.S. Medicare – edge of bankruptcy;

6) Congressional handling of tax resources – filled with pork, fraud, careless disbursal, waste, and use for political purposes.

Similar charges can be laid at the door of the Canadian system, but I add only the astonishingly stupid and useless boondoggle of the “gun registry.”

Following Hume’s line of thought, we might ask ourselves “How does this happen? What is the mechanism?”

I suspect that the answer is simpler and more general than the one given by Hume. Using his language, I suspect that “the passions” in general are simply more powerful determinants of belief than prior experience.

It seems, in fact, to be as if even the slightest evidence still fetters our belief to ground, but on the final dissolution of that tiny fragment, the gravity of reason disappears and belief "slips the surly bonds of earth and lets us touch the face of God." Yes, it is faith precisely that appears when the conditioning of past experience fails, but it is not the simple absence of grounds that is necessary, it is also the wish that the thing be true. And what this highlights is that faith is not restricted to traditional religion, it is present wherever the emotions dictate belief, rather than prior experience. It is present in hope-based political thinking, but it is also present in the burgeoning religion of "the planet." After millenia, we are back to animistic nature-worship. As we try to negotiate our way through history, hope-based belief and experience-based belief wage an unending competition and, as Wittgenstein quoted Nestroy, progress is always smaller than it appears.

In short, we believe what we want to believe. Yes, in some cases, we believe because of the pleasure we get from the thought of the extraordinary being real; but, equally, we often believe simply because we prefer a world in which the belief is true. Thus, Obama may actually believe that he can talk his way out of the Iranian and North Korean threat simply because he hates a world in which he can’t.

For many people, the wish is father to the belief. There probably isn’t more to it than that.

#27: Socialism, Toilet-paper, Greed, and Envy

Back in 1920, Yeats asked this question in the concluding lines of his apocalyptic poem, The Second Coming:

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Well, I think I can tell him, the rough beast is socialism, and it’s well on its way to be born. In fact, I suspect that its progress is inexorable and its success inescapable. Sigh.

We whine a lot about Leftoid salmon swimming upstream against reason, spawning more and more of their intellectually disabled kind into the social current. By “we”, I mean me. I’m sure others also do, but I’m certain that I do.

And I’m right to do so, this is something very bad, if only because it means that the real job a university can do, namely train the thinking processes of the young, is not being done by anyone. But concentrating on this one particularly smelly aspect of the problem obscures the larger mechanism at work. Greed.

Yes, Greed is responsible for many social ills, as the Lefties never tire of screaming, but that it is also responsible for the inexorable progress of socialism is usually not mentioned.

I.

The advertisers of the Left have always had a very effective populist mantra with which to attack the free-market people. And notice that they don’t and won’t refer to then as “advocates of free market enterprise,” they rather refer to them with the shop worn 19th C. pejorative, “capitalists.” The mantra is that “capitalism” is “all about” Greed. That’s how they talk – it’s “all about” this and it’s “all about” that. And when they say “greed,” it is always capitalized and italicized, even when they speak. But is this fair (not the style, the “Greed” thing)?

If by “greed” we mean the desire for more goods and wealth, well, sure, the free-market boys are certainly motivated by a desire for more. But surely this is only the beginning of the discussion, not the end. Before we condemn them for this, should not at least a couple of questions be asked and answered.

The first question is this: is Greed unique to free-marketeers?

When social justice types appeal to “the people,” what is it that they promise them? They promise them the wealth and goods accumulated by others. In other words, they appeal to the Greed of the masses, do they not? And while the slaving masses of Tsarist Russia had plenty to complain about, as did the slaving masses of 18^th C. France, surely it would be hard to find comparable “slaving masses” in North America or even Europe these days. Yet the appeal to their Greed continues unabated. The Tsarist worker or peasant did not weigh 300 lbs or own a flat-screen television, he did not sport $200 running shoes, and she did not get a bonus for every illegitimate crack baby she cranked out. Yet the modern equivalent hears exactly the same Greed based rhetoric as did the Russian worker or peasant. In fact, the modern unionized worker, as close to the “worker” of the commie imagination as one will find today, has income and benefits that are equal to if not greater than those of the entrepreneurial class. If they belong to the privileged class of government employees, their benefits are truly astonishing. And yet the social justice machine drones on. Which brings us to our second question.

How do the free-marketeers and the socialists go about satisfying their respective Greeds?

The free-marketeer tries to satisfy his Greed by acquiring voluntary contributions from his fellow citizens. He approaches his fellows and offers them a flat-screen tv for a specified amount of money. The people the social justice type paints as the free-marketeer’s victims have a choice. At last reckoning, there were no gangs roaming the streets forcing poor people to buy flat-screen tvs at gunpoint. This seems as fair as can be, and Rawlsian theory is “all about” “fairness.” A free market government promises its citizenry an equal opportunity to offer products to others and to buy products from others, and it promises to protect the citizenry from any elements or forces that would attempt to interfere with these freedoms.

The social justice type, on the other hand, campaigns on a different platform. The platform should come as no surprise, since it is the same platform perfected and implemented by Lenin and all of his successors. The platform is this: we will take the wealth and goods of your more successful and industrious brethren by force and distribute it in the way that seems to us most fit. But even if you don’t wind up with a lot of what they had (because we now have it), you will have the satisfaction of knowing that they don’t either and, in addition, that we’ve humiliated, jailed, or killed them. Yours truly, Uncle Joe.

Oh, you might say, this is not how it is with democratic socialism. But it is exactly how it is! Try withholding your taxes and see what happens. It is exactly what happened when shopkeepers refused to pay “protection” money to the mafia – two bulky men in badly fitting suits came to their shops and broke their bones. What were they paying for? They were paying for “protection.” From whom? From themselves. But this is very much the same as with the IRS and with Revenue Canada: you pay so that they will not attack you. And from whom do they protect you? Criminals? Certainly not, as anyone who has ever been mugged or burgled will tell you. The police for which we pay dearly is there only to harass and bully and intimidate and maintain as unarmed the already honest and civilized portion of the nation. The police arrange for the pick-up and disposal of bodies, not their protection while alive. The functions of the police include: cleaning up crime scenes (removing bodies), providing more government jobs at citizen expense, keeping the productive citizenry unarmed, and collecting fines for more government redistribution of income.

Sooo, Greed is a large part of the mechanism that makes socialism succeed. It lies at the heart of its appeal to the masses. And, as long as the non-productive have suffrage, they will increasingly vote to have the wealth of the productive re-distributed among themselves. But I want here to draw our attention to another mechanism of Greed that works to the same end, blindly and inexorably.

II.

Back in 1977 there was a documentary called Hollywoodism: Jews, Movies & The American Dream in which is was argued that much of what we think of as emblematically “American” only came into existence during the 20^th C. through the creative activities of (primarily) immigrant Jews.

The fascinating thing about this documentary was that it illustrated the immense culture shaping power that the new media had, both actually and potentially. Given this power, we ask two questions:

1) What directs the application of this power? And

2) What direction(s) has this power chosen?

Well, the answer to the first question is very simple. This power is directed by Greed. At this point in history, the North American media are primarily directed by the fundamental free market force: money. Of course, the movers and the shakers of those industries are themselves human beings and themselves ideologues to various degrees, which influences their experiments with products. There is clearly a kind of synergy between the popular mood and the various media productions, each influencing the other. Ultimately, though, the productions that are utterly beyond the public’s liking cease to appear.

Marketing entertainment products has exactly the same strategies as those employed in winning elections. In both cases, the marketer attempts to define the largest sub-population within the total voting population by means of a flattering narrative. The narrative will characteristically have two elements: the ascription of flattering properties to the members of the sub-group, and the identification of a real or imagined separate “power” group that has victimized those members. We can see this at work in television commercials.

It does not take long to notice that in the U.S., the ads have predictable general forms. Very large numbers of ads feature a bumbling white male ranging in age from teen to middle aged. These males are represented in negative terms, ranging from stupid to clumsy to bumbling to dishonest. The positive figures are generally female or black. The females can range in age from teens to middle aged. Blacks can be male or female, but always observe the white male (occasionally female) with expressions of barely contained annoyance or tolerant bemusement. They exhibit "attitude," but, as the ads show it, well justified "attitude." The blacks are always shown as the competent and knowledgeable figures in the ad, as are the women. Frequently, the women and the blacks are represented as physicians and scientists, the "authorities" on the scene.

In sit-coms, the same character layout exists, with the addition that the women, the children, and the blacks are also the moral correctors of the stupid, bumbling, frequently immoral middle aged men.

Why is this the case? Are all the writers of this dreck militant blacks or feminists? Probably many of them have those sympathies, but this is not what drives the machine. What drives the machine is money. These stories are directed at audiences, specifically the audiences that spend the money. Consequently, the stories flatter the buyers. This is not new, not a mystery. But what has to be added to the story is that the forces that sell toilet paper ALSO sell a culture, which is a set of values and a set of assumptions.

What this means is that the purveyors of toilet paper are actually the architects of the culture of free-market societies. And, since the populations that the most easily flattered are those that have the least to be flattered about, we can expect a culture that has been taught to believe the most outlandish rubbish. And the outlandish theoretical sub-text is that of victimization, the superiority of the most numerous, and the fairness of the "re-distribution" of wealth. Of course, there is further trash, as well, most notably that the U.S. is "at fault" for all the crimes in history, and that the earth is burning.

I believe it is the fact that stay-at-home mothers are the most frequent targets of television fare that accounts, for example, for the language used by newscasters. We hear the talking heads, often one of the obligatory women, referring to mothers as “moms” or “mums,” fathers are “dads,” and in general reducing every issue to its sentimental elements. I think of it as the oprahfication of our national discourse, it focuses constantly on how everyone feels about this or that. The objective of both market forces and government is to reduce the collective mind of the citizenry to a state of Oprah watching sentimental stupidity.

III.

If we take into account both the take over of our schools and the control of the media by left directed market forces, it is difficult to see how socialism can fail to succeed.

Socialism fails as an economic policy, but it succeeds as a political strategy. The reason is succeeds as a political strategy is that in the absence of an ideology that stresses self-reliance and the right to retain what you have earned, the appeal to greed and envy reaches the vast majority of people.

#26: Evolution III

This is actually a response to two comments left by Jeff. I add it as a separate post only because of its length and because I think it sheds further light on the issues in the two prior posts.

Greetings, Jeff, glad to read your contribution to my questions. As I understand the theory, there are two explanatory theses. The first is the thesis that there are random mutations. The second is that the creatures with adaptive mutations survive, while the others do not.

The example of evolution in action that I find most persuasive is that of the development of anti-biotic resistant bacteria. But even in this example, there are two possible stories to be told, either of which might be true, or both.

Let’s assume a population of bacteria B such that 95% of these bacteria succumb to anti-biotic C. This means that even after a round of C, there are still 5% of the original population left in the system, RB, which cannot be killed with C.

Now, some theorists claim that there is such a thing as environmental “room” such that organisms will automatically breed to the limits of that “room.” In this case, that means the original 5% will breed to fill the room vacated by the now defunct 95%.

The second possible story is this. We start with population B, but do not assume that it contains 5% RB. Instead, we assume that C either kills members of B OR it alters the DNA of some members in such a way as makes them resistant. The only advantage of this story is that it doesn’t rely on random mutations (or random mutations alone).

If all of this is true, then this is a simple model of natural selection.

In either case of this simple model, the presence of the adaptive property or feature of the organism has to be explained. It is here that I’m not persuaded that the theory is fully defensible.

You say that we should be talking about a simple organism, not a raptor. Fine. And here you say we just need to assume a single photosensitive cell. OK. But then you go on to add a causal connection to attractive or aversive action, and this seems already fairly complex to me. How do we assume this random mutational activity takes place? Do we assume that nature produces quite literally every conceivable variation on every creature it spawns from the simplest on? This would mean photosensitive cells appearing at one time on one creature at least for every location on and in the body. Of course, the same goes for every other sensory kind, including ones of which we have no experience. Surely this did not happen. Have we found remains of creatures with eye sockets where the navel would normally be?

And is it really true that the locations of eyes on the world’s creatures is actually optimal? There are critters with stalked eyes, which seems a pretty good design. But wouldn’t a critter with four stalked eyes have an advantage over one with just two? And why, just in general, have we never found a trace of an animal with more than two eyes?

Then, in addition, the mutations in the theory should be heritable ones in order to produce a new and better adapted population. But this would involve a further mutational change at the chromosomal level, no?

What seems to be the case (though it may well not be) is that there is some other mechanism that limits or directs the mutations. The “mutations” assumption, thus, seems to need elaboration in order to avoid being nothing other than a baptism of ignorance, as Russell would say.

I have a similar problem with the notion of “genetic drift.” You write:

“More likely than these theories is the case for non directed genetic drift. Instead of use it or lose it, a deletory mutation probably occurred in the lineage of cave fish (once they had moved to the caves). Being that the mutation was neither adaptive or non adaptive it would neither be selected for or against. However, natural selection is not the only way a population can change. Sometimes when there is no selective pressure a population can drift due to chance. These changes tend to occur very slowly and can drift back as well. It may even be that there is a higher probability of mutation at on of the genes determining cave fish sight, such that in the absence of positive selective pressure drift is more likely to occur.”

If what happened was a “deletory mutation,” then it would seem that the blind and sighted fish would have equal survival ability and we should find both populations present side by side. This is not what happens. So the explanation must lie with “genetic drift.” But I am not comfortable with this doctrine for reasons similar to those against “mutation.”

“Genetic drift” seems to be a doctrine quite similar to “global warming” in that it is consistent with anything that happens. If a feature disappears, it’s due to genetic drift; and if it doesn’t disappear, then there was no drift. If the blind fish have non-functioning eyes, we assume that these eyes are vestigial, which means that they were fully functioning products of the evolutionary process at one time. Apparently, they lost the sightedness, but the non-functioning organ remained. This means that sight “drifted” away, but the organs did not. Why would the “drift” discriminate in this way?

You said once that you thought that the Dawkins story about evolution really taking place at the cellular level addressed these questions, but I didn’t understand how at the time (still don’t). Do you still think this?

#25: Evolution (Yet Again!)

Most of the European 18^th century was fascinated with “natural history” and with the question of speciation. Yes, this was an important issue long before Darwin came upon the scene. It became important almost immediately once the Aristotelian and Christian world view of fixed species came into question. One interesting thesis was that species are a kind of illusion, that in fact there exist creatures who imperceptibly fill the apparent gaps between the different kinds with which we are familiar. We can see the beginnings of evolutionary thinking in the writings of David Hume. An explicit effort to grapple with the problem came from Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1 August 1744 – 18 December 1829) who hypothesized that acquired characteristics were heritable. This was the not-so-good evolutionary theory. Thus, Federer’s skills as a tennis player would automatically be transferred to his progeny. None of this theorizing hit the jackpot until Darwin’s On The Origin of Species came out in 1859. The huge advantage of this theory came from it’s providing a purely mechanical and intuitively satisfying explanation of the appearance of new species, namely the doctrine of “natural selection.”

In the interest of fairness, and not to detract from Darwin’s achievement, I should mention that the doctrine of natural selection already appeared in Lucretius’s (ca. 99 BC- ca. 55 BC) De Rerum Natura (the passage is too long to cite, but the interested reader should look at the section entitled “Origins of Vegetable and Animal Life” in any edition of the poem).

Now as I said, the notion of natural selection is indeed intuitively satisfying, but this might in fact be a burden for the theory. The reason I say this is that the attractiveness of the doctrine may well be responsible for a kind of carelessness with respect to detail. In particular, I have a problem with the theory that I am hoping one of our readers will successfully address. I suspect that I’m missing something obvious, but try as I might, I still don’t have an answer to my puzzle. Here is my problem.

Here is the theory of speciation by natural selection as I understand it. We assume a limited amount of food and space to be available to a population of creatures. We further assume that the creatures of this population compete for the food and space. We thirdly assume that those creatures less well equipped in the fight for survival die in greater numbers and sooner than their better equipped competitors. We finally assume that the creatures are subject to random mutations, some of which improve their chances in the battle for survival and others do not.

We can easily see the intuitive attractiveness of this idea if we consider a fictitious population of raptors alike in all respects, except that some of them have eyes and the rest do not. It seems immediately plausible to expect the eyed ones to prevail and the blind ones to die out. The eyes ones would find the food before the blind ones, the eyed ones would find the strong, good-looking raptor women before the blind ones, and in conflict, the eyed ones would presumably beat the blind ones. After not too long a time, the only remaining raptors of this group would be eyed. So goes the theory of natural selection.

The problem with this story, for me, is that it works really well if we assume a fully functioning eye as the adaptation, but not so much if we assume a non-functional transitional eye still in the process of “evolving.”

That is: if the theory of natural selection forces us to hypothesize instantaneous mutations introducing fully functional eyes (or whichever organ you prefer), then its initial intuitive attractiveness disappears.

Having a fully functional eye involves an enormous amount of structural change on the organism’s part. The eye itself is very complicated, but, in addition, in order for the eye to be functional, the brain must also be altered and there has to exist appropriate neurological connection between eye and brain. It stretches probability to the breaking point to assume that one of the raptors is born complete with such an enormous and functional mutation. It doubles the stretch of this probability to yet further assume this raptor finds another one like itself with whom to breed a race of eyed raptors.

What is far more likely is evolution is a kind of creeping adaptive change. What I mean is that one or a few of the raptors are born with one or a few new cells where eyes will eventually be. If we can figure out 1) why these raptors will breed with enough other raptors like themselves to eventually created a “new cell” population, and 2) why these raptors are better at surviving than their fellows, we might be in position to see how eventually an eyed population could evolve. But the stages that precede being eyed do not bring any survival advantage with them – it is sight, and only sight, that is an aid in the contest for survival. Until the collection of new cells actually confers sight on the raptor that owns them, it is in exactly the same position as all the others, no better at surviving and no worse.

The theory works on the assumption that the population ratio of more adaptive to less adaptive changes in favor of the adaptive group, which is why there is more adaptive-adaptive reproducing and why eventually there are only the adaptive ones left. But there is no reason to assume this ratio will change during the period before the eye actually functions and gives the creature an adaptive advantage. Which entails that no uniformly improved population will be produced on which yet further mutations will occur to eventually produce a functional eye.

In a nutshell, then, I cannot understand how the evolutionary process, i.e. natural selection, works during the interim period between no eye at all, on the one hand, and a functional eye, on the other.

The only way I can see the theory working is with some ad hoc assuming.

If we assume that pre-functional eye cells confer some other adaptive advantage over the creatures that have it, then the rest of the process can be taken to work. If, for example, pre-functional-eye cells have the ability to “sense” danger in some manner that doesn’t involve great neurological or structural complexity, then they could give a competitive advantage to their owners. Perhaps there are yet other possibilities of this kind. The problem would lie in finding some kind of empirical evidence that supports such an auxiliary hypothesis.

#24: Blind Fish and Evolution!

There are a number of species of blind cave-fish, all of which have non-functioning eyes. I find these of particular interest for evolutionary theory. How can the traditional evolutionary doctrine explain these fish?

I see only two possible hypotheses. The first is that eye-like structures can mutate into existence without having any adaptive value at all. This would be an expensive hypothesis for the theory, since it would allow for evolution even in the absence of survival benefit in the competition for continuing existence. In effect, making this hypothesis would be tantamount to giving up the doctrine of natural selection. Yet, in addition, if we accepted the idea that eye-like structures can mutate into existence without having any adaptive value at all, we would faced with the new question as to why that adaptive process did not produce fully seeing eyes. Why, it would have to be explained, did the process that produced the blind eyes stop short of fully seeing eyes?

The second, and more attractive, option is that these were at one time seeing fish who lost their ability to see through lack of use. The notion that leaps to the mind is that of atrophy. We all know the popular wisdom that if you don’t use it, you lose it, right? All that is required of evolutionary theory is that natural selection is taken to work backwards as well as forwards. This would mean that no longer adaptive features gradually cease to appear in the population since their utility is gone. Hmm.

This is promising. Sightedness once gave them an advantage, and thus all of them became sighted, the blind ones disappeared. Once in the caves, the sightedness lost its utility and … it disappeared? While the eye structure stayed? Why did it disappear? Were there still blind fish around? Let’s assume there were, why would their blindness be a sufficient advantage to make blindness the norm? And further, why is the eye structure still there? If the sightedness disappeared simply because it was no longer useful to survival, why wouldn’t the same be true of the eye structure? Why, for that matter, do we still have the appendix?

And if there were no blind fish around to compete in the dark, would sightedness still have disappeared (leaving the eye structure)? Why? How does natural selection explain this? But even if we use the atrophy argument instead of natural selection, there is still a problem. If you don’t exercise, yes, you will become increasingly weak and pudgy, but it does not follow that you will have weak and pudgy children as a result of your own weakness and pudginess. Yet, the fish who didn’t use their eyes not only lost their sight, but they bred children who were also blind! Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, these fish rehabilitate your theory! Acquired characteristics can be heritable!

#23: A Frivolous Contribution: Requiescat en Pace

Without being a Social Scientist, I feel reasonably sure that there are far more Dead people than living ones. Again, not being a Social Scientist, I can’t argue statistically that all Dead people are Democrats, but if the many who voted in the last election are a representative sample, then, yes, the Dead are Democrats. Which makes it all the more surprising that the Dead were neither promised benefits by the Obama campaign nor were billions of stimulus dollars aimed in their direction. And who needs stimulus more than the Dead, eh? And just imagine the power of the man who awakens this group to its political potential. AARP, the political arm of the Almost Dead, is nothing in comparison! We’re talking about the AADP! What is it? Read on.

We know that unions, whose members are known to work like the Dead, have already received huge disbursements, not to mention ownership of GM and Chrysler; we know that ACORN received and was promised a further fortune, and that part of what ACORN does is register Dead people to vote for Democrats; and we know that various other parties friendly to Obama have done very well. Why have the Dead failed to get any gravy for themselves? Have they been too inert, too passive? That has always tended to be their problem. Has Obama taken them for granted? Does he assume that they’re like blacks and Jews, that they’ll vote for him not matter what he does? I suppose he’d have some justification for such confidence.

Well, it’s always difficult to get into someone else’s mind, especially when it’s the mind of a genius and so different from our own. Whatever the answer, it has to be one that includes the premise that Obama would never fail to reward a loyal constituency. And that may be the clue to our conundrum.

Perhaps Obama simply hasn’t noticed the Dead. The Dead are a very discreet bunch and, in addition, Obama is used to getting his support from the Living Dead. Given how closely the Living Dead resemble the Defunct Dead (except for their odd way of walking and their hunger for living flesh and other people’s money), it would come as no surprise if even Obama failed to notice them.

The reason, I suggest, that Obama hasn’t rewarded the Dead is that he didn’t notice them as a distinct identity population! Now that we’ve told him, expect immediate public recognition of the contributions the Dead have made to the United States, acknowledgment of how much they have suffered at the hands of Living White Males (who buried them!), and large new initiatives on the cemetery front to address the many problems they have integrating into a Living White World.

Expect a Czar to be appointed to represent the Dead. It could even be the last one, Czar Nicholas, who would easily qualify since he is, in fact, dead. When all this happens, and it will, the country will finally, after millions of years, repair its terrible oversight through a formal recognition of the AADP: the American Association of Departed People.

Requiescat en pace.

#22: Know Thine Enemy -- The Methods of the Left

While Leftists always claim the moral high ground as theirs by right, arguing that what they do is for the betterment of the “ordinary working people,” they are actually what I call “trans-moral.” By this I mean that there is no means too low for them to use. The True Believers among them are happy to use any means, no matter how dishonest or vicious, because they see themselves as doing holy work. The populist opportunists among them don’t care what they do or say simply because they have no moral constraints at all. So we are left dealing with fools, on the one hand, who believe themselves licensed by their high calling to lie and cheat, and criminals, on the other, who really don’t feel the need to justify their lying and cheating at all (it is simply what they do).

Our only defense against the fools and the criminals is to learn to detect their activities, to become sensitized to the methods of the Left.

Here is a partial list of those methods:

1) Denying the obvious and claiming only stupid, stupid people believe the obvious: Muslims do NOT hate all Christians and Jews (it just seems that way); the whole thing is MUCH more complicated than you think, and much too complicated for YOU to understand (you uneducated, poor, simple boob!).

2) Distraction, e.g. but look what X, Y, or Z did, and HE’S a CONSERVATIVE!

3) Character assassination by teams of surrogates, attacking the person, not what they say. The ad hominem argument on an organized, huge mechanized scale.

4) Playing the victim: oooh, oooh, he called me a bad name, he said I LIED (Well, did you? Doesn’t matter, he made me feel bad!). RA-A-A-A-CISM!

5) Selective Moral Perception: Oh, oh, oh Guantanamo! The horror, oh, the horror! But why do we hear so little about Russian, Chinese, Sudanese, and Arab violations of human rights?

6) Cultural Relativity, a version of the double standard. When WE defend ourselves, we are horrible, horrible war-mongers. When others attack US, they are merely expressing the values of their own unique (and even quite beautiful) cultures.

7) Moral equivalence: Yeah, but the Israelis once attacked the Lebanese.

8) Ignoring relevant differences: So what if they were defending themselves?

9) Denying the differences even exist: Yeah, well, what IS “defending” any way, if not just an excuse for attacking, eh?

10) Faking scenes of victimization on film, a favorite of the Arabs and their European enablers.

11) Brainwashing the young, e.g. Palestinian children’s books and University Social Science courses, and primary and secondary school textbooks.

12) Political “theory”: It is ALWAYS immoral and counter-productive to retaliate against aggression. There are ALWAYS non-violent conflict resolution possibilities available. War is NEVER justified, no matter what the other side does.

13) Blame the victim: it’s all our own fault, if we hadn’t done X, Y, or Z, they wouldn’t have attacked us. THEY are just acting reasonably, but WE were EVIL. We just have to stop our wicked, wicked ways and everything will be OK.

14) Outright lying: e.g. there were twenty people at the rally (when there were 20,000), they were violent and crazy (when they were middle aged cheerful people expressing themselves); illegal immigrant will NOT be covered by the government healthcare plan (when there is nothing in it to prevent it); there will be no new taxes (when there will).

15) Charging Critics with Using the Left's Own Tactics. The "right" is "mean-spirited" (was there ever a more infantile charge?); the "right" is "partisan"; the "right" is "divisive"; the "right" attacks individuals, rather than "ideas" (Clinton's phrase, the "politics of personal destruction", a technique he developed into an art form). For the Left, any statement of an inconvenient truth is an "attack".

16) Taking over the mass media, e.g. the Times, CNN, MSNBC, etc. and marketing a totally one-sided value laden vision of events.