Satan's Game

Thought I'd not rant about how the health care saga continue to turn into bizarro world, but rather on something that comes from a place rather closer to my heart.

I'm an avid fan of Jerry "Tycho" Holkins and Mike "Gabe" Krahulik and their long-running comic strip Penny Arcade. Today they linked to a story about a man who attempted to kill two friends of his with a hammer. The story describes how the man apparently got into some form of violent rage, and in the article motive was assigned to two things: 1) a Dungeons and Dragons game gone wrong; and 2) a girl. Horrific to be sure, but mundane in a sense -- people kill each other for much, much less. The story is a month old, the original article reporting financial issues as part of the motive. The guy it seems, has a pretty rough life, is a missionary of some sort, which can be hard on people, and it was claimed completely uncharacteristic of him. Pretty standard really.

What seems to have Holkins incredulous is the apparent blaming of the attack on Dungeons and Dragons. The comments section seems to be following (or preceding, I haven't checked the time stamps rigourously) Holkins' lead. Now, the moral panic over Dungeons and Dragons seems to be a particular piece of American history, and something I'm not personally familiar with (apart from this hilarious depiction). But I can't see the implication. The piece explains that motive was established as involving D&D. That's a correlation, certainly, and there are causal elements to it, but it certainly doesn't follow that the implication is that D&D causes people to bash each other in the head with hammers. What does follow is that this particular individual, by a particular game, was lead to do this. He's still culpable, and it doesn't line D&D up for the burning. If you replaced every instance of D&D with "card," we'd have a poker player gone mad. That's not something we'd blame poker on.

What D&D does cop is its status as an involved game. D&D is an involved pursuit. No more than philosophy (recall Popper and Wittgenstein), football, or finance. I can understand the concern at the future construal of D&D as "Satan's game" considering the events of the past, but I don't believe that this article presented that facet. In fact, the comments seem to indicate that the people most concerned about this are D&D players. The rest of the comments were along the lines of "this guy is a crazy person, chill out!" As to the status quo comment response that follows the line: "I play D&D, I haven't brutalised anyone, therefore D&D doesn't make you brutalise people," -- that doesn't follow either. D&D can lead to you brutalising people. It can be a direct causal factor in leading to someone snapping. How do we know? Because this is the motive established. But it is just that - a motive. It doesn't follow that arguments like the one Langton has used on pornography (more specifically, sexualised violence in pornography).

Why is this of so much interest to me? Because in liberal society we seem to suffer this problem. Hell, forget liberal, as people we suffer from this distinction's nuances tripping us up. As it is, most of my thesis revolves around a non-D&D (unfortuantely, it'd be so much fun to write a thesis on the ethics of gaming) version of this. Scientists claim that they haven't exploited or subjugated a population with science, therefore science doesn't cause this. It may not cause in the sense that it alone creates the disposition to subjugate, but it certainly fulffils a causal process. Its parsing this that interests me, because humans are notoriously bad at cause/correlation and necessary/sufficient distinctions, and we get wrapped in them very easy.

Maybe the article is stating that D&D is once again Satan's game. I don't believe so, I believe it is stating that this person had it as a causal contributor to some pretty horrific stuff. I approach it with the same level of interest that I do science, football and philosophy being causal factors in terrible things. But that's the mens rea. That's what it is all about.

Discuss.

EDIT: My apologies, that's a Legal Fail. Motive and Intent are distinct in modern law, with mens rea covering the latter. Carry on.

Oh, PPS, I'm thinking I'll change the drapes on this site soon. The brown is getting to me.

The latest in a string of riciulous moves.

So the picture to the right appeared this morning on Digg. I must say, this little piece of rhetoric from the right has gone beyond the traditional rhetoric of the free market, and into something a little bit more crazy.

The pamphlet is distributed by a lobby group, LaRouche Political Action Comittee. LaRouche has cited that the US health system reforms proposed by Obama and his cabinet are akin to the eugenics programs of the Nazi Party in the lead up to and druing the second world war. Their justification (based on my understanding of this video)

1. The German eugenics program pre-world war two involved a panel of experts to decide who was clinically unfit to foster the German people.  Obama's new healthcare will be streamlined and rationing decisions will be made by a panel of experts (because of limited resources and a large distribution problems).  The existence of this panel of experts, much like the panel of experts in Hitler's regime means Obama is evidently a facist.
2. The creation of an independent board of experts to oversee health reforms is beyond congressional oversight, and thus is the sign of a dictator.

Now, if I remember correctly, this board that is being set up is in direct response to republican concern that medical treatments would be distributed by non-professionals.  As it is, although Peter Orszag proposed the new board, he is not on it.  If Ezekiel Emmanuel is on it, his "fascist" tendencies come from a number of articles he's written over the years about the allocation of medical resources when we can't meet all required needs.

Because the market so obviously can meet those needs.

Have a look if you can stomach it.  I'm a bit too busy on this particular day to trawl through all the mindless rhetorical maneuvering that goes on in the video.  The sad thing of it is, most people who see that flier aren't likely to follow it around the webs tracking down what's moving underneath.  Its just another piece of lunacy by those who believe in freedom (TM).

I love drugs

So, I am in the Netherlands, the oft claimed home of drugs and hookers, and was sitting in my room, reading this article from the UK Times about 'love shyness'. In essence, this is supposedly an emergent phenomenon (very very weak epistemological emergence, if you could even call it emergence) whereby a bunch of lonely adult males piss and moan about the fact that they were ten years old when had their last girlfriend. Observe:

John has been in love. “Probably just the once. When I was 10 there was this girl I really liked. She was younger than me, so when I went to secondary school I lost contact with her and never saw her again.” He has an enduring memory of playing outside with the girl, and of the sun slowly going down, and never feeling happier. In fantasy he often takes the memory further and, imagining himself as a child again, he kisses her.

Now, this is clearly indicative of some deep seated emotional abnormality, and I don't mean to be cold hearted and lacking empathy when thinking about this - clearly I read this article for a reason, and if I am in a culture renowned for its liberal approach social norms yet sitting inside and reading newspaper articles, I think it safe to say that I am not the most successful pants-man who strode the earth. But then I read this section, and my humour and cynicism and bitterness returned:

Seb says the first step to getting better is recognising that something is wrong and the label helps with that. “I believe LS can be overcome,” he says, “but it’s a long, hard road.”

There are drugs to treat shyness, mainstream antidepressants such as Paxil. But the many possible side-effects include sweating, nausea, lowered libido and suicidal tendencies

Nice. You want to treat a problem that has depression and sexual relations central to it, by application of medications known to lower libido and increase suicidal tendencies? And make the people sweaty and nauseous while on dates? Nice thinking, arse-clown. Maybe just force these guys to smoke Ice and give them a handgun. Might solve their problems, sure it might also have some negative side effects, but hey, as long as we're helping these people, who cares what happens to them.

Which brings me to the vague point of these ramblings - that labelling of socially non-standard behaviour dances easily to the music of medicalization, which as i'm sure we all know is perhaps not the best solution to a given set of problems: I'm lonely, cold inside and my last girlfriend was an eight year-old, twenty-two years ago. Clearly I need drugs to find love.

The words 'parasite' and 'exploitation' seem to bounce around in my head for some strange reason.

US and Health Care Reform...WTF?

Speaking of health care reform, and failing empires, and following Nick's lead, I am going to post some link to a tv show that expresses myself for me.

But before clicking mice and staring vacantly, I just have to ask, WTF is going on in that country? The standard rhetoric of opponents to health care reform in the US seems to claim that

a) a government bureaucrat will make your health care decisions for you

b) anything the government runs is inefficient

c) a citizen's taxes shouldn't be spent on something that doesn't directly benefit them

Let me just point out the bleeding obvious

a) in the US most health care decisions are made by an insurance company, often hired by the patient's boss. Yes. That sounds fair and equal - an industry designed to make money by restricting services to life's necessities, (and by that I mean living) coupled with the idea that if you get sick, you lose your job, and so lose your health care. And die. Dang. But at least its not the government. Because that would be socialism, and that is evil.

b) The US currently spends 15.3% of GDP on health care (more than double the OECD median), yet comes in at 50th in terms of life expectancy per birth, compared to all other countries. Yes! That's efficiency!

c) The list of wasted tax dollars in the US would make a British MP blush. This list could go on for ever, but two immediate examples spring to mind. 1 - The cost of the Iraq war: almost US$ 900 Million. 2- The cost of corn subsidies: US$ 56 Billion (1995- 2006). Tax dollars going to kill people (around 500 Iraqs per day) and citizen soldiers (4,331) in overseas wars and cheaper junk food that probably kills them at home. That's directly beneficial.

I just don't understand how people swallow the steaming pile of lies that is being shat out upon them. It boggles my mind. How? How? How? god, shoot me in the face with a big gun.

Anyway, this was meant to be short and to the point. The point being this little link to a tv show. Enjoy: The Daily Show on Health Care Morons.

Peace out.

Racism in America

A nice little piece of Colbert.  I thought it was a good depiction of how race is being dealt with in the US.

(Lifted from Lean Left.)

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
The Word - He Who Smelt It, Dealt It
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Tasers

Tell me, what do you see?

So Adam Man Tium sent me a most interesting article yesterday.  The New York Times has posted that a bit of a stink has been thrown up about the publication of common answers to Rorschach tests. It is a really good article, filled with all sorts of juicy little morsels for our brains to feast upon.

First, there is the issue of the release jeopardising the validity of a famous psychological test. While I can see why the clinical psychs are a bit cranky, I don't particularly see any objection to such a move. I mean, other fields that deal with people encounter this all the time. Hell, psychologists have to deal with the fact that people learn. That they can learn faster now just means that new scales will have to be designed. The fact that there are apparently tens of thousands of papers written trying to link behaviours and results on the tests doesn't seem to matter. I mean, for research psychs - shouldn't you guys be happy? You now have more work. Get over it. As to the wringing of hands about posterity, that's a touch weak as far as I'm concerned. if the cryptographers cried every time someone on the internet cracked a code, the world would be awash with their tears and broken dreams.  My experiences with people who are in the business of fooling psychs is that if someone wants to fool a psych, faking a Rorschach isn't going to be the only trick up their sleeves.

What is more interesting is the concern that leaking psychological diagnostic tests may lead amateurs to wrongly diagnose people they know.  More importantly, this is seen (it seems) as a violation of the psychological professional code of conduct.  Now, my own internal jury is still out on whether this in the Rorschach case has sufficient empirical grunt to follow through, but I actually think this kind of argument is quite a pressing one.  There is already a growing worry about self-diagnosis and subsequent prescription of medical treatments.  Of course, it hasn't stopped a whole swag of individuals jumping on the home-medicine bandwagon, and considering the US health problems of the day maybe this is justified.  Nonetheless, there is a reason that people train as long as they do in health-related disciplines.  The harms potentially caused by misdiagnosis and malpractice (as liability premiums for medical practitioners show) can be quite catastrophic.  Again, if you are only doing it for yourself, maybe that's okay.  But anecdotally, if someone thinks they know how to cure your particular brand of sniffles, they are going to go around telling everyone they can.  Noone just keeps their home-medicine to themselves.  That's how medicine evolved.  Unfortunately, in our society, the risks are that much greater, and there are weighty ethical concerns that accompany the trial-and-error way of the home doctor.

What is startling about this article is that the above concerns about harms and professional responsibility is actually shown nicely by the very person who is the staunchest defender of the postings, Dr. James Heilman. Before I do that, I'm going to take the chance to e-ridicule him:

Heilman, the man who originally posted the material, compared removing the plates to the Chinese government’s attempt to control information about the Tiananmen massacre. That is, it is mainly a dispute about control, he said.

IDIOT. You think this is in anyway like the cover up of Tienanmen, because of control? So by your logic, the protection of patient details, or the identity of rape victims, or any other form of control of information based on the risk of considerable harm caused is like Communist repression. I mean, come on people! The mere attempt to exert control over something doesn't make you any [insert favourite political scapegoat of the day]. Heilman obviously hasn't been engaging with the arguments on any substantive level, because otherwise he'd be focusing on actual argument, rather than meaningless hyperbole.

To cap it off, we have his own personal coup de gras:

To illustrate his point, Dr. Heilman used the Snellen eye chart, which begins with a big letter E and is readily available on the Wikipedia site. 

“If someone had previous knowledge of the eye chart,” he said, “you can go to the car people, and you could recount the chart from memory. You could get into an accident. Should we take it down from Wikipedia?” 

And, Dr. Heilman added, “My dad fooled the doctor that way.”

So doc, what you are saying is that you let your dad endanger the lives of other people by faking a really quite justified intervention into people's right to drive their cars around (i.e. whether or not they can see), and this is somehow meant to act as a rebuttal to those psychologists who are worried about harms caused by misuse of their diagnostic materials?  Yeah, that's totally coherent.  In fact, I would be tempted to say YES.  Yes we should.  Not only have you shown that leaving the loaded gun on the kitchen table risks kids shooting each other with it, but you've got video footage of little Jimmy running off with it to play cops and robbers with his friends.  You've proved their point!  Hell, all they need now is a little push in the empirical direction to show its not only you and your dad who are menaces to everyone around them, and there's a case for regulation right there!  I mean, right to freedom of expression is one thing.  Right to cheat on your driving eye-test is quite another.

I mean, there is a better solution to the eye thing - just randomise the letters.  But I'm not in the biz, so I don't know if that is feasible or jeopardises the reliability of the test.  It probably does. Still, an interesting article all in all, filled with equal amounts of the good, the bad, and the stupid.

A Very Creative Turn Of Rhetoric (while we wait for the end)

Some of you may have been following the intellectual jousting match that is Steve Fielding v Majority World Scientific Opinion. In an effort to be a good representative to his constituents (2% of whom actually voted for him), Australian Senator Fielding thought he ought to do the good thing and explore the science of climate change. As he put it recently on, Lateline "Look, I don't think it's matter of being sceptical or extremist on this issue; it's too important to play politics with... And I think it'd be derelict if I didn't inform myself." Like a good engineer, Fielding sought information from 'both sides of the argument' in the US. These sides were the Obama governmental representatives and conservative think tank marketing group the Heartland Institute. In his crusade to separate climate change from politics, he visits he US government and a thinktank intended "to discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems." Lucky he avoided politics there! Returning to Australia, Fielding was now convinced that there were too many doubts scientificially about the links between climate change and human activity.

While Fielding's disproportionate power in the Australian Senate is of interest itself, I am intrigued by the way in which the debate about 'climate change' has shifted. Fielding's own explorations are indicative, I believe, of a fascinating turn of rhetoric in how 'energy conservatives' are dealing with the problem that very few people believe them any more. Pesky phrases like '[w]arming of the climate system is unequivical' and '[m]ost of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic GHG concentrations,' taken from the 2007 IPCC Climate Change Summary Report, keep jumping out at them. How can they deal with what seems the massive weight of scientific opinion? Enter the re-branding of climate skeptics as 'climate mavericks' (my term).

Consider Fielding's comments, again from Lateline: "up until now, I, like most Australians, have just believed one side of the story totally. I've never - we've never really considered as Australia, there's been never a real debate about looking at the other side of it. And I think we've all just believed that it's definitely global warming is a real issue and global warming is driven by carbon emissions." Like his understanding of global warming trends, it seems that Fielding's memory of Australian socio-political history is extremely shortsighted. For those of you unfamiliar with Australian politics, the previous government, who were in power from 1996 - 2007, were open skeptics about climate change. Only late into their failed 2007 election campaign did the sitting Government openly acknowledge some possibility of human influence on global climate. Second to this, the massive coal industry - Australia is the largest exporter of coal worldwide, approx 1/3 of the world's coal comes from Australia. Finally,we are heavily reliant upon cars (i.e. petrol) as the major form of personal transport. Basically, the status quo in Australia was, and still is skewed heavily towards carbon intensive industries and carbon intensive lifestyles.

Yet somehow, folks like Fielding paint a view that they are a maverick, standing up against the conservative green-minded folks who accept climate change without thinking. Check conservative mouth-piece Miranda Devine's casting of Fielding as warrior for freedom:

He has been derided by people without any training in mathematics or scientific disciplines, who regard science, probably, as they do their computers - as a little black box to be understood only by an elite council of infallible gurus who are incapable of impure motives. Who is the gullible one?...Fielding has been smeared as a religious nutter, even though the real religious nutters are the green zealots who are hell-bent on destroying farming and mining for the sake of, at best, a minuscule environmental benefit.

As the weight scientific opinion has shifted more and more to the links between human activity, climate change, and the damage it will probably cause, the skeptics lost their position of authority. How to deal with this? It seems that there is a shift in how climate skeptics deal with the issue of public opinion. Rather than the rhetoric of 'fringe dwelling wierdoes' of the '80s, or 'not enough scientific evidence' of the '90s, it is now 'mavericks wanting the public to know both sides of the story.' Big carbon producing industries and their political lackeys are now the underdog, fighting for the rights of the down-trodden middle classes.

Yes, when violent green radicals like Ross Garnaut peddle such socialist ideas that "[t]he weight of scientific evidence tells us that Australians are facing risks of damaging climate change. The risk can be substantially reduced by strong, effective and early action by all major economies," we need someone to stand up and question the green radicals. Enter, Mr. Fielding, truth-crusader, climate maverick. Oh, wait a minute, that's right...People did that for decades, and they have been shown to be wrong, wrong wrong.