Terrorists and pyschopaths as broken machines

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Horrific crimes can sometimes bring out the best in humanity. We band together over our shared shock and sadness, forgetting for a minute the banality of our daily concerns. When it comes to dealing with the alleged perpetrators of these crimes, our reaction isn’t always so laudable. After news broke that the FBI had captured suspected Boston marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, some people on Twitter and in Boston expressed variations of the sentiment “I’m glad we got him, but I wish we’d killed him,” and many who were okay with him being captured alive are talking about his potential execution with apparent glee.

Vengeance is a strong desire. But it’s an ugly, primitive, base desire. And it’s a desire we should overcome as a species, as it no longer serves a worthwhile purpose. It might take a shift of perspective to accept that.

People are machines. Nuanced, fascinating, incredibly complex machines. This is not how we normally think about humans, primarily because we are more advanced than any manmade machine and are able to do things that seem very un-machine-like, such as emoting, thinking, and desiring. None of these things render us supernatural. We are subject to the same laws of physics as any other system. Our blood lust regarding evildoers is very much centered around the misconception that we each have an ability to make decisions that lies outside of the determinism of natural laws. A misconception that we are in some way outside of consequence. It’s a convincing illusion. We frequently sense that there is a little person living inside our brain. When we feel an emotion, we can feel the little person — our “self” — reacting to it, as if it is distinct instead of part of the same unit. Thus we imagine murderers and terrorists having a little person in their brain that goes “muh ha ha, I’m going to do something evil today”. But that’s not how it works. Imagine a calculator that is programmed to know that 2 + 2 = 5. The calculator doesn’t know that it’s wrong and merely disregard that fact. It actually thinks that two and two make five. Terrorists and psychopaths are just broken or just have maladaptive programming. They have no more ultimate guilt than a broken clock, or a computer with a virus.

Free will is a hard idea to shut down. People hear of a crime and think “well I would never do something like that”. They might not. But put in the perpetrator’s body, of course they would do it! If no part of them was different, there would be no part able to act differently. It is only because they were born who they were, and had the experiences that they did, that they are them, instead of someone else.

When a machine is broken, and you don’t know why, you don’t discard it. You don’t hate it. You inspect it. You question the circumstances that led to it being made this way. You try to see if there is some way to avoid machines being made this way in the future.

I hope we find some answers with Tsarnaev. Answers are more useful than vengeance.

Link

This is a pretty cool bill. Allows employers to offer employees the option of receiving overtime as 1.5x paid time off instead of 1.5x pay. So if getting additional time off is more important to you than getting a bigger paycheck, you can have that option. If you change your mind later, you can cash out at any time, and employers can’t force you either way. Naturally, unions are furious, because they care about their coffers, not about worker freedom.

Working Families Flexibility Act of 2013

Followup on “The Post”

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Fifteen months ago, I published “The Post”. I feel comfortable calling it that, because to this day people come up to me at events and want to talk to me about “The Post”. I know what they’re talking about, and they know I know what they’re talking about.

“Why I am an atheist and a naturalist” is by far the longest thing I’ve ever written in my life. It took me 30 days to write it. It was also a huge emotional leap for me. Not only was I putting my personal journey from faith to skepticism out there for the whole world to read, I was also dealing with my own thoughts about my upbringing and my struggles with religion in a very intimate way. Sometimes it takes writing about an experience to realize how you truly feel about it.

My expectations for the post were modest. I thought a few friends would read it, and that most would see its prohibitive length and skip on by. I was overwhelmed with the response by its tens of thousands of readers. I made the decision not to open comments on the post, and I’m really glad I did that. People from all over the world wrote emails to me. Dozens upon dozens of emails. Some pithy, but most quite substantial. The people varied: some were fellow out-and-proud atheists, some were still keeping it private, some weren’t sure what they believed, and some were still fervent believers. They were as young as their teens, and as old as 70. But the one thing that was constant was that they were all supportive. Not a single person told me I was going to burn in hell for renouncing God. No one told me I was a bad person for doubting.

We’re conditioned, especially Americans, to treat the continuum of skepticism and faith as a private topic. This artificial public reticence can have serious consequences. The most heartbreaking responses I got were from people who were questioning their faith or had lost their faith, but who couldn’t tell anyone… because they were depending on their parents to put them through school, or because they were afraid their spouse would leave them, or because they feared being shunned at work, or in their local community. This can’t stand. It’s often said that being religious just requires faith. What is gained by pressuring the unfaithful into lying to themselves and to others about what they believe? That’s not faith — that’s fear. This cannot stand. Social pressure doesn’t make believers out of skeptics, it just tortures them with the pain of living a lie. It makes them feel like they have to choose between their loved ones and their own integrity.

Don’t put people in that situation. Don’t make your love or respect for someone conditional on something they can’t change.

And if you’re having doubts, express them. People may surprise you, and you won’t believe how light you’ll feel, unburdened by the contradiction.

Link

“We should be in the business of protecting cherished institutions and our cultural heritage,” Mr. Leigh said. “Otherwise what, I ask, is a Conservative Party for?”

— New York Times “British House of Commons Approves Gay Marriage”

The only thing more odious than saying that change is good because it is new, is saying that stagnation is good because it is old.

Prominent Anti-GMO Activist Recants

One of the leading anti-GMO voice in Europe, Mark Lynas, has just publicly renounced his previous position and turned completely around on the issue.

I want to start with some apologies. For the record, here and upfront, I apologise for having spent several years ripping up GM crops. I am also sorry that I helped to start the anti-GM movement back in the mid 1990s, and that I thereby assisted in demonising an important technological option which can be used to benefit the environment.

As an environmentalist, and someone who believes that everyone in this world has a right to a healthy and nutritious diet of their choosing, I could not have chosen a more counter-productive path. I now regret it completely.

So I guess you’ll be wondering—what happened between 1995 and now that made me not only change my mind but come here and admit it? Well, the answer is fairly simple: I discovered science, and in the process I hope I became a better environmentalist.

Freedom of Religion: a Flawed Concept

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“It’s my religion.”

If there exists a more nebulous defense of the entire spectrum of potential human actions, from the inane to the decidedly evil, I certainly am not aware of it. Religious beliefs are given extreme deference in America, even by the the non-religious. We’re bombarded by saccharine pleas from Disney and other factories of infantile pop spirituality to “just believe in something”. And then that belief is used as a universal defense for any action that results from it. Further, it is posited that this faith is beneficial because it constrains people and gives them reasons to be good. Faith defines what is good, is a defense for things that otherwise seem bad, and constrains people to its self-created definitions of goodness. Confused? Good. You’re sane.

So engrained are the ideas that belief justifies actions and that morality is the product of belief that believers often wonder why non-believers don’t just go around murdering people. After all, if there is no eternal judgement for your actions, no belief in a higher power, why be good? Dostoevsky’s character Ivan Karamazov pondered thusly: “Without God [...] everything is permitted.” An exploration of natural morality is a topic for another day. What concerns me now is the implication — nay, the claim — that religious beliefs constrain people. Sure, a particular religious belief might constrain a particular religious person. But take a step back. Look not at a specific religion, but on the concept of religion itself. What is there to constrain religious belief?

Religious beliefs are, rather by definition, irrational, which is to say that they are primarily based on faith, not facts. And what is to constrain faith? Faith is an internal conviction that springs up outside of a system of strict evidentiary truth seeking. The ultimate answer to “why do you believe?” has to be “because I believe”. Sure, in practical terms, it’s correct to say that most believers believe because someone told them to believe, or because they had an emotional experience that swayed them to belief. But why did they choose to embrace that idea? Well… believers just believe. You have to just have faith.

Freed from any need for a deeper explanation, faith is completely and utterly unbounded. You may believe that Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead, or that girls should have their clitoris cut off, or that God wants you to exterminate the Jewish people, or that humans were formed 7,000 years ago from dust, or that insulting the prophet Muhammed should be a capital offense, or that your children should not get medical care or blood transfusions. These are all real religious beliefs. But their spectrum is not constrained by what beliefs have yet been claimed. The spectrum is constrained only by the limits of any one human being’s credulity. And there are some stupefyingly credulous people out there.

Which brings us to “freedom of religion”. In the United States, the first amendment to the Constitution states that Congress can make no law “prohibiting the free exercise [of religion]“. Thus, people are said to have freedom of religion: to practice their religion as they see fit.

How are we supposed to square the ideas of human rights and rule of law with the idea that religious practice cannot be prohibited? These ideas cannot avoid conflicting. Driving drunk? The Lord spoke to you, and said “verily I say unto you, if you can enter a vehicle under thine own power, thou art good to drive”. Want to suck the blood off of a baby’s penis with your mouth and give him a herpes infection which kills him? Oh, that one’s real. What could not be defended by saying “that’s my religion”? How do you even begin to draw a line that makes sense?

This is the problem. Religious belief is carte blanche to do anything. Ivan Karamazov was wrong: it is not God’s absence which permits anything, it is the unbounded and socially excused concept of religious belief that permits anything.

Of course, people should be free to believe what they want. That’s not freedom of religion — that’s freedom of thought; a foundational freedom. Probably the foundational freedom. That people are free to think what they want does not mean they should be able to do what they want. Rights and laws don’t just go away because you have a mystical idea in your brain that contradicts them. That’s not how a civilized society, ordered around the idea of human rights, ought to work.

Thus I would like to encourage people to start thinking of “freedom of religion” as just “freedom of thought”. If your rituals and worship and the exercise of your belief are lawful, and mindful of human rights, go ahead. Worship away. But if your religious rituals or the excercise of your beliefs violate the law, or violate people’s human rights, you shouldn’t be able to jump to “it’s my religion” as a defense. Because it’s not a defense. It’s a declaration that you’re above the law or that your unfounded beliefs are more valuable than someone’s natural rights.

Should the Westboro Baptist Church be legally designated a “hate group”?

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A whitehouse.gov petition that wants to “legally recognize Westboro Baptist Church as a hate group” has, as of this writing, garnered over a quarter of a million signatures. It reads, in full:

This group has been recognized as a hate group by organizations, such as The Southern Poverty Law Center, and has repeatedly displayed the actions typical of hate groups.

Their actions have been directed at many groups, including homosexuals, military, Jewish people and even other Christians. They pose a threat to the welfare and treatment of others and will not improve without some form of imposed regulation.

There are a few problems with this petition.

Legal Recognition

The first problem is a rather fundamental problem: there is no such thing as the legal recognition of a “hate group” in the United States. No such legal concept exists. The most popular list of hate groups is maintained by a private organization, The Southern Poverty Law Center. Its list has no legal standing. The federal government cannot act on this petition because the action that is being requested is not available to that government.

The Executive Branch

If the term “hate group” did have legal standing, the executive branch would arguably not be the branch of government to determine that. We don’t give the executive branch the power to censor. That sort of action typically requires a law, or a court order.

Should We Restrict Hateful Speech?

Even if such a concept did exist, and even if the executive branch had power to designate it, would that be a good idea? Read the comments on the coverage of this petition on the Huffington Post and witness the appalling lack of respect for freedom of speech. The speech of the Westboro Baptist Church doesn’t harm anyone. They don’t violate anyone’s rights. The only thing they do is make people mad. You don’t have a right to stop people from offending you. The fact that the rest of us are a bunch of evil sinners going straight to hell offends them — are we all violating their rights with our ungodly ways? Nonsense.

Freedom of speech is useless unless it includes the freedom to offend others. No one is jailed in Cuba or Iran for speech that offends no one. It is only once speech offends someone that its freedom can truly be tested. In this way, the Westboro Church is a test. We fail the test if our impulse is to use guns to shut them up.

The Free Marketplace of Ideas is Working

Does anyone want to argue that the Westboro Baptist Church is convincing people? That they’re winning support for the positions that “GOD HATES FAGS” or that “SOLDIERS DIE; GOD LAUGHS”? Or is their minuscule, hateful band of brainwashed dumbfucks just the last pathetic gurgles of a dying strain of religiously-motivated hatred in America? Reason is winning. Tolerance is winning. Love is winning. We denigrate ourselves by treating them as a problem worthy of rethinking our fundamental principles on the subject of human rights. They’re certainly not worthy of upheaval. They’re not worthy of introspection. They’re not even worthy of our hatred. They’re worthy of a national rolling of the eyes.

Please, join me. Roll your eyes, stop paying attention to powerless idiots, and go hug someone you love.

Raspberry Pi Headless Setup

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A tiny package arrived today. Max Spiker on Twitter sent me a Raspberry Pi (Version B). I plan to use it up as a WordPress server and do posts about serving WordPress with (very) limited resources.

I didn’t have a USB keyboard or HDMI cable handy, so here’s how I set it up “headlessly”, using OS X.

Required

  • SD Card (at least 2GB)
  • USB power supply (I used my Kindle power adapter)
  • Micro USB cable
  • Ethernet cord

Steps I Took

Downloaded a “Raspbian” disk image. Unzipped it. Renamed it rpi.img.

I plugged the SD card into my Mac.

$ df -h
{REDACTED}
/dev/disk5s1    15Gi  3.0Mi   15Gi     1%         0         0  100%   /Volumes/NO NAME

disk5s1 was the one I wanted.

Make sure you get this right. If you get this wrong, you will end up wiping another one of your drives. This will be a sad Christmas.

Next, I unmounted it.

$ sudo diskutil unmount /dev/disk5s1

Next, I copied that disk image onto my SD card like so:

$ sudo dd bs=1m if=/Users/mark/Downloads/rpi.img of=/dev/rdisk5

Note how disk5s1 became rdisk5 — drop the s{number} suffix and prepend r. This is the dangerous step. Don’t get it wrong.

It took a while to write the image out (SD cards are slow). Once it was down, I unmounted the drive:

$ sudo diskutil eject /dev/rdisk5

I plugged the SD card into the Raspberry Pi, connected the Raspberry Pi to my router using an ethernet cable, and then plugged in the micro USB power cord. Waited a minute or two for it to boot.

Next, I peeked at my router to see what IP address the Raspberry Pi had grabbed: 192.168.1.42.

$ ssh pi@192.168.1.42
pi@192.168.1.42's password: raspberry

That’s it! I was in. Simple enough. There are lots of tutorials that’ll walk you through next steps. I’ll post again once I have WordPress running.